While searching for anything to do with deep soul music on the internet, I came across this delightful documentary on Northern Soul. The original 30-minute programme is no longer available on the BCC website but you can watch it on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMtaEASd2LI&feature=kp
It was a revelation to me that these little-known 45 r.p.m. records from the 60s and early 70s had made their way across the Atlantic and were firing up the old dance halls and rebellious hearts of northern England by the mid 70s in a unique way.
If you know and like this music, and most of all, if any of you were there in the dance halls or collecting the records, I'd love to hear about it.
here's a sample, enjoy! : The Carstairs: It Really Hurts Me Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxx0jcBZHPQ
How's that as an antidote to Abba? ;-)
Practically the house band of Birmingham University Guild of Undergraduates. Spencer Davis read German at the university and played gigs at the Guild with the Group.
The 60s and 70s were a fantastically creative and varied period for music that has never been equalled. There really was a lot going on.
Celine Dion magnificent and Dusty Springfield rubbish? I would end a friendship over that too. French people don't 'get' soul music. My French OH doesn't listen to any of it, I play it with the headphones on when he's home. Dusty Springfield is cool. Celine Dion is rubbish. She.has.no.soul. She's a trained seal. Her manager husband taught her to eat with a fork, for goodness' sake, but I digress.
Dusty.
My closest friend in UK was a French woman from just outside Paris
and we were friends for many years but disagreed about so many things...
Uk was a better place for her and always would be......the scenery
was better and the people were so friendly.
Oh my gosh but when she announced that Dusty was a rubbish singer and
Celine Dionne was magnificent our friendship collapsed.
The music years of the 60s and 70s were magical for me. Such a diverse
spectrum of sounds.....and apart from Abba and such I loved it all.
If the vinyl is in good condition, there are collectors out there and you could auction them. Or keep them, of course. We had Otis Redding and Sam and Dave and Wilson Pickett at home. I finally got to hear Wilson Pickett live in 2002. My boyfriend at the time was listening to Pickett perform at a festival in San Remo. He didn't have a ticket to the show but could hear it perfectly outside, so he rang me in Canada from a phone box outside the concert hall and held up the receiver so I could listen as well.
In my youth I was a blues and soul collector. I have blues 78s that I shall digitise sometime but also put up for auction. As for the rest, not the stuff you are mentioning but apart from all the soul greats like Otis Redding, I have Sam and Dave, Arthur Conley, early Wilson Pickett , several of the girl trios and piles of junk I need to sort through. The LPs are in the 200 range but the singles in the thousands. I once picked up a box I could hardly pick up for £1 in a village hall jumble sale, even when I had sorted out dross, duplicates (as far as I could remember having them) and damaged records I had something like 140 left! Madness, people just cleared out their children's collections when they left home, moved house and so on.
The same with cassettes, we have hundreds between us. I have the equipment for digitising the lot but somehow sitting here with an LP on is still nostalgically a thousand times preferable to sticking a dongle in my computer and listening! Mind you, the resurgent popularity of vinyl does make it tempting to sell. I ought to start looking through and seeing what I don't want in order to do that.
Spencer Davis group: My older sisters used to play this 45. I had no idea that lead singer Steve Winwood was a little white boy of 17 when this was recorded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_gFF-z9OS8
Lots to listen to on the internet, Brian, but it's not the same thrill, neither is listening to digitized mp3 files, as playing a 45 on a turntable, especially if you have boxes of them waiting to be rediscovered. Amazed you still have a collection. I've moved so many times that I had to eventually get rid of the 78s, 33s and 45s from the family archives.
I was a bit too young for the whole northern soul scene (and I lived in the south of England) but there was a revival of that music in the late 70’s that then morphed into a heavier funk / jazz funk scene. There were a few clubs around playing everything from John Handy to Lonnie Liston Smith. I remember that we all used to wear baggy peg trousers with double belts. Happy days !
Ah, another Dusty Springfield fan! This is for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGEBY59iGo
It was first recorded by Jerry Butler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gZgcHiOfT4
Cheers.
Thanks for steering me in this direction, Barbara. I've found Ian Levine's Solid Soul Sensations Northern Soul podcasts and there's a treasure trove on Youtube as well... You're right about the sound, those orchestral arrangements remind me of the Phil Spector wall of sound. Lots to read and listen to, it's music history heaven for me.
Dusty Springfield was loved by many.....and she was so special.
Spencer Davis group...really liked them...
Blue eyed Soul...interesting.
Georgie Fame....blue eyed Jazz.
Here they are David ....the typos....pounce.
Northern Soul ....a little like the Spector sounds.
When we had Chinon in West London one of our very regular clients was
an ex DJ from Heaven....not the real one but the gay disco in Kensington.
He is the man for Northern SOUL and has had TV shows through the years
with all the top artistes performing....SOME as before and some at present
time.
And he is on You Tube talking about Doby Grey....Im in with the in crowd..
Mary Wells...
Have fun if you like that music.
It was high energy.
He knows everything about Northern Soul you would wish to ask.
Makes his money mainly with boy bands but lives, and sleeps and dreams
Northern Soul.
Ian had he had a huge passion for fresh crab, scallops, duck breasts and
jonathons full calorie butter and double cram mash. And Dr Who.
Join his gang on facebook.....Ian Levine.
I must sift through my umpteen hundred 45s but doubt I have any records from this genre. I must admit that I bought 'job lots' of 45s at jumble sale type events when cassettes became the thing to have. I will get round to digitising as many as I want one day, so perhaps the Northern Soul can wait to be discovered then. It is a brilliant discovery though, ta luv!
David, were your vests sweaty because you were dancing to Northern Soul? ;-)
Seriously, though, did you know about this phenomenon? I'm only learning about it now in my research.
I'm really interested to know how many English, Scottish or Irish people were fans of soul: Northern Soul in particular, or if not, blue-eyed soul (like Dusty Springfield, Spencer Davis Band, occasionally Van Morrison), or other soul music specifically American (Philly, Memphis, Chicago, New Orleans...)
Actually, what I found interesting in the archival footage of dancers was seeing what looked like (in some cases) Oxford bags, as opposed to what you called loon pants, or what we called 'elephant pants' in North America. The Oxford bags suggested that these dancers were rebelling against current fashion trends - the loon pants that would have been sold in most retail stores - what Abba was wearing, for example - and were buying their clothes second-hand, the way the punks did in the late 70s. Just a theory. What's also interesting to me is that the clothes don't go with the music - the dancers were not trying to imitate the recording artists of a slightly earlier generation. It's a look they made their own. Authentic because you know they didn't go out to spend loads of money trying to emulate the singers (of another place and time in many cases).
Oh dear. Lots of denim loon pants and sweaty vests. Weren't the seventies wonderful. Not.
Loved it too, especially the surprise of hearing one of the boys, who was just 16 or 17 at the time, doing an Otis Redding number like an old pro.
I always loved the film "The Commitments" Not exactly Northern Soul but near enough for me. (well I did live in the SW of England at the time)