Soul music has some of its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues.^[1]Many consider soul music to be a genre of music created by African Americans in northern United States inner cities, particularly Chicago.^{[citation needed]} Other areas, such as Detroit and Memphis, Tennessee quickly followed and created their own regional soul music style, due to their gospel roots. Some of the elements from Chicago and other parts of the United States, such as the south, brought some raw unpolished funky talent to heavily-populated inner cities, where soul became polished and perfected.

Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, Jackie Wilson, and Etta James were early popular stars of the music genre, and other soul forerunners include: Mahalia Jackson, Louis Jordan, and Big Joe Turner.^{[citation needed]} Some of the earliest soul artists included Ray Charles, who is widely considered to be the inventor of soul music by putting the blues and gospel music together with his groundbreaking hit of 1954, "I Got A Woman".^{[citation needed]} Little Richard, Fats Domino and James Brown, although all were happy to call themselves rock and roll performers at the time. During the 1960s Beatles boom, both Charles and Brown claimed that they had always really been R&B singers. Little Richard proclaimed himself the "king of rockin' and rollin', rhythm and blues soulin'", because his music embodied elements of all three, and because he inspired artists in all three genres. Solomon Burke's early recordings for Atlantic Records codified the soul style, and his early 1960s songs "Cry to Me", "Just Out of Reach" and "Down in the Valley" are considered classics of the genre. Peter Guralnick writes, "it was only with the coming together of Burke and Atlantic Records that you could see anything resembling a movement."^{[citation needed]}

An important center of soul music recording was Florence, Alabama, where the Fame Studios operated. Jimmy Hughes, Percy Sledge and Arthur Alexander recorded at Fame, and Aretha Franklin recorded in the area later in the 1960s. Fame Studios, often referred to as Muscle Shoals (after a town neighboring Florence), enjoyed a close relationship with Stax, and many of the musicians and producers who worked in Memphis contributed to recordings done in Alabama.

Another notable Memphis label was Goldwax Records, owned by Quinton Claunch. Goldwax signed O.V. Wright and James Carr, who went on to make several records that are considered essentials of the genre. Carr's "The Dark End of the Street" (written by Chips Moman and Dan Penn) was recorded at two other important Memphis studios, Royal Recording and American Sound Studios, in 1967. American Studios owner Chips Moman produced "The Dark End of the Street", and the musicians were his house band of Reggie Young, Bobby Woods, Tommy Cogbill and Gene Chrisman. Carr also made recordings at Fame Studios, utilizing musicians David Hood, Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins.

Aretha Franklin's 1967 recordings, such as "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "Respect" (originally sung by Otis Redding), and "Do Right Woman-Do Right Man", are considered the apogee of the soul music genre, and were among its most commercially successful productions. During the late 1960s, Stax artists such as Eddie Floyd and Johnnie Taylor made significant contributions to soul music. Howard Tate's recordings in the late 1960s for Verve Records, and later for Atlantic (produced by Jerry Ragovoy) are another notable body of work in the soul genre.

Motown Records also contributed to the soul canon, although at the time, the Detroit-based label described itself as a manufacturer of pop music. Music by Motown artists such as Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Marvin Gaye did much to popularise the style, and the overall Motown sound did much to define what later became known as northern soul. In Chicago, Curtis Mayfield created the sweet soul sound that later earned him a reputation as the Godfather of northern soul. As a member of The Impressions, Mayfield infused a call and response style of group singing that resembled the gospel style, and influenced many other groups of the era.

By 1968, the soul music movement had begun to splinter, as James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone began to evolve both soul and rhythm and blues into other forms. Guralnick argues that, "More than anything else, though, what seems to me to have brought the era of soul to a grinding, unsettling halt was the death of Martin Luther King in April of 1968."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 1970s

Later examples of soul music include recordings by The Staple Singers (such as I'll Take You There), and Al Green's 1970s recordings,done at Willie Mitchell's' Royal Recording in Memphis. Mitchell's Hi Records continued the Stax tradition in that decade, releasing many hits by Green, Ann Peebles, Otis Clay, O.V. Wright and Syl Johnson. Bobby Womack, who recorded with Chips Moman in the late 1960s, continued to produce soul recordings in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Detroit, producer Don Davis worked with Stax artists such as Johnnie Taylor and The Dramatics. Early 1970s recordings by The Detroit Emeralds, such as Do Me Right, are a link between soul and the later disco style. Motown Records artists such as Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson contributed to the evolution of soul music, although their recordings were considered more in a pop music vein than those of Redding, Franklin and Carr. Although stylistically different from classic soul music, recordings by Chicago-based artists such as Jerry Butler and The Chi-Lites are often considered part of the genre.

By the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres. The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length statements with hard-hitting social commentary. Artists like James Brown led soul towards funk music, which became typified by 1970s bands like Parliament-Funkadelic and The Meters. More versatile groups like War, the Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire became popular around this time. During the 1970s, some slick and commercial blue-eyed soul acts like Philadelphia's Hall & Oates and Oakland's Tower of Power achieved mainstream success, as did a new generation of street-corner harmony or city-soul groups like The Delfonics and Howard University's Unifics.

By the end of the 1970s, disco and funk were dominating the charts. Philly soul and most other soul genres were dominated by disco-inflected tracks. During this period, groups like The O'Jays and The Spinners continued to turn out hits.