Jackie Wilson: Greatest Soul Singer of All Time?

I understand that the title above is ample evidence of my famous capacity for overstatement, and I want to point out that the question mark was added intentionally, because Lord knows I’m not quite certain of the statement myself. I mean, Jackie Wilson better than Sam Cooke? Better than Solomon Burke? This Wilson fellow better be really something, right? In fact, he better have a voice that can move stony mountains to the brink of tears.
Now, add to all this doubt a few obvious facts about Jackie Wilson: he was (especially compared to Cooke and Burke) a pretty shitty seller of records. Half of the music he recorded doesn’t even really count as soul, coming down squarely on the saccharine side of commercial pop, with wooden rhythms and Disney-style backing vocals. There isn’t an ounce of political import in his entire recorded catalogue, nothing close to “A Change is Gonna Come”. And once he was shot in 1961 (by a jealous lover), Wilson only put out one great song, “Higher and Higher”.
But there’s one thing about Jackie Wilson that puts all of these considerations to bed, in my estimation, and that’s the absolutely ridiculous power of his voice. Not just that he could hit those high notes, or that he could jump octaves and trill and all those things that are technically impressive. He had some weird, almost absurd quality in his tremolo, and some inability to let any note lie flat. There are no relaxed spots in a Jackie Wilson vocal line, everything ends up in the red.
Take his signature tune, “Lonely Teardrops”, written by Berry Gordy (who went on to found Motown records). What could have been a middling soul tune in someone else’s mouth is transformed, through the rubber-band quality of Wilson’s pipes, into some kind of transcendental moment of emotional release. When he hits the bridge, and the band drops out behind him, he manages to sound for all the world as if his lover’s leaving him is actually going to cause him to keel over and die of loneliness. And there are precious few soul singers who can do that.
In fact, Wilson actually died singing “Lonely Teardrops”. He had a heart attack on-stage.
So I would argue for Jackie Wilson being the best soul singer of all time. Not the best soul artist, or the owner of the best soul song. I think Jackie Wilson spent his whole career fighting saccharine arrangements by producers who wanted him to be a pop-star, clumsy backing bands, and questionable marketing choices, all for the privelige of bestowing upon the record-buying public the gifts of his glorious voice. If you doubt me, listen to “Lonely Teardrops”.
I bet you can pinpoint the spot where he had the heart attack.