Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s, combining elements of African American gospel music and rhythm and blues.

According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying." Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds.

Soul music has its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues. The term 'soul' in black American parlance has connotations of black pride and culture. Gospel groups in the 1940s and 1950s occasionally used the term as part of their name. The jazz that self-consciously derived from gospel came to be called soul jazz. As singers and arrangers began using techniques from gospel and soul jazz in black popular music during the 1960s, soul music gradually functioned as an umbrella term for the black popular music at the time. The term "soul music" itself, to describe gospel-style music with secular lyrics, is first attested in 1961.

Wilford Daniel "Danny" White (born February 9, 1952) is a former quarterback and punter for the Dallas Cowboys and an American football coach in the Arena Football League. He has been the color commentator for Cowboys games on Compass Media Networks' America's Team Radio Network since the 2011 season.

He was named the head coach of the Arena Football League expansion Utah Blaze, which began play in 2006. Prior to that he served as the head coach of the Arizona Rattlers from 1992 to 2004, winning the ArenaBowl championship in 1994 and 1997. White's contract was not renewed by the new Rattlers ownership after the 2004 season following three consecutive ArenaBowl losses. In his first season coaching the Blaze, he led the team to a 7-9 record and a playoff berth where Utah fell to Arizona 57-34.

A graduate of Westwood High School in Mesa, Arizona, he dind't receive a lot of notice while being the starter at quarterback, because back then he was a better baseball player.

Frank Kush then the football head coach at Arizona State University, helped convinced the baseball coach Bobby Winkles to sign White to a scholarship, with the provision that he would also play punter for the football team. During those early years Kush gave him a chance to improve his skills as a quarterback, which would eventually lead him to become the starter midway through his sophomore season, in a game against New Mexico State University where he threw 5 touchdowns.

Don Bryant (born April 4, 1942, Memphis, Tennessee, United States) is an American singer and songwriter.

Bryant was staff songwriter for Hi Records. He married soul singer Ann Peebles in 1974.

Doin' the Mustang (1991)
Comin' On Strong (1992)

Ruby Johnson (19 April 1936 - 4 July 1999) was an American soul singer best known for her recordings on the Volt label in the late 1960s.

She was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and was raised in the Jewish faith. She sang, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Temple Beth-El choir. After completing high school, she moved to Virginia Beach where she worked as a waitress and began singing rhythm and blues with local bands, before spending two years with Samuel Latham and the Rhythm Makers. She then moved to Washington DC in the late 1950s, and joined Ambrose and the Showstoppers, the house band at the Spa nightclub. Local entrepreneur Never Duncan Jnr. became her manager, and placed her with record producer Dicky Williams. Her first single, "Calling All Boys", was issued in 1960 on the V-Tone label, before Duncan established his own recording company, NEBS. She released a succession of singles on NEBS, including "Here I Go Again", "Worried Mind", and "Nobody Cares", some of which became local hits.

Erica Abi Wright (born February 26, 1971), better known by her stage name Erykah Badu /ˈɛrɨkə bɑːˈduː/, is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter, record producer, activist and actress. Her work includes elements from R&B, hip hop and jazz. She is best known for her role in the rise of the neo soul sub-genre, and for her eccentric, cerebral musical stylings and sense of fashion. She is known as the "First Lady of Neo-Soul" or the "Queen of Neo-Soul".

Early in her career, Badu was recognizable for wearing very large and colorful headwraps. For her musical sensibilities, she has often been compared to jazz great Billie Holiday. She was a core member of the Soulquarians, and is also an actress having appeared in a number of films playing a range of supporting roles in movies such as Blues Brothers 2000, The Cider House Rules and House of D. She also speaks at length in the documentary Before the Music Dies.

Erykah Badu was born Erica Abi Wright in Dallas, Texas, on February 26, 1971. Her mother raised her and her brother and sister alone; their father, William Wright, Jr., had deserted the family early in their lives. To provide for her family, the children's grandmother often helped looking after them while Erykah's mother, Kolleen Maria Gipson (Wright), performed as an actress in theatrical productions. Influenced by her mother, Erykah had her first taste of show business at the age of 4, singing and dancing with her mother at the Dallas Theatre Centre. Erykah Badu was the owner of Focal point in Dallas, Texas.