Stevie Wonder

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• Top 6 R&B/Soul Artists of All Time

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• Aretha Franklin

  Aretha Franklin, widely known as "the Queen of Soul," became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, a recognition reflecting her role in defining soul music as a distinct genre through her late-1960s Atlantic Records recordings. Her 1967 recording of "Respect," originally written and recorded by Otis Redding, transformed the song's meaning entirely — Franklin's version became an anthem of both the civil rights movement and the emerging feminist movement, reframing a song originally about romantic loyalty into a demand for basic dignity and equality. Franklin's gospel-rooted vocal technique, developed singing in her father's Detroit church as a child, gave her a level of raw emotional power and technical vocal control that became the defining template for soul singing, and Rolling Stone has repeatedly ranked her voice the greatest in the history of popular music. Her 2015 performance of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" at the Kennedy Center Honors, delivered as a surprise tribute to the song's co-writer Carole King, became a viral moment decades into her career, demonstrating that her vocal power remained undiminished even in her seventies.

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• Marvin Gaye

  Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On marked a dramatic departure from the more straightforward romantic soul music that had defined his earlier Motown career, instead addressing the Vietnam War, urban poverty, and environmental degradation through a loosely connected concept album, and it's now widely regarded as one of the greatest albums in American music history. Motown founder Berry Gordy initially resisted releasing What's Going On, reportedly considering it too political and musically unconventional for commercial success, before its eventual release proved to be both a critical triumph and a major commercial hit, reshaping expectations for what a Motown artist's music could address. Gaye's smooth, sensual vocal style on later albums like Let's Get It On helped define the "quiet storm" subgenre of soul music, a deliberate contrast to the more socially conscious material of What's Going On that demonstrated his range across both deeply personal and broadly political songwriting. Gaye's life ended tragically in 1984, when he was shot and killed by his own father during a domestic dispute the day before his 45th birthday, a death that added a layer of tragedy to a catalog already known for its emotional depth and vulnerability across both his political and romantic material.

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• Ray Charles

  Ray Charles, blind by age seven after childhood glaucoma, is widely credited with pioneering soul music by fusing gospel music's vocal intensity and call-and-response structure with secular rhythm and blues lyrics, a combination some religious listeners at the time considered controversial given gospel's sacred origins. His 1959 hit "What'd I Say," built around an improvised call-and-response section between Charles and his backing vocalists, became one of the most influential recordings in the development of soul music and was reportedly banned by some radio stations for its suggestive vocal delivery. Charles's 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which applied his soul vocal style to country songs, was a commercially and critically bold genre crossover that helped demonstrate soul music's compatibility with other American musical traditions, expanding his audience considerably beyond his existing R&B fan base. His combination of technical piano skill, gospel-rooted vocal power, and genre-crossing ambition across country, jazz, and traditional pop made Charles one of the most versatile major artists in American music history, and Frank Sinatra reportedly called him "the only true genius in the business," a widely repeated tribute to his broad musical range.

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• James Brown

  James Brown, widely known as "the Godfather of Soul," pioneered funk music's rhythmic emphasis on the "one" — accenting the first beat of each measure rather than the backbeat typical of most popular music — a rhythmic innovation that became foundational to funk, hip-hop sampling, and much of subsequent Black American popular music. His extended live performances, built around tight, extensively rehearsed backing bands and Brown's own explosive, physically demanding dancing, set a new standard for concert showmanship, and his 1963 live album Live at the Apollo became one of the best-selling live albums in music history at the time. Brown's 1968 song "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" became a significant anthem of the Black pride movement during a pivotal moment in the civil rights era, reflecting Brown's willingness to directly address racial identity and pride in his music at a time when doing so carried genuine commercial and personal risk. His rhythmic innovations became the most heavily sampled source material in the early development of hip-hop production, with breaks from Brown's recordings, particularly by his drummer Clyde Stubblefield, forming the rhythmic backbone of countless hip-hop tracks in the genre's foundational years.

