This first episode travels through the South, from Muscle Shoals in Alabama to Stax in Memphis, taking a detour north to Detroit, to explore how Motown's most soulful achievement showed the whole world a successful, sophisticated image of black people, at a time when Motown musicians themselves were subject to the same treatment as any black American.

How inequality, poverty and racism drove black American musicians to a harder soul sound in the late 60s and early 70s.

How, in the 70s and 80s, a second coming of soul men offered a black female audience slow jams and sexual healing.