Displaying items by tag: soul

It can be argued that it was Booker T. Jones who set the cast for modern soul music and is largely responsible for its rise and enduring popularity. On classic Stax hits like "Green Onions," "Hang 'Em High," "Time Is Tight," and "Melting Pot" the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Musicians Hall of Fame inductee and GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipient pushed the music's boundaries, refined it to its essence and then injected it into the nation's bloodstream. In June of 2013, Sound the Alarm, the new album from Booker T, finds the Hammond B3 organ master looking ahead yet again, laying down his distinctive bedrock grooves amid a succession of sparkling collaborations with some of contemporary R&B's most gifted young voices.

Bettye LaVette is one of the most soulful singers alive. She started life in Muskegon, Michigan in the late '40s but moved to Detroit with her family when she was six years old. Unlike most of her peers, she did not grow up in a Baptist church singing gospel. As she says, "I am a child of the blues", which was the music she heard as a young child. Her soul is so deep, that it is assumed that she must have started in church.