Today's music history

The genre of American popular music referred to as "soul" music was a melding of rhythm & blues and black gospel.  It began in the early 1950's as a secularized version of black gospel and at that time the audience for it was almost exclusively black.
"Soul" began to evolve in the mid to late 50's at the same time a white audience began to discover black music.  

When I was at the age to first be discovering music and start buying records (about 1960),  the classic soul music was being recorded in Memphis and Muscle Shoals,  Alabama.

Arguably,  the best of it was recorded at the studios in Muscle Shoals and it's bordering town Sheffield,  Alabama by a now legendary group of studio musicians known as the Swampers (aka The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) who backed up a long list of vocalists.

One of the classic recordings which came from this genre has an interesting story.  I'll let wikipedia pick it up from here...

Before the recording session, the song had no title or lyrics.  The session proceeded with the expectation that the vocal artist would produce them for the vocal takes. When it came time to record the vocals,  the vocalist improvised the lyrics with minimal pre-planning, using the melody as a guide for rhythm and phrasing. The performance was so convincing that others working on the session assumed the vocalist had the lyrics written down.

Additionally...

The song is credited to Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright (the bass and keyboard players in the vocalist's own band who didn't even perform on the record). However, the song was in fact written by the vocalist himself, but he gave it to Lewis and Wright.

The recording reached number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B singles charts.

The wailing Hammond B3 organ providing the backbone for this recording was provided by the Swampers' keyboardist,  Spooner Oldham.  Oldham wrote "I'm Your Puppet",  the million selling soul record performed by Pensacola's James and Bobby Purify and produced by Papa Don Schroeder for Bell Records which was also recorded in Muscle Shoals.

Here's a youtube of the record with/lyrics.  I was 17 and in high school when this record was released.
I performed it often in a local soul band called The Twilighters (keyboard player).  It's still one of my favorite ballads,  especially when I'm three sheets to the wind like I was then.  lol

We lost JJ Cale last week too. JJ Cale, Dead at 74

Neil Young once said that the two best electric guitarists he’d ever heard were Jimi Hendrix and J.J. Cale.

What were his songs?  How about After Midnight, Cocaine, They Call Me the Breeze...

A great artist.

When a Man Loves a Woman is one of the most beautiful songs ever..