The term rhythm and blues was coined by Billboard Magazine journalist Jerry Wexler after he was asked by his editor to find an alternative for the label 'race music'. In a previously unseen BBC interview with Ray Charles, he reveals how his innovations first brought soul to a wider audience. As the black sounds crossed the racial divide, rhythm and blues gave birth to rock 'n' roll – a far more sanitised version of the black sound which was seen to be "too uninhibited, too loose, and too sweaty." Black artists were squeezed out of the mainstream charts by white covers of their songs and Charles looked back to his roots for his inspiration and the creation of his own distinctive sound.

Sam Cooke was gospel music's crown prince, the man who inspired a generation of singers when he took on the pop world and won. In the process he became soul music's first superstar. This episode follows Sam Cooke's career as he made the transition from gospel to pop, and profiles some of the artists who followed him: The Staple Singers, Ben E King, Solomon Burke and Johnnie Taylor. By busting open the ivory doors of the pop tower, these artists became the bridge that established the gospel shout as a lasting sound in American music. The Gospel Highway explores the two different worlds that divided the world of Black music before and after that revolutionary moment in 1957 - the year Sam Cooke went pop. It investigates the intriguing, enigmatic 'Gospel Highway' circuit, then enters the bright, fresh, sequined world of late 1950s and early 1960s pop. In his short life, Sam Cooke would dominate both. Interviewees include: Bobby Womack, Solomon Burke, Ben E King, LC Cooke (Sam's brother), Candi Staton, the Fairfield Four, Mavis Staples and Peter Guralnick.

This episode is about Motown's golden age from 1959 - 1967. It traces the Detroit label's extraordinary rise from cottage industry to mighty record giant before chronicling its fall from pop innocence. The Motown sound and its incredible flood of 1960s hits unquestionably changed the landscape of pop. With the Supremes, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, the label rewrote the cultural rule book and created THE sound of young America. Ultimately, it was Motown svengali Berry Gordy who cleverly, brilliantly and ruthlessly concocted a formula that appealed as much to Blacks as to Whites, creating bright-eyed assimilationist soul. As well as celebrating this music, this film also digs beneath the shimmering pop surface to investigate the machinations at work in the Motown camp. Motown's relationship with Chicago's music scene is also investigated. This program unveils an intriguing musical dynamic that existed between these two industrial northern cities in the mid 1960s. Interviewees include: Mary Wilson, Etta James, Martha Reeves, Jerry Butler and Barney Ales.

In the summer of 1967, Otis Redding performed in front of a 200,000 capacity crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival, the biggest audience of his career. Backed by the Stax Records house band, Booker T & The MGs, Otis gave the crowd a night of unadulterated down home Southern Soul. It blew the psychedelic cobwebs out of the hippies' minds. And they loved it. It was Otis's finest hour. Five years after walking into Stax Records studio in Memphis as an unknown singer, he was now breaking into the mass white market and seducing its counter-culture, without diluting his music one drop. Tragically, Otis didn't live out the year. But for a brief, brilliant time, he emerged as the very embodiment of the 60s soul music. With his music, Otis helped bring black and white together in the mid 1960s before the more racially divisive Black Power era arrived. This episode tells the story of Otis, Southern Soul and how it evoked the sweet dream of freedom. Interviewees include: Steve Cropper (the MGs), Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Jerry Wexler, David Porter, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

Funk was a brand new Soul bag. It was the soundtrack to riots and revolution, the heady Black Power era in the second half of the 60s and early 70s. Its tough urban rhythms brilliantly evoked a time of Black cultural pride and political upheaval. Ain't It Funky traces Funk's roots from the raw blueprint of James Brown's Papa's Got A Brand New Bag to the cartoon, psychedelic Funk of George Clinton and his Parliament/Funkadelic thang of the mid-70s. Interviewees include: James Brown, George Clinton, Otis Williams, Pee Wee Ellis, Fred Wesley and David Ritz.

Today, contemporary R&B is the music that the world spins to. R&B is one of the biggest selling music genres, worldwide its performers are among the most conspicuous celebrities on the planet with mighty corporations queuing up to recruit them to promote their products. This episode investigates how R&B arrived at its lofty heights. An extraordinary story unfolds, tracing the diamond-dripping, premiere-attending world of today's R&B stars, right back to the crack streets of Harlem in the mid 80s. It's also the story of how Mary J Blige's troubled journey revolutionised the sound of modern pop and in doing so took black music from the ghetto to fabulous.