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• Otis Redding

  Otis Redding's raw, emotionally intense vocal delivery, recorded at Stax Records in Memphis alongside the label's tightly rehearsed house band, became one of the defining sounds of Southern soul music during the mid-1960s, distinguishing his gritty, gospel-influenced style from the more polished, pop-oriented sound coming out of Motown at the same time. His performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, held in front of a predominantly white rock audience largely unfamiliar with his music beforehand, is widely credited with introducing Redding and Southern soul music to a broader mainstream American audience beyond his existing R&B fan base. Redding died in a plane crash in December 1967, just three days after recording "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," a song notably more reflective and melancholic than his earlier, more upbeat material, and the single became his first and only number-one hit, released posthumously just weeks after his death. His original recording of "Respect," later reworked and transformed into an entirely different kind of anthem by Aretha Franklin's 1967 cover, remains one of the most significant examples in music history of a cover version eclipsing and reshaping the meaning of the original recording.

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More in Music

• Naftule's Dream

  Naftule's Dream grew out of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, a Boston-area group that had already been playing traditional klezmer for 14 years before Newton, Massachusetts-born clarinetist Glenn Dickson and accordionist-songwriter Michael McLaughlin spun off a more adventurous, improvisation-focused outlet from within it. The band released two records on their own, "Search for the Golden Dreydl" in 1997 and "Smash, Clap" in 1998, before going on to record three further albums for composer John Zorn's Tzadik label under its Radical Jewish Culture series, a significant marker of downtown-avant-garde credibility. The Boston Globe praised the group for fusing "klezmer music, Phish-like improvisation, and radical Yiddish poetry," a description that captured how directly the band pushed past traditional acoustic klezmer instrumentation and arrangement. Their combination of their roots in a 14-year-old traditional klezmer orchestra and their three albums on John Zorn's boundary-pushing Tzadik label has made Naftule's Dream one of the most musically adventurous bands in the klezmer revival movement.

• Brave Old World

  Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.

• Kapelye

  Kapelye was assembled in 1979 when ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik organized a group of musicians to perform at a klezmer lecture at Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island; the November 18, 1979 debut went well enough that the musicians agreed on the spot to keep performing together as a full-time band. The group took its name from the Yiddish word for "a band" and began actively researching and collecting turn-of-the-century klezmer recordings, drawing several members, including fiddler and vocalist Michael Alpert, from the overlapping Balkan music community. Their 1981 debut album, "Future & Past," mixed traditional Yiddish folk ballads with labor and political anthems and songs pulled directly from Yiddish theater, and the band followed it with "Levine & His Flying Machine" in 1985 and "Chicken" in 1987, before "Old-Time Jewish American Radio" became their most successful release. Their combination of Sapoznik's foundational archival research and their genre-launching 1981 debut album has made Kapelye one of the most historically significant bands in klezmer's modern revival movement.

• Andy Statman

  Andy Statman, born in New York City in 1950, started on banjo and guitar at 12 before switching to mandolin, which he studied briefly under lifelong friend David Grisman, and by 1970 he was playing in the experimental bluegrass group Country Cooking, followed by stints with David Bromberg's band. In 1975, Statman sought out klezmer clarinet legend Dave Tarras and became his protégé; Tarras wrote melodies specifically for him and eventually bequeathed Statman four of his own clarinets, deliberately passing the older master's living klezmer lineage directly to him. His late-1970s album "Jewish Klezmer Music" became a touchstone recording for that decade's klezmer revival, released alongside his mandolin-focused "Flatbush Waltz," and the National Endowment for the Arts later named him a National Heritage Fellow, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts. His combination of his direct mentorship under Dave Tarras and his rare parallel mastery of klezmer clarinet and bluegrass mandolin has made Statman one of the most historically important figures in klezmer's modern revival.

• Giora Feidman

  Giora Feidman was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of klezmer musicians spanning his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and by 18 he was already leading clarinetist of the orchestra at Argentina's Teatro Colón before joining the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1957 on the recommendation of conductor Paul Kletzki. He played with the Israel Philharmonic until 1974, then launched a solo career and was crowned "the King of Klezmer" in New York already in the 1970s, well before klezmer's broader American revival movement took hold in subsequent decades. In the early 1990s, Steven Spielberg invited Feidman to record alongside violinist Itzhak Perlman on the score for "Schindler's List," and Feidman's solo clarinet became a defining voice on that soundtrack, which went on to win the Academy Award. His combination of a multi-generational klezmer family lineage and his solo clarinet performance on the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" score has made Feidman one of the most significant ambassadors for klezmer music worldwide.