Soul Kind of Feeling Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cannonball Adderley

This song is the title track of Cannonball's 1969 soul jazz album, which was subtitled "Live at the Club". The latter was a hoax as it was put together at a Los Angeles' recording studio where the album's producer, David Axelrod, set up a pseudo 'Club', created an invitation only audience and furnished them with free drinks.

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" has since become the definitive slow soul jazz tune, sounding somewhat like the southern soul instrumentals that pervaded the 1960s, however, the thing that set it apart was a groove that was significantly laid back. It has a deep moaning quality that is in stark contrast to anything else on Adderley's album but that didn't stop it from becoming the surprise hit of 1967. The song reached number eleven on Billboards' Hot 100 charts and number two on its soul chart. Later that year the Buckinghams would add lyrics to the tune and their version would climb to number five on Billboards' Hot 100.

Answer: Hall and Oates

Hall and Oates were the masters of blue-eyed soul and, this track, released in 1982, was the duos fourth single to reach the number one spot on Billboards' Hot 100 charts. Whilst many have concluded that the song was about relationships, some even suggesting that bondage was involved, the pair have explained that it was a cry of defiance. In an interview with The Guardian (Dave Simpson, April 2018), Daryl Hall explained that he'd felt that he was being manipulated by the whole music industry and shouted to himself "enough is enough"... and the song grew from there.

Hall would also relate how the song had also created some influence amongst his peers. During the recording of "We Are the World", the 1985 charity single by the supergroup USA for Africa, Michael Jackson had taken him aside and said "I hope that you don't mind, but I stole the groove (from this song) and used it on "Billie Jean" (Jackson's chart topping 1983 single)".

Answer: The Impressions

Curtis Mayfield was a songwriting genius. This number was written in an era where R&B and soul was not overtly used as a medium to create social awareness. As such, there was a fear that it would adversely affect sales. To circumvent this, Mayfield drew upon his church upbringing and created a subtle gospel sound. To many it sounded like a call to "get onboard with the church" and it would take a number of listens to identify that it spoke of a revolution to come.

Drawing upon traditional Black American freedom songs such as "Wade in the Water" (1901) and "The Gospel Train" (1876), the track was a big hit for The Impressions in 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. employed the song to either get people marching or to provide them with soothing. He would declare it the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. Its cultural importance was also recognized by the National Recording Registry, slating the song for preservation in 2015.

Answer: Roy Head

Roy Head's career saw him exploring a variety of musical genres and he would eventually find himself inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. However, in 1965, he was at the front of a group dubbed Roy Head and the Traits and it was with them that he'd achieved his biggest worldwide hit "Treat Her Right". That song, which would to establish him as a singer of blue eyed soul, reached number two on Billboards' Hot 100, and was only kept from the top spot by a little Beatles' number called "Yesterday", came about by mistake.

According to Head, they were at a dancehall and, "I wanted to do "Ooo Poo Pah Doo" (1960) by Jessie Hill, and the guitarist played the wrong riffs. So I made up a song about talking to a cow. 'If you squeeze her real gentle, she'll give you some cream.' It was risqué, but in a hillbilly way. The dance floor packed up ". (This is an excerpt from "200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs: The Stories Behind the Music of the 1960s Greatest Performances" by Frank Mastropolo (2023)). The band's bass player, Gene Kurtz, then suggested to Head that they get serious with the song and make it about talking to a woman, rather than a cow. They did and it changed their lives.

Answer: Bobby Timmons

Bobby Timmons was one of the early innovators of soul jazz and, this track is a great finger-popping example that features on his first album "This Here is Bobby Timmons" (1960). Though he'd been in the industry for some time, this was his first LP as the sole leader of a combo. Timmons had originally given the track to Cannonball Adderley to record but, for his own version, he adopted a slightly funkier style. Adderley would release his version later that year and, hot on his heels came a second construction of the tune, this time by Art Blakely.

It's appropriate that those two artists are mentioned as Timmons had served his apprenticeship with the two masters, contributing songs such as "Moanin'" (to Blakely in 1959) and "This Here" (Adderley, also 1959) to their causes. Both songs would also appear on Timmons' debut LP. By this time, Timmons was at the peak of his powers, leading saxophonist Jimmy Heath to declare "soul is an innate thing in people. Some people do have it, and some people don't... Timmons definitely has it".

Answer: Nina Simone

Amongst soul performers, Nina Simone stands as one of the finest protest singers. Her canon includes such notable works as "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" (1969), "Four Women" (1966) and the "Hair" medley of "Ain't Got No, I Got Life" (1968). Without doubt, her fieriest piece was her first protest song, the withering "Mississippi Goddam", which she released in 1964. Written, she claimed, in less than an hour, the song was born out of a "rush of fury, hatred, and determination" as she "suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963."

