Try a Little Tenderness — Otis Redding (1966)

Otis Redding's 1966 transformation of a 1932 pop standard into the template for soul performance features a three-part structure—quiet tenderness, smoldering emotion, then cathartic ecstasy—that soul singers have emulated for 60 years. Recorded in a single afternoon at Stax Records, the song builds so relentlessly that by the final 90 seconds, Redding is screaming and barely intelligible, delivering soul's most joyfully abandoned performance.