 He was cited by two of soul music's pioneers, Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, as contributing to that genre's early development.Redding stated that most of his music was patterned after Penniman's, referring to his 1953 recording "Directly From My Heart To You" as the personification of soul, and that he had "done a lot for [him] and [his] soul brothers in the music business.