Phil Walden and Southern Soul

Phil Walden, founder of Capricorn Records, who has died, is best remembered for launching the career of Duane Allman and a host of southern rock artists in the 1970s. But his most important contribution to the music that I love was his role in managing and promoting Otis Redding and other great southern soul singers including Percy Sledge, Sam and Dave, Arthur Conley, Al Green, Clarence Carter and Johnny Jenkins. From his base in Macon, Georgia, he wielded enormous influence over the development of soul music and, along with Atlantic's Jerry Wexler and his fellow white contemporaries at Stax and Muscle Shoals, played a huge role in the development of black music in the segregated south. He may have ripped off his artists but he certainly put them on the map. He will not be forgotten. For more read this: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1725