From the early 1960s through the late 1980s, Bobby Womack was one of popular music’s great triple threats, making stunning, if often underrecognized, contributions to the world of soul as a session musician, writer of hit songs for others, and as an artist in his own right.

His often unorthodox but eminently soulful guitar playing animated recordings by Hall of Famers Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin, and Sly and the Family Stone; his emotion-laden treatises on the vagaries of love provided hit material for the Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, the J. Geils Band, George Benson, and New Birth; and his own recordings, from 1971’s “That’s the Way I Feel About ‘Cha” through 1985’s “I Wish He Didn’t Trust Me So Much,” defined the essence of what it meant to be soulful and funky in the 1970s and 1980s.