Try a Little Tenderness — Otis Redding (1966)

Otis Redding transformed a 1932 pop standard into the template for all soul music performance with a three-part structure that begins in quiet tenderness, builds through smoldering emotion, and erupts into cathartic ecstasy -- a structure that soul singers have emulated for 60 years. His 1966 Stax Records version was recorded in a single afternoon session in Memphis and builds so relentlessly that by the final 90 seconds Redding is screaming, shaking, and barely intelligible -- the most joyfully abandoned performance in soul history.