He also celebrates a Georgian boxing superstar and the men and women who crossed continents in pursuit of freedom

The first episode is about arriving and growing up in Britain.

From the 17th century, slavery drove the economy of the American south for 200 years. Slavery was finally abolished in 1863, but its gospel tradition lived on. As the black American church grew in strength and popularity, so did its singers. A network of black performers and venues emerged known as the gospel highway and in 1950s- in living memory of the Emancipation Proclamation- saw the emergence of soul music’s first generation of stars. Soul came from a higher place, but it would land in the carnal world of Rhythm and Blues. Ray Charles’s What’d I Say crystallised soul, combining Saturday night R&B with Sunday morning call and response. 

Episode One travels through the south from Muscle Shoals in Alabama (Aretha, Clarence Carter, Mavis Staples) to Stax in Memphis (Booker T and the MGs, Otis Redding), taking a detour north to Detroit, to argue that Motown’s most soulful achievement was to show the whole world a successful, sophisticated image of black people at a time when Motown musicians themselves were subject to the same treatment as any black American. 

With contributions from Mavis Staples, Candi Staton, Duke Fakir, Martha Reeves, Mary Wilson, Otis Williams, The Holland Brothers, Clarence Carter, Al Bell, Steve Cropper and Spooner Oldham. Expert analysis from Mark Anthony Neal, Nelson George and Emily J Lordi

1967 was no summer of love for black America. The Detroit riot was one of 159 uprisings across America. When Martin Luther King was murdered the following year in America’s other soul city, Memphis, a tipping point was reached. America burned while James Brown wrote Say It Loud, risking it all to speak out. Stax Records went from being a label built around an integrated house band to become a black-centric business spearheaded by Isaac Hayes’s expansive, flamboyant soul symphonies. 

Meanwhile, in Detroit, The Temptations tackled socially aware subjects like the Detroit riot and absent fathers, while Marvin Gaye conceived the epic What’s Going On. This episode also looks at the revolution of black heroes in cinema, inaugurated by Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a film that led to the blaxploitation genre - a creative sideline for civil rights soul heroes like Isaac Hayes (Shaft) and Curtis Mayfield (Superfly). The film culminates with the Wattstax festival, 1972’s black Woodstock - a truly redemptive and soulful image of the black inner city. 

Narrated by Carleen Anderson with contributions from Mavis Staples, David Porter, Al Bell, Otis Williams, Barrett Strong, Fred Wesley, Mary Wilson, Craig McMullen, Willie Hall and William Bell. Expert analysis from Mark Anthony Neal, Nelson George and Emily J Lordi.

This episode features powerful testimony from people who recall the first time they were racially abused