Soul music became the voice of black America in the 1960s, but that voice was hardly a singular one. Mixing the sacred sounds of gospel with the profane of the blues—and a dash of lush, pop production—soul brought black music to new heights of expressiveness. Lyrically, soul veered from complex, adult romance to optimistic anthems of black pride, a reflection of the social changes and civil rights activism taking place in the United States.

Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and James Brown pioneered the form in the late 1950s with their mixtures of gospel and R&B. In the 1960s, major soul music scenes centered around labels, producers and studios in Detroit, MI (Motown), Memphis (Stax/Volt), Philadelphia, PA (Gamble & Huff) and Alabama (Muscle Shoals).

Throughout the decade, artists such as Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, Ben E. King, the Temptations and Curtis Mayfield brought the sounds of sweet soul music to listeners—black and white—across mainstream America. The demand for “Respect” in the Otis Redding song, as performed by Aretha Franklin in 1967, stands as much as anything for the spirit of soul.

The soul era is generally considered to have died out when the Civil Rights era ended, signified most dramatically by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

Musically soul lived on, though it spawned the new variations of funk (Sly Stone, James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic) and disco (the Trammps, Donna Summer) and the singular sounds of Stevie Wonder.