Ten bands and bandleaders who, between 1965 and 1980, turned the long-playing record from a container of singles into rock's grandest canvas. Something remarkable happened to rock music in the middle of the 1960s: the album stopped being an afterthought.

Ten singers who carried gospel into the charts, turned three-minute singles into testimony, and made soul the defining American sound of the 1960s and 70s. Soul music was born when the church walked into the studio and refused to leave.

Ten voices, from the opera house to the stadium, that taught a hundred years how to sing. No century changed singing the way the 20th did.

Most of the words we use to sort music were invented to sell it. That is worth knowing before you decide what you like.