She opens the number with the lines
"The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it"
using it to express her outrage at the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi, the Alabama church bombing that saw four young girls perish and to highlight the Tennessee sit-in protest against segregation.

Answer: Hamilton Joe Frank & Reynolds

Written by Brian Potter and Dennis Lambert, the rumour floated was that the song was specifically written for Elvis Presley, however, the writers have neither confirmed nor denied this. The song was originally recorded by Country Store in 1970, but it had little impact on the charts. It was then offered to the Grass Roots, but they turned it down.

As fortune would have it, Dan Hamilton, Joe Frank Carollo and Tommy Reynolds happened to be in the ABC-Dunhill studios recording a Creedence Clearwater Revival medley when they were asked to sing the song. Barely halfway through their rendition, the impressed producers called a halt to it and offered the trio a recording contract and the song to go with it. The trio drew on the popularity of horn based bands, such as Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, that were dominating the charts at the time and employed a similar sound into their recording. Released in April of 1971 this blue-eyed soul single would sell over a million copies in a short space of time and peaked at number four on Billboards' Hot 100.

Answer: Roberta Flack

There are two people that need to be acknowledged here. The first is Gene McDaniels, the man who wrote the song. Gene rose to fame in the early 1960s with two Top Ten hits in "A Hundred Pounds of Clay" (1961) and "Tower of Strength" (also 1961). Toward the mid and late 60s, he turned his attention to politics which led him to write "Compared to What", a protest song about the Vietnam War that also took aim at US President Lyndon B. Johnson. The song was first recorded in 1966 by jazz pianist Les McCann and it appeared on his album "Les McCann Plays the Hits". A more popular version would be a live recording between McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris that was played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in June of 1969.

Whilst the song has been covered by more than 270 artists, the definitive version is Roberta Flack's. There is a link here to McCann. He'd heard Flack sing at a jazz club and it was at his urging that Flack joined Atlantic Records. His version of "Compared to What" (with Harris) was released almost simultaneously with Flack's in 1969. Her version is built on a joyous bassline and is lifted by Flack's piano punctuation and musicianship, but it's the fire and passion with which she delivers her words that take the song to another level. That said, Flack's version of the song went unnoticed but soon gained attention when Flack's big hit "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (another McDaniel composition) echoed on the soundtrack of Clint Eastwood's "Play Misty for Me" (1971).

Answer: Roy Ayers

Disco arrived in the mid 1970s and it would have a significant impact on soul jazz. The major one was that club owners soon found that a disco DJ was a lot cheaper than a jazz combo, and that he (the DJ) would bring in more patrons. Roy Ayers saw this coming and knew that he had to adapt.

Ayers, a vibronist, got his start in the 1960s working alongside the likes of Herbie Mann and Chico Hamilton, releasing a number of traditional soul jazz albums. In the 1970s he formed the Roy Ayers Ubiquity and began to alter that traditional landscape. He'd concluded that soul jazz and disco share two things in common... they both relied on the live experience and also on movement. Rickey Vincent, in his wonderful book, "Funk: The Music, the People and the Rhythm of The One" (1996), identified that Ayers was able to draw in all of the best qualities of soul jazz and turn them into highly danceable records.

This is never more evident than on "Everybody Loves Sunshine" (1976). In an interview with the Guardian (with Dave Simpson, June 2017) Ayers stated that "I was recording in Jimi Hendrix's studio in New York. It was a beautiful hot sunny day and the phrase popped into my head. Immediately I started singing "feel what I feel, when I feel what I feel, what I'm feeling". It was spontaneous, it was wonderful and I knew that was exactly how I wanted it to sound".

Released in 1976, Pitchfork magazine placed the song at number 72 on their list of the "200 Best Songs of the 1970s". The track has since been sampled over 200 times by artists such as Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, Kendrick Lamar and A Tribe Called Quest.

Answer: Aretha Franklin

What you may not know about this song is that it was written by the late, great Otis Redding and that he wrote the song from a man's perspective. His lyrics describe a man coming home from a hard day's work and demanding a little respect from his partner. It became a crossover hit for Redding in 1965.

Two years later, Aretha got a hold of the song and she turned it on its head, rephrasing the lyrics, altering the gender roles and making it a call for human dignity. The resulting song become THE version of the song as well as becoming an anthem for both the Feminist and Civil Rights movements.

The song would earn Aretha two Grammy Awards and it would be her version, not Redding's, that would be recognized by the Library of Congress who added the song to its National Recording Registry.