There’s a decent barroom argument to be had over whether Sam Cooke or Ray Charles can rightly be called the inventor of soul music. Both men took the structures and idioms of gospel music and adapted them to create a new, modern sound. Though it took Brother Ray a few years before he moved away from aping Charles Brown and Nat King Cole, Cooke’s voice was so distinctive that when he released his first pop song, “Loveable,” under the name Dale Cook, gospel audiences immediately recognized his familiar tenor. more ›