12 R&B Soul Songs Written Off As Garbage... That Became The Greatest Music Ever Heard

12 R&B Soul Songs Written Off As Garbage... That Became The Greatest Music Ever Heard They were buried as B-sides, rejected by label presidents, called garbage by the men who ran the biggest record companies in the world. This is the story of twelve songs that were dismissed, dismissed again, and then became some of the greatest recordings in R&B history. In this video we go deep on Bill Withers recording "Ain't No Sunshine" as a throwaway B-side while still installing toilets on airplanes at a California factory. We talk about how Sam Cooke was so frightened by "A Change Is Gonna Come" that he performed it live exactly once — and was shot dead eleven days before it was released to the world. We cover Etta James taking a twenty-year-old Glenn Miller standard that everyone had forgotten and turning it into one of the most played songs in American music. We get into Aretha Franklin's six years of failure at Columbia Records — eighty thousand dollars in debt — before she walked into Atlantic, covered a song Otis Redding had already recorded, and made history. Ray Charles bet his entire career on a country music album his own label thought was career suicide. Lionel Richie wrote a waltz he believed was meant for Frank Sinatra and handed it to a funk band who turned it into their first-ever number one. Then comes Anita Baker — dropped by Arista, told she had no star potential, working as a receptionist at a Detroit law firm, fighting a lawsuit in court while recording Rapture at night just to get it released. Bobby Brown, kicked out of New Edition, with a flopped first solo album and an entire industry laughing — who walked into a New York studio and wrote "My Prerogative" as a direct response to every person who said he was finished. Gloria Gaynor recording "I Will Survive" wearing a back brace from spinal surgery while the music business was saying the Queen of Disco was dead — and Polydor's own president refusing to release it as the A-side. Luther Vandross, a decade of singing background for David Bowie, Bette Midler, and Barbra Streisand, jingle singer, session man — finally stepping to the front at thirty years old and going straight to number one. Otis Redding recording something gentle and quiet three days before his plane went down, leaving behind an unfinished whistle where the final verse should have been — and that record becoming his only pop number one. And Marvin Gaye, whose Motown label called "What's Going On" the worst record they had ever heard, whose entire Quality Control board voted against releasing it, and whose one-man strike forced their hand — producing what is now widely considered the greatest album in American music history. Twelve songs. Twelve times the industry was completely, historically wrong. This is RnB Vinyl — where the stories behind the music matter as much as the music itself. #RnBVinyl #RnBMusic #SoulMusic #MarvinGaye #ArethaFranklin #LutherVandross #AnitaBaker #SamCooke #BillWithers #OtisRedding #EttaJames #RayCharles #GloriaGaynor #BobbyBrown #Commodores #WhatsGoingOn #Respect #NeverTooMuch #IWillSurvive #MyPrerogative #SittinOnTheDockOfTheBay #AChange #RnBHistory #SoulHistory #ClassicRnB #MusicHistory #RnBClassics #VinylCommunity #Motown #AtlasticRecords