Soul Blues

Soul blues is a form of Blues that shares similarities with Soul and incorporates the eponymous soulful inflections of Gospel, Jump Blues and soul music into the vocals. It is usually based on soulful vocals and/or an expressive electric guitar. Soul blues is sometimes backed by a powerful, refined horn (or string) section common to soul while mostly relying on slow and mid-tempo ballads. It has also been called "Memphis blues", hinting at its origins, but is not confined to artists from that area. In the 1960s, soul blues can be said to be blues influenced by soul. But the genre's historical origins predate soul, beginning in the early 1950s, when blues artists in turn helped shaping the sound of what would later become soul music. In the 1950s, vocalists such as Bobby "Blue" Bland and Z.Z. Hill developed a mellifluous, melismatic singing style often using a falsetto quality that brought their gospel roots into blues, while fellow Memphis-dwellers and guitarists such as Albert King, B.B. King and Lowell Fulson emulated these vocal qualities with a hard-edged, but fluent electric guitar sound. Typically (but not always) backed by the horn sections that had become an integral part of jump-blues and Rhythm & Blues during the 1950s, this style had some of the success soul music enjoyed during the 1960s with performers like Etta James or Little Milton. Many blues artists looking for broader exposure started to record for soul labels like Motown Records and Stax Records during this period, furthering the cross-pollination of the two genres. Soul blues had a lasting influence on blues performers until today, as exemplified by the soul-influenced blues style of Robert Cray or Joe Louis Walker.