TOP 50 SOUTHERN SOUL, RHYTHM & BLUES ALBUMS

1982-20??

This chart represents the most popular albums in the genre history in the last 40 years. We are in the process of updating the chart to 2025.

Is it "Southern Soul" or "Soul Blues"? Mainstream Blues & R&B outlets refer to (dismiss?) all this music as simply "Soul Blues" or "Retro-Soul" but for over two decades now we have this thriving "Southern Soul (SS)" genre- an underground network of labels, artists, DJs, promoters, websites that self-identify as "Southern Soul" rather than "Soul Blues". It resembles more a movement than a genre of music. Complicating matters further is that this music needn't have been and often isn't created in the South. It need only be appreciated and consumed by the network, the "movement" we refer to as "Southern Soul/R&B".

Another term, "Deep Soul", is often used for old school Soul music like that which was recorded in Memphis/Muscle Shoals. While this is a direct descendant modern day Southern Soul/R&B has evolved into it's own species. It's a modernized version of old Deep Soul, Rhythm & Blues, urban Blues, a little Funk and lately a dab of Hip Hop.

We use the hopefully all encompassing "Southern Soul, Rhythm & Blues" to describe this music. The "Top 50 Southern Soul, Rhythm & Blues Albums" list focuses on artists and albums that had the greatest impact on/within this network and the ones that have stood the test of time. Why do we start with 1982 before the term "Southern Soul" gained prominence? We start the modern Soul Blues (one that branched into Southern Soul/R & B, while another branch became modern Soul Blues) era as beginning with the advent and success of ZZ Hill's "Down Home". Hill's album was a watershed moment that seemed to breathe new life to the Blues. In the 70s Malaco/Waldoxy had taken the baton from Stax Records and in 1982 ushered in a new era of Memphis/Muscle Shoals-influenced Soul and Blues with the release of "Down Home". Record labels like Ecko Records, Mardi Gras Records, Senator Jones' Hep' Me and later CDS Records followed and became the main producers of this music for the next few decades prior to the Cambrian-like explosion of new independent labels we have today.

Determining what fits in this Southern Soul/R&B category is far from an exact science and quite maddening when we got down to it. There are plenty of important artists and albums who record Soul and soulful Blues that don't necessarily thrive in this underground community. As if it wasn't complicated enough we must remember there is the modern, mainstream Soul Blues. This is where you'll find your Johnny Rawls, your Lou Pride, your Preston Shannon. Perhaps the prime example is Robert Cray, arguably the greatest and most successful Soul Blues artist of the past three decades. We haven't included his work on this Top 50 because he is not a staple of the chitlin' circuit. In a way Cray transcends it but that isn't meant to be disparaging to Southern Soul. Artists like Cray are children of Stax Records and use all live instruments, which had become a rarity outside of Malaco Records from 1990 onward. In fact one of the common knocks against Southern Soul is it's use of keyboard programming and the often low budget, demo-like recordings it produces.  It's folly, however, to reject the whole Southern Soul tag based on this. Most of today's Southern Soul would not embarrass itself being played back to back with a major label act.

The bottom line on what makes this list is that the artist and/or album must be largely appreciated and played amongst this Southern Soul network described earlier. As opposed to Cray, ZZ Hill, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Denise LaSalle, Artie 'Blues Boy' White and Little Milton, are staples of both Southern Soul/R&B and Soul Blues. Hill, LaSalle, Bland, Milton in their early days were definitely mainstream Soul and/or Blues artists who later became "chitlin circuit", Southern Soul, darlings in their latter days. Same can be said of other formerly mainstream R&B artists from the 60s, 70s and 80s like Tyrone Davis and Johnnie Taylor. They became part of this network in their later years.

One thing you may notice is the list is dominated by men. I believe a future list will be more evenly divided by gender. Artists like  Big Cynthia, Lacee', Karen Wolfe, Uvee Hayes, Lola, Stephanie Pickett, Sweet Angel & others have made a mark on the genre and it's now just a matter of time to tell if this influence ages well.

We have limited the list to one album per artist. We would like to stress that this Top 50 is not necessarily the "best" artistically but rather the Top 50 albums that made the biggest impact on modern day Southern Soul from 1982-20??. 

There are many artists that came close or arguably could be on here so we plan to follow this list up with one that constitutes what we consider the very best Soul Blues albums released in relatively the same period soon. And finally this Top 50 is subject to change at anytime as time progresses. For the BEST 100 Contemporary Southern Soul Albums list click HERE

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