The state of soul music in America is an interesting study. Many of the artists on this showcase largely failed to make a leap to the mainstream, while others like James Brown and Gladys Knight built careers that rose to dizzying heights and included almost universal recognition. The middle ground includes some artists featured here like Ben E. King, Otis Redding, and Percy Sledge that had huge crossover hits, and others like Freda Payne whose careers were built in a fairly narrow window of time. In almost all cases, every one of the musicians on America's Music Legacy: Soul demonstrates why soul as a label is both appropriate and misleading. As a brand for black and white audiences to identify musicians, it was far too narrow. Surrounded by what have ended up being healthier and more expansive genres like blues or R&B, soul music is now almost a defunct term. Not that the styles of music displayed here are completely out of date, but modern artists seem more likely to carry the R&B label or even slip into sacred gospel territory, rather than brand themselves as "soul."

The beneficiaries of the height of popularity for the soul sound included artists like Knight, with her Pips, Otis Redding and Percy Sledge. The appetite for their blend of blues and gospel brought songs like "Satisfaction," "Stand By Me," and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" across the race line to mainstream radio. James Brown kicks off America's Music Legacy: Soul with "Rap Payback," setting a high bar for every other performer. Leon Isaac Kennedy - who was a bit of a one-hit wonder as an actor and now as a minister - does the entire event a disservice through some cheesy MC work, but we expect he was just delivering the lines written for him by some network exec... The night is rounded out with artists like Mary Bond Davis, who was introduced here as a rising soul star, but who went on to do more in theater. Rufus Thomas, daughter Carla Thomas, Jerry Butler, and Tyrone Davis are artists that won't be familiar to younger listeners today but who each contributed to the soul legacy of the '60s and 70's. Seeing all this talent amassed in the '80s was a bit of a swan song for the entire genre, although these songs end up frequently sampled and replayed on "Oldies" stations to this day.

America's Music Legacy: Soul is a good collection for nostalgia's sake, but there is more extensive coverage out there for some of the larger artists that might be of more interest to fans. Watching James Brown perform a few songs doesn't satisfy the craving for his brand of driving soul and funk, and fans of this classic lineup of Glady Knight and The Pips will wish there had been more time devoted to the group. What America's Music Legacy: Soul does accomplish is to present a two-hour block of the best that soul music had to offer, looking back on at least two decades of productive work that saw many black artists elevated from niche status to the mainstream. Where soul was perhaps different than the blues and jazz styles that preceded it was in the commercial success achieved by so many of these artists. One wonders how much soul music built the foundation for later R&B and rap artists to achieve their incredible success. At the very least, there's not a black musical act today that can't trace its sound back to the influence of at least one artist from this showcase, and that's saying something.