I want to tell you that before he broke through as a singer, Jackie Wilson aspired to be a boxer, but that is not true. The truth is that Wilson was a singer first, a church choir star next to his mother and then a quartet feature, years before he would be sent to juvie for the second time and learn to duck, swing, dive, weave, bob, hit, and, most often, be hit. The truth is that his Golden Gloves record had four times as many losses as it had wins. The truth is that his mother, aware of the danger inherent to building a living off a body, forced him to quit boxing shortly before Jackie became a father at seventeen. The truth is that, through connecting him to the infamous predator of black talent, Berry Gordy, Detroit’s amatuer boxing scene ultimately propelled Jackie Wilson to musical success. The truth is that though the word “exciting” could certainly describe Wilson’s octave-spanning tenor, the singer was dubbed Mr. Excitement because of his viscerally electric performances: hips gyrating to the point of contortion, feet slipping then snapping in easy precision, a body that would fall—almost collapse—then rise, spin, resurrect itself like the boxer rebounding from the ropes, all while crooning in near-perfect pitch.

I have a Spotify playlist entitled “werk flo,” which was initially created to be a motivational jamfest that could go from my cubicle to Rock Creek trail runs; thanks to limited space on my iPhone and a desire to avoid constant data overages, it’s become a catch-all collection of 300-some-odd songs I’d like to have on hand at any given moment. This is how two of Jackie Wilson’s hits, “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher,” which is on Mr. Excitement, and “Because of You,” which is not, came to be spliced onto my half marathon training running soundtrack, sandwich-shuffled between the likes of Chance the Rapper and Third Eye Blind. His uptempo delivery of “once, I was downhearted; disappointment was my closest friend” is both endearing and infuriating as I crest an unexpected hill; the redemptive, thankful chorus of “Because of You” is a mockery at mile two but a near-hymn as I break eight miles for the first time under the shadow of the Washington Monument. Wilson’s music holds a specific sort of longing and desperation cradled in an even more specific sort of hope and cockiness and is, as a result, more human, more real, and infinitely more motivating than the majority of its playlist-mates. Sometime in the weeks before the half marathon, I promise myself to set these songs on my race day playlist.

Though not his biggest commercial success, “Higher & Higher” is arguably Wilson’s most famous song—it also almost did not make it out of the studio. The story goes that Wilson initially sang the song as a longing dirge. His producer threatened to pull the track if he did not sing it as the celebratory record he envisioned it to be, and Wilson subsequently cut the lead vocals in a single take. This jubilance, almost ingrained in Jackie’s voice, is a trademark of the singer’s catalogue, wherein even what could be more prototypically read as a ballad is an infectious, energetic earworm taking the listener higher and higher, their toes tapping and shoulders shimmying almost as surely as the singer’s were during the recording. Wilson’s shows were exciting because he was a gifted performer, yes, but that particular excitement is contagious, it is all-consuming, it is undeniable and uncontrollable. Even without watching videos of Wilson’s performances, you can hear the rollicking of his muscles and the growth of his smile in his voice. Somewhere at his core, likely the same place that drove Wilson towards boxing, Jackie understood that joy is a bodily sacrifice.

I first took up running to get healthy in the traditional sense, after finding out my twenty-two-year-old body’s blood sugar was nearly pre-diabetic. I returned to it a year later to get healthy in the less traditional sense, a means of strengthening myself both mentally and physically in the wake of an eating disorder that developed after that first foray into the pursuit of health. Both turns to the sport were meant to reinforce the importance of a body by overcoming what I previously thought my body could or should do or be, the burning in my calves a metaphoric sort of cleansing. To motivate myself to stay committed, I register for a half marathon on the second day of the new year. While training, I run on injuries, in snowstorms, without socks, in gasping, heaving breaths over state lines between the commonwealth where I was raised and the city I have adopted. I give my body in an effort to find something like health, like happiness; most of the time, I think it works.

Because of his music’s occasional presence, I think about Jackie Wilson’s body while trying to accomplish the contradictory task of both ignoring and attuning myself to my own during runs. I think about the impulse of dancing and the joy of surrender, sure, but mostly I think about Wilson’s death. Jackie had a massive heart attack and collapsed during a performance on a Dick Clark revue. The audience saw the fall as another bombastic stunt, a descent meant to heighten the inevitable rise, and therefore wrote the emergency off as part of the act; the minutes without oxygen before Clark stepped in left Wilson in a semi-comatose state for the remainder of his life. Mr. Excitement passed bedridden and nearly vegetative nine years later, a victim of the very same limitless body that brought him prominence.

I run my half marathon through a swampland in my hometown that is preventatively burned on an annual schedule, shuffling through “werk flo” without any proper ordering. I arrive late and forget to stretch. I drink too little water. I get injured at mile six and keep going, my quad threatening to sheer itself away from the rest of my leg at any moment. Out of over two and a half hours of listening and running, Jackie Wilson’s songs do not surface once.

During the run, I think about the swamp and its fires, the way the peat is burned to protect the trees. I think about how once, when the fires burned out of control, the smoke that billowed over my childhood yard smelled faintly of liturgical incense. I think about religious offerings, about Abraham’s willingness to offer his own flesh and blood, about how the glory of that moment came from the realization of his not having to make that sacrifice and the blessings that were still bestowed as a result. My mind turns to Jackie and his losing boxing career, Jackie and the hip swing Elvis stole from him, Jackie and his body so energetic, so frantic, so consumed by the ecstasy of itself and its power. I think of how someone once described Wilson as the musician who took rhythm and blues and turned it into soul, how he was the man who gave a corporeal being to something as intangible and mythic as “soul," someone who understood that a body is not Abraham nor Isaac nor the ram in the thorns, but the knife, the altar, the long-carried torch upon which all may be offered and all may be done.

—Moira McAvoy