Day 6: Country-Soul

William Bell
The Soul of a Bell

Ray Charles may have been the best-known soul singer to interpret country music, but he certainly wasn’t the only one: from Charles’s landmark 1962 recording Modern Sounds in Country and Western to Solomon Burke’s recently released Nashville, soul singers have long found inspiration in the country ballad. A grossly underappreciated talent, William Bell was an early architect of the famous Stax sound but was cruelly slighted by his label in the late 60s and early 70s as it became an increasingly large and unmanageable entity on the verge of imploding. Though southern soul fans may remember him from his bona fide classic “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” few recognize his first full-length album, The Soul of a Bell (1967), for what it is: an indisputable masterwork of country-soul. “You Don’t Miss You Water,” a Bell original, is far from the only classic on The Soul of a Bell. The record also includes such slow-burners as “Everybody Loves a Winner,” “I’ve Been Loving You To Long (To Stop Now),” and an eminently tasteful and heartfelt rendition of Chips Moman’s and Dan Penn’s magnum opus “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” Gram Parsons, the father of country-rock, was so taken by the early Bell repertoire that he covered “You Don’t Miss Your Water” with the Byrds and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” with the Flying Burrito Brothers. But as moving an interpreter he was, Parsons was never able to better Bell.

To hear tracks from The Soul of a Bell, click here.