Soul Music...

singing with the ugly face...

“Soul is singing with the ugly face.” Sharon Jones, a gospel-trained singer who started performing soul in the ‘70s can sing with sweetness and grace, but she says there’s more to it than that. “I think when you go soul, you got to get the ugly face.”

A newcomer to soul music is a young Eli “Paperboy” Reed who “knows how to sing ugly.” “My music sounds the way it does ‘cause everybody wears their influences on their sleeve...” he says. It is “marked by a passionate precision and raw intensity.”

According to National Public Radio writer, Ashley Kahn, “If you’re talking about music, soul is easy to define. It’s a gritty, vocal style, filled with a feeling straight out of the black church. Soul music was born in the ‘50s, took over the charts in the ‘60s, and remains alive and well today. Soul often has horn sections and sometimes strings, but it doesn’t like to be too dressed up with polished production: Soul is more about naked emotion and personal testimony.

“Soul music was born thanks to the innovations of a generation of post-war musicians who, essentially, turned gospel music into a secular form of art.” Ray Charles and Sam Cooke were two of the founding fathers, but there were many soul singers and groups who fostered the evolution of the mainstream black music into mainstream American music.

A stepchild of soul music was the “blue-eyed soul” singer—a white artist who performed the black music. Singers in the 60s like the The Righteous Brothers took soul music to the top of the charts. The ride for soul continues with music from a plethora of artists such as Michael McDonald, Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse and Taylor Hicks.

Blue-eyed-soul singer, Taylor Hicks, told NPR Tapestry in a radio interview in 2005, “My music is derived from the old soul artists of back in the day…the high energy live performers like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gay, Otis Redding and a lot of the Stax soul review—energy that you would have if you saw those play back in the day.” He writes in his autobiography, “Heart Full of Soul,” of his early attachment to soul music growing up in an imperfect world…”....And all the while, I was listening to soul music - music where you can actually hear a man’s heart break. So it just really made sense to me - even at such a young age.”

Taylor Hicks has the voice…a gravely, whiskey tenor with the “passionate precision and raw intensity” described by Paperboy Reed. He performs his music with the intensity of a tent revival testimony. Taylor can sing with the ugly face…the face he wears when he “takes us to church”!

The new sound of soul by Taylor Hicks will take us to church on March 10 when “The Distance,” is being released on his own label, Modern Whomp Records.

Soul music—emotions set down in music inspiring the ugly face!

Sources: Ashley Kahn, National Public Radio, and NPR Tapestry; Heart Full of Soul, by Taylor Hicks.