Solomon Burke died Sunday at age 70. Here are some of his essential recordings:

“Home in Your Heart” (Rhino, 1992): A two-disc overview of a career lacking top-20 hits, but rich in hard-core soul with country inflections and gospel testifying. All the key early tracks are here, including “Cry to Me” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.”

“Soul Alive!” (Rounder, 2002): Burke was at his best in front of an audience, where he turned concerts into a celebratory church services. This 1983 performance is pure theater, moving from show-stopper to show-stopper, the fans pushed into an audible frenzy.

“Don’t Give Up on Me” (Anti, 2002): The soul great delivers the most nuanced singing of his career in this moving masterpiece, digging into contemporary material provided for him by a bevy of admirers, including Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.

greg@gregkot.com

Solomon Burke, the robust, regal preacher-turned-singer who defined soul music in the ‘60s and continued to perform and minister for decades afterward, died Sunday in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

Burke died on a plane after arriving on a flight from Los Angeles, airport police said. Burke's family said on his Web site the singer died of natural causes, but did not elaborate. He had been scheduled to perform a show Tuesday in an Amsterdam church converted into a concert hall.

It would have been a fitting finale for a singer who was born 70 years ago in a room above a Philadelphia church “to the sounds of horns and bass drums" from the United Praying Band (some sources claim he was born in 1936, four years earlier, but Burke said in a 2002 interview that he was born in 1940). He seemed fated to join the church, and he became a preacher and hosted a gospel radio show. By the early ‘60s, his immense talent led to a deal with Atlantic Records, where he began a fruitful partnership with songwriter-producer Bert Berns.

He recorded a string of classic soul sides, including "Cry to Me," "Got to Get You Off My Mind," "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" and "Down in the Valley." His sound was a bold merger of orchestrated sophistication and countryish, down-home grit, and his best singles built a Gothic sense of drama and heartbreak (a guide to Burke's essential recordings HERE).