Essential Soul on Vinyl: A Starter's Guide
Soul is what happened when gospel walked out of the church and started singing about this life instead of the next one. It is the source under almost everything else in the shop: funk borrowed its rhythm section, hip-hop raided its grooves, and half of today's pop is still chasing its choruses. A good soul record does not ask you to admire it. It asks you to feel something, and it will not take no for an answer.
The ten records below are the ones we hand people first, chosen because each one is the right record, not the convenient one. Run through them and you will cover the founder, the church-trained belters, Memphis twice, Motown twice, the message years, and the Brooklyn revival that proved the music never left. When you are ready to dig past these ten, the funk, soul and disco collection is the bin to browse.
Sam Cooke - Mr. Soul (180g) Vinyl LP
Start with the man the music is practically named after. Sam Cooke came out of the Soul Stirrers with the smoothest voice gospel ever trained, and by 1963 he was remaking American pop in his own image. Mr. Soul, cut for RCA that year, catches him bending standards like "Cry Me a River" and "These Foolish Things" until they belong to him, next to "Nothing Can Change This Love," one of the tenderest things he ever sang. This is the 180 gram pressing; if you like your records with a little color, the same album is here as an orange vinyl edition too.
Etta James - At Last! Vinyl LP
Etta James's 1960 debut for Argo is where blues grit met big-city strings and neither side blinked. The title song is the one that plays at every wedding, but the whole record earns its exclamation point: "A Sunday Kind of Love" floats, "I Just Want to Make Love to You" growls, and "Trust in Me" splits the difference. James was in her early twenties and already singing like she had lived three lives. This edition adds a handful of bonus tracks from the same era; her follow-up The Second Time Around is worth asking about at the counter.
Otis Redding - Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul Vinyl LP
Most of Otis Blue was cut in a single around-the-clock stretch at Stax in the summer of 1965, with Booker T. & the M.G.'s working at a pace nobody would dare schedule now. It plays like a summit meeting: "Respect" in its original form, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" at full burn, and covers of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Shake" that turn tribute into argument. If you buy one 60s soul album, make it this one. His late masterpiece The Dock of the Bay is the next Otis to reach for.
Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul Vinyl LP
In 1969 Isaac Hayes, already a songwriting force at Stax, was handed complete creative control on the Enterprise imprint, and he used it to break every rule of the three-minute soul single. Hot Buttered Soul is four tracks long. "Walk On By" stretches past twelve minutes of fuzz guitar and strings, and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" spends its whole first act as a spoken sermon before the song even starts. Slow, orchestral, and endlessly sampled, it rewired what a soul album could be. For the next chapter of that sound, Black Moses doubles down on everything.
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On (180g) Vinyl LP
The centerpiece of any soul shelf. Marvin Gaye fought his own label for the right to release a song cycle about war, ecology, addiction, and faith, sung through the eyes of a veteran coming home to a country he barely recognized. Released on Tamla in 1971, it flows as one continuous piece, "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" into "Inner City Blues" into that string-swept title track, and it has never stopped sounding current. Once it has its hooks in you, Gaye's 70s run continues with Let's Get It On and I Want You.
Gil Scott-Heron - Pieces of a Man Vinyl LP
Half poet, half bluesman, Gil Scott-Heron made records that talk to you straight. Pieces of a Man, cut for Flying Dutchman in 1971 with keyboardist Brian Jackson and a band that included bassist Ron Carter, opens with the studio version of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and then shows the tender side of the same mind on "Lady Day and John Coltrane" and "Home Is Where the Hatred Is." Rappers have been quoting him ever since. The collection The Revolution Will Not Be Televised gathers more from this era, and We're New Here, Jamie xx's rework of his final album, carries that voice into the future.
Al Green - Let's Stay Together Vinyl LP
Willie Mitchell's Hi Records had the warmest rhythm section in Memphis, and in 1972 he pointed it at Al Green. The result is the silkiest record on this list: the title track glides on Al Jackson Jr.'s drums, the horns whisper instead of shout, and Green's falsetto turns even the Bee Gees' "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" into church. This is late-night soul, best played low and close. His Greatest Hits, also on 180 gram vinyl, collects the rest of the Hi run in one sitting.
Stevie Wonder - Talking Book Vinyl LP
In 1972 Stevie Wonder was newly free of the Motown assembly line, playing most of the instruments himself and running his clavinet through a synthesizer rig nobody else had figured out yet. Talking Book is the album where that freedom clicked: "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" opens the door and "Superstition" kicks it off the hinges. It is also the friendliest way into his 70s run. From here the path leads straight through Innervisions to Songs in the Key of Life, and there is not a wrong turn anywhere on it.
Bill Withers - Greatest Hits Vinyl LP
Bill Withers wrote like a man who had held a day job, because he had, and he never lost the plainspoken directness that came with it. This 1981 Columbia collection is wall-to-wall standards: "Ain't No Sunshine," "Lean on Me," "Use Me," "Lovely Day," and "Just the Two of Us," his classic with Grover Washington Jr. Nothing here feels written so much as overheard, one neighbor leveling with another over the fence. Still Bill and the live At Carnegie Hall are the deep dives to hunt down once these songs have you; ask at the counter and we will point you the right way.
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Naturally (20th Anniversary) Vinyl LP
Proof the music never went anywhere. Sharon Jones spent years being told she did not look the part, then out-sang everyone who supposedly did. Naturally, recorded to tape at Daptone's Brooklyn house studio and released in 2005, is modern soul with no quotation marks around it: "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" struts like a lost Memphis single, and the band flips "This Land Is Your Land" into something slyer than any campfire singalong ever managed. This is the 20th anniversary pressing. Follow it with 100 Days, 100 Nights, the record that made the world catch up to her.
Ten records, sixty years, one continuous argument about how much feeling a groove can hold. The funk, soul and disco collection is where the digging continues, and the 1960s albums bin catches the singles-era sides around the edges. Come by the shop and tell us who we left off; with soul, that second list is longer than this one, and that is exactly the point.
