“Soul Kitchen” by The Doors

Jim Morrison wrote the words to "Soul Kitchen" in the summer of 1965 as a tribute to Olivia's, a soul food joint in Venice Beach where he lingered so late the staff had to throw him out. The Doors cut it at Sunset Sound Recorders one afternoon, September 13, 1966, for their first album, The Doors, released in 1967, and the credit went to all four of them.

Kim Fowley's 1965 single "The Trip" lit the fuse, and Robby Krieger has said James Brown was on his mind too: the riff that runs through the whole song was his stab at a Brown horn section. Morrison sings, Ray Manzarek plays keyboards and John Densmore drums, with Paul A. Rothchild and Bruce Botnick producing and Botnick engineering. Writers have filed it under hard rock and funky blues-rock, and Slant's Sal Cinquemani called it a classic Doors song.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.