"Soul" or "R&B"?

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This is going to sound like a pretty naive question, but this came up while organizing MP3s: what constitutes "soul" as opposed to "R&B", genre-wise, when it comes to '60s/'70s music? I've heard remarks stating that R&B is Southern and more in tune with whatever one means when one says "earthiness", while soul is a more upwardly-mobile, glossy, usually Detroit/coastal phenomenon. It gets pretty tough to sort out sometimes, especially in the late '60s/early '70s when funk starts becoming more and more pervasive and begins to bridge the two, and my own feeble criteria is shaping up to be the questionable "soul has strings and R&B doesn't" dichotomy. Where does one end and the other begin?

Stupornaut (natepatrin), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:12 (twenty years ago)

reverse that geography nate!

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:13 (twenty years ago)

yeah, I'd say other way around. I look at it like this: Stax/Volt=soul=south and Motown=R&B=Detroit/North

jmeister (jmeister), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:27 (twenty years ago)

nate i'd read guralnick's 'sweet soul music', i'm sure someone will pop up to debunk it but it provides a nice overview. one way to think of it too might be 'r&b'=family, 'soul'=genus maybe.

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:32 (twenty years ago)

This makes more sense, yeah. I think now I've got the hang of...

Oh wait: "Philly Soul". DAMN YOU GAMBLE AND HUFF

Stupornaut (natepatrin), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:33 (twenty years ago)

My basic position on this is I Don't Give a Shit and use them interchangably. Worse, I even sometimes say Motown is Funk, which really pisses some pedants off.

Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:37 (twenty years ago)

Haha "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" to thread

Stupornaut (natepatrin), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:39 (twenty years ago)

I call it ALL rnb.

Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:40 (twenty years ago)

i call it all pop music!

j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 2 May 2005 03:41 (twenty years ago)

I call it all noise.

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/images/Images/adorno.JPG

Lethal Dizzle (djdee2005), Monday, 2 May 2005 04:51 (twenty years ago)

Guralnick's book actually ends up copping to little distinction between the two.

Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 2 May 2005 05:02 (twenty years ago)

rnb = rock music made by black people
soul = funky stuff with strings

a banana (alanbanana), Monday, 2 May 2005 05:15 (twenty years ago)

R&B=hard rock
Soul=heavy metal

Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Monday, 2 May 2005 05:36 (twenty years ago)

Motown was Northern Soul, wasn't it?

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 2 May 2005 09:19 (twenty years ago)

approximate dates, some overlap esp/ w/soul-funk-disco

1920s-WW2: race music

1948-63: Rhythm & Blues

1963-74: Soul

1966-82: Funk

1971-83: Disco

1980-1989: Urban

1990-present: R&B

sidebar:

1973-83: hiphop

1979-93: rap

1993-present: hiphop

m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 2 May 2005 09:42 (twenty years ago)

"Northern Soul" was something else, gier, and was actually named thus 'cos it was played in clubs in the north of England.

jed_ (jed), Monday, 2 May 2005 09:54 (twenty years ago)

1971-83: Disco

Disco doesn't fit into this picture, as most of the songwriters/producers were indeed white.

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 2 May 2005 10:03 (twenty years ago)

fuck sake, what's that got to do with it? it's not a thread about black or white music. anyway i'm not sure it's even true.

the timeline is reductive of course and could splinter off into house rather than urban (after disco) but whatever.

jed_ (jed), Monday, 2 May 2005 10:23 (twenty years ago)

Oh for fuck's sake: Adorno nowhere dismisses 'pop music' as 'noise'. If you gonna namedrop / imagedrop at least read some of his books!!!

alext (alext), Monday, 2 May 2005 10:45 (twenty years ago)

oh yeah, like xxxxxxxxpost or something!

alext (alext), Monday, 2 May 2005 10:45 (twenty years ago)

**the timeline is reductive of course and could splinter off into house rather than urban (after disco) but whatever.**

well yeah the point is that genre-wide generalizing labels are reductive too. I was trying to cite the generic terms for black music in the mainstream (hence the abscence of subcultures like house etc). Surely we can all agree (or argue) about how great the music is and leave the name game to the less enlightened?

m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 2 May 2005 11:13 (twenty years ago)

...in the US mainstream cause the term House never really went wide here (like it did in the UK).

m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 2 May 2005 11:15 (twenty years ago)

...not necessarily a stupid comparison (not in my opinion anyways). The way I see it, "R&B" is a catch-all term for a genre that encompasses several sub-genres. Subgenres such as "soul" and "funk" and etc. In other words: All poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles. (Second time I've used that saying on the ILM. I stole it form "Law & Order".)

Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Monday, 2 May 2005 11:33 (twenty years ago)

Oh for fuck's sake: Adorno nowhere dismisses 'pop music' as 'noise'. If you gonna namedrop / imagedrop at least read some of his books!!!

hahaha my bad dude i wasnt even trying to be serious.

