12 Lost R&B Classics That Deserve to Be Legendary (But Most People Forgot)

Twelve R&B and soul records that should sit next to the genre's most famous songs — and somehow don't. Some of these hit #1. One of them got sampled by Beyoncé and became a bigger hit for someone else than it ever was for the original artist. All twelve got buried by label collapses, radio formatting, industry politics, or simply getting released next to an even bigger hit from the same artist. Inside this countdown: the Motown songwriter-producer who built other artists' hits and never got billed on his own; the Percy Sledge follow-up that vanished in the shadow of "When a Man Loves a Woman"; the Denise LaSalle #1 hit that mainstream soul retrospectives still leave out; the King Floyd record recorded almost as a throwaway B-side that hit #1 anyway; the Terry Callier song decades ahead of its time that got rediscovered by British DJs twenty years too late; the Moments' chart-topping ballad from the same independent label that would later launch hip-hop as a genre; the Frederick Knight vocal performance trapped inside the wreckage of Stax's 1975 bankruptcy; the Temptations track Motown itself deliberately kept off the radio; the Spinners' most socially conscious single, too heavy for the oldies stations that canonized their love songs instead; the Gladys Knight Grammy winner overshadowed by her own bigger hit released months later; the teenage Betty Wright performance that got lost under everything she accomplished afterward; #12 — Shorty Long's "Function at the Junction" (1966): a Motown songwriter-producer who helped build other artists' hits finally got his own single, a manic party record built around a fictional dance-off between a preacher and a bootlegger. He died just three years later, before he ever got to build the solo career this song hinted he deserved. #11 — Percy Sledge's "It Tears Me Up" (1966): the same Muscle Shoals sessions, the same raw vocal style that made "When a Man Loves a Woman" immortal — and almost total anonymity ever since, buried by the one song everyone already knows. #10 — Denise LaSalle's "Trapped by a Thing Called Love" (1971): a #1 R&B hit, written and performed by LaSalle herself at a time when few women in the genre got that kind of creative control, and still one of the most criminally underrepresented names in mainstream soul retrospectives. #9 — King Floyd's "Groove Me" (1971): reportedly recorded almost as a throwaway B-side at Malaco Studios in Jackson, Mississippi — and it still hit #1 on the R&B charts and crossed into the pop top ten. #8 — Terry Callier's "Ordinary Joe" (1972): a deep-soul masterpiece that never charted, released just as Cadet Records collapsed financially. Callier reportedly worked as a computer programmer for years before British DJs rediscovered his catalog decades too late. #7 — The Moments' "Love on a Two-Way Street" (1970): a #1 hit from an independent New Jersey label run by Sylvia Robinson — the same woman who'd go on to found Sugar Hill Records and help launch hip-hop as a commercial genre. #6 — Frederick Knight's "I've Been Lonely for So Long" (1972): a Stax Records top-ten hit and one of the finest vocal performances in the label's history, trapped for decades in the legal wreckage after Stax's 1975 bankruptcy. #5 — The Temptations' "Message from a Black Man" (1969): a bold, unflinching statement of Black pride that Motown reportedly never released as a proper single, cautious about how it might affect the group's crossover appeal. #4 — The Spinners' "Ghetto Child" (1973): a socially conscious Thom Bell production too heavy for the oldies-radio nostalgia format that turned "I'll Be Around" into a permanent fixture instead. #3 — Gladys Knight & the Pips' "Neither One of Us" (1973): a Grammy-winning #1 hit, written by Jim Weatherly, released the same year as their own even bigger crossover smash, "Midnight Train to Georgia" — which quietly absorbed all the legacy recognition. #2 — Betty Wright's "You Got Your Hooks in Me" (early 1970s): a technically stunning vocal performance recorded while Wright was still a teenager in Miami's TK/Alston soul scene, overshadowed by everything she went on to accomplish afterward, including mentoring a generation of R&B and hip-hop artists. #1 — The Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)" (1970): a Brunswick Records deep cut whose string break got sampled for one of the biggest pop songs of 2003 — while the original recording stayed almost completely anonymous. If you love deep-catalog soul, real music history, and the stories behind the songs radio forgot to keep playing, subscribe for more countdowns like this one. Watch Next: if you liked this, check out our video on R&B classics that made millions for everyone except the artists who recorded them. #RnB #SoulMusic #ClassicSoul #ForgottenRnB #DeepCuts #MotownHistory #70sMusic #SoulHistory #OldSchoolRnB #MusicDocumentary #RnBGrove