"Respect Yourself" (The Staple Singers)

The Staple Singers started out in the late 1940s as a gospel group consisting of siblings Mavis, Cleotha, Pervis, and Yvonne Staples, led by their guitarist father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples.  Through the years, their repertoire expanded from gospel standards to organic R&B with a social conscience.
A key example is the sublimely funky "Respect Yourself" from their 1972 Stax album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself.  
The message of the song is reason enough to love it: getting respect means earning respect, and that starts with self respect.  
But the cherry on this sundae is that the track was recorded in Muscle Shoals, AL, with the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.  
Who was the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, you ask?  They're only some of the best session musicians (next to The Funk Brothers and The Wrecking Crew) to ever put sound on tape.  They basically were a bunch of white dudes from rural Alabama with amazing chops and a love of early rock and soul music.  They ended up backing the likes of Aretha Franklin ("I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You"), Wilson Pickett ("Land of 1000 Dances"), and Etta James ("Tell Mama") at a tiny recording studio in the middle of nowhere.
So think about this: not only did a family gospel band (whose leader was pushing 60 at the time of the recording) score a Top 5 hit with this chunk of funk, they did it recording in the middle of Alabama in 1972.  With a band of white country boys.  
It gives me chills thinking about how, in the middle of a state that was a powder keg of racial tension at a time when younger and older generations were finding little middle ground when it came to culture or ideologies, you not only had black and white musicians making soul-stirring music together, but you also had multiple generations working together.   I think that's pretty noteworthy.