Lethal Dizzle (djdee2005), Monday, 2 May 2005 13:17 (twenty years ago)

WBLS

billstevejim (billstevejim), Monday, 2 May 2005 13:25 (twenty years ago)

apols. for sense of humour failure :-) six months of wrestling with TWA and my brain is fried.

alext (alext), Monday, 2 May 2005 14:07 (twenty years ago)

I'm struggling with this a bit myself...

I tend to think R&B is pre-rock, occasionally with mock gospel overtones (Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well, etc)

Soul is usually credited to either Ray Charles or James Brown from what I've read, so late 50's maybe? Also, it seems to infuse gospel in a more respectful way.

My guess anyway.

But then, once Funk hit the scene, it becomes more confusing to me. Early Funk is pretty clear as it's raucous, but then it gets smoothed out between Disco and Soul, which almost puts it back into the soul camp. I couldn't imagine Al Green being labled funk.

And what about 20's through 40's? I know Race Records was the term used then, but wouldn't R&B be retroactive? Then what qualifies as Jazz vocals vs. R&B in those instances?

I'm still moving massive amounts of files on Soulseek as a result of stewing over this daily (as with many other taxonomy questions that anti-taxonomists blast me for daily).

PappaWheelie, Monday, 2 May 2005 15:06 (twenty years ago)

Taxonomy has its uses!

There was a period in the 60s and early 70s when soul replaced R&B in common parlance. It wasn't until the early 90s that you'd hear people use the term "R&B" (never "rhythm & blues") when describing contemporary black music.

m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 2 May 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

Maybe I'm wrong about the date but it seems like the term R&B went into retirement for awhile, unless you were talking about somebody like Bobby "Blue" Bland or Big Joe Turner.

m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 2 May 2005 16:04 (twenty years ago)

Oh for fuck's sake: Adorno nowhere dismisses 'pop music' as 'noise'.

Not "noise", no. More like artistically worthless muzak.

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 2 May 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

Worse, I even sometimes say Motown is Funk, which really pisses some pedants off.

If no one else does, perhaps the Funk Brothers agree with you.

()ops (()()ps), Monday, 2 May 2005 20:54 (twenty years ago)

Rhythm and Blues (Jerry Wexler's construction when working for Billboard) was a nicer kinder way of saying 'music made by and for black people' than 'race music'. I guess the people who actually made the music called it 'soul', though of course it still appeared in the R and B charts.
Lesser known Motown tunes certainly count as Northern. Many sixties soul records didn't chart in Britain until the seventies on the back of the Northern soul scene.

snotty moore, Monday, 2 May 2005 23:49 (twenty years ago)

three years pass...

R&B was the race music that predated the Rock & Roll umbrella, and was not Swing, going back to the earliest Boogie Woogie and Hokum records.

Doo Wop was one of the primary directions of R&B during the Rock & Roll umbrella, and bridged the R&B to Soul gap, but caught so caught up in the RNR net that it's not seen as the progression of R&B to Soul.

Soul basically is when Ray Charles/James Brown gave way to Sam Cooke/Jackie Wilson, and was capitalized in 1959 with foundation of Motown and redireciton of Stax in the 60s.

R&B became a term used again after the fall of Disco and the watering down of Funk in the early 80s. Kind of a catch all term for Black music.

I think for a while in the 80s, R&B remained an industry term while most listeners called it Soul.

By the late 80s/early 90s, R&B was used by the listeners as well, kinda wiping away Soul in contemporary usage.

I think of Soul almost to mean 60s/70s "Black oldies" today, with no other contemporary meaning.

i ask you today what makes this average? (PappaWheelie V), Wednesday, 10 December 2008 03:00 (sixteen years ago)

For a while I was confused by the term 'Modern Soul', often seen on eBay listings. Then I realised its purpose was to distinguish 1980s soul/r&b (pre New Jack Swing) from '60s and '70s soul. Those 'Northern Soul' / Mod people in Britain have caught up with '80s stuff now, but in that collectors' scene the term 'Modern Soul' is needed to describe a particular distinction/niche. At least, that's my understanding of it.

dubmill, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 06:31 (sixteen years ago)

I've got no kick againt modern jazz

Kublai Khan Paw Paw Chow Chow Chow (PappaWheelie V), Wednesday, 10 December 2008 06:33 (sixteen years ago)

three years pass...

M Coleman's description above is accurate and fair. However, a few weeks ago, I downloaded some old Tribune music articles from the late seventies and early eighties. I was reminded of how I liked opening the paper and seeing some interview with a black musician under the heading "soul" in groovy font. I like the term soul because it pays tribute to black people's culture.

โตเกียวเหมียวเหมียว aka Bulgarian Tourist Chamber (Mount Cleaners), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 15:45 (thirteen years ago)

And where to we put "boogie"? Post-disco, part-modern soul?

Playoff Starts Here (san lazaro), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 17:53 (thirteen years ago)


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