#soul

#soul

A MARTINEZ, HOST: As we finish this year, let's listen to some of the musicians we lost in 2025. Sam Moore was half the R&B powerhouse Sam & Dave. He sang on smashes such as "Hold On, I'm Comin'," "I Thank You" and this one. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOUL MAN") SAM AND DAVE: (Singing) I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We also lost the guitarist on that song, Steve Cropper. He defined the sound of Memphis soul with the Stax Records House Band. He appeared on hits by Otis Redding, Booker T. & The M.G.'s and Wilson Pickett.

For most of Western history, the soul was the master key to human nature, the invisible essence that thinkers from Plato to Descartes believed set us apart from animals, grounded morality, and housed the mind itself. Psychology, in its earliest form, was literally the "study of the soul." Mental illness was treated as a disturbance of this fragile inner essence. Even as modern science began to peel the mind away from metaphysics, the soul proved stubborn, clinging to public imagination

The first song I fell in love with God Will Open Doors by Walter Hawkins. I grew up on the Hawkins gospel family. They were my teachers. I was raised by my grandparents, and my auntie fell in love with the gospel sound and imported records from America although my grandparents thought it was a bit too secular, even though it was gospel.

Marcus Brown's voice is a crooner's voice, a baritone, emanating notes from some spot in his body deeper than his chest. Biologically speaking, this is impossible. But taking in his vocal, its dark timbre and real dimensionality, one feels perplexed and forced to come up with an explanation. Occasionally, Brown, who makes mesmerizing, lovelorn music under the name Nourished by Time, is a serenader reaching for the style of Jodeci or SWV-sinewy, solicitous, but alien underneath the ad-libbing.