FROM THE SOUL

Robert Hilburn is very competent to pass judgment on the tin-eared, talentless morons who populate the worlds of rap and alternative rock, but he displays appallingly bad taste when he feebly tries to justify his rankings of soul greats (“Ole King Soul,” Feb. 9).

Ray Charles and Sam Cooke invented the genre. Without them, no one who followed would have had a template to lay their stylistic variations over. That Al Green was and still is one of the all-time greats is a given, but we didn’t need Hilburn to tell us that.

Hilburn and his ilk always have the space to extol the questionable musical talent of gun-toting, women-hating rappers, but no time for genres of music that take real talent and soul to produce, such as blues and jazz, which will be the driving force in popular music long after his flash-in-the-pan alternative heroes are dim memories.

The idea of producing any form of music should be to bring light into a world overrun with darkness and evil. Hilburn has spent the last 30 years promoting styles of music that have darkened the landscape of this city.

NATHAN C. SAMPLES

Glendale