Are Rhythm & Blues and Soul the same thing?
EH: R&B is just a 12-bar blues with a little more tempo; add more tempo to the guitars, and you have rock ‘n’ roll. But when you really stop and think about blues or country, they’re automatic soul. Every type of music has soul—the name is a misnomer. Soul has funky 12-bar blues, with a slower, grinding movement, and there’s a gospel root to it. That’s where we came from. When you say, “soul singer,” you think of Aretha Franklin, and everybody knows what that means. I sure do, but Aretha franklin’s soul and Motown’s soul are not even close to the same thing. BH: There’s a big difference; I admit that. Motown was more pop/R&B or R&B/pop, and you could reverse the emphasis, depending on the song. The New York sound from Carole King and Gerry Goffin was very soulful R&B/pop, because it came from a church feeling. Everybody borrowed from that. And yet Motown’s sound wasn’t black or white. . . LD: The H/D/H factor strived to make colorless music that felt good and appealed to everybody. Whe
