Soul

In the mid-1950s the public began bearing a change in the further development of the blues. It was the merging of blues and gospel music to form a new sound that became rhythm and blues. It was this marriage that would eventually evolve into soul music in the 1960s.

Leading this trend was the Five Royales of North Carolina whose gospel rendition or "Baby Don't Do lt" became a number one hit on Billboard's R&B charts on January 17, 1953. Ray Charles' career began in 1954 with his R&B version of "I Got a Woman." James Brown's 1956 hit of "Please, Please, Please," found its place on the R&B charts. During the early 1960s, soul music became the replacement for rhythm and blues. The pioneers of soul music were all black performers whose parents and some of the performers themselves have grown up during the Gospel Era. The term soul is closely associated with African-American cultures. Later, in the second half of 1969 when the music journal Billboard officially replaced rhythm and blues to soul that the scope of this music extended into the white population.

Preacher Solomon Burke from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was among the first to record a hit with his soul version of "Just Out Of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms)," on Atlantic Records in 1961. Burke followed through with two successive hits in 1962 and 1963. They were "Cry to Me," and "If You Need Me" respectively. Many blues singers and musicians included soul music in their repertoire. Among the most influential of them all was Bobby 'Blue' Bland whose national 1962 hit "Yield Not to Temptation" is an excellent example or what the combination of gospel and blues sounds like.