F16C Radio v.96 – Condition Red
Wigan
Carl Carleton – Competition Ain’t Nothing (Backbeat)
The Tams – Shelter (Probe)
Ambassadors – I’m So Proud of My Baby (Atlantic)
Billy Butler – Boston Monkey (Okeh)
Billy Harner – I Struck It Rich (OR)
Robb Fortune – Crazy Feeling (Now)
Tony Clarke – Landslide (Chess)
Patti and the Emblems – Please Don’t Ever Leave Me (Kapp)
Pat Lundy – Soul and Nothing But the Blues (Columbia)
Felice Taylor – Under the Influence of Love (Mustang)
Parliaments – Don’t Be Sore at Me (Revilot)
Jackie Lee – P-E-R-S-O-N-A-L-I-T-Y (Mirwood)
Platters – With This Ring (Musicor)
James and Bobby Purify – The Last Piece of Love (Bell)
Baltimore and Ohio Marching Band – Condition Red (Jubilee)
JJ Barnes – Sad Day A’Coming (Revilot)
Stagemasters – Baby I’m Here Just To Love You (Slide)
Soul Twins – Quick Change Artist (Grapevine)
Paul Kelly – Chills and Fever (Dial)
Bob Brady and the Conchords – More More More of Your Love (Chariot)
Listen/Download – F16C Radio v.96 – Condition Red – 84MB Mixed MP3
Greetings all.
First off, Happy New Year!
Let’s all raise a figurative (or literal, if you have one handy) glass in the hopes that 2012 will be a healthy and prosperous year for everyone.
Despite the fact that we ended last week – and the year – with a mix (albeit of recycled material) something happened during Christmas week that had me back in the crates again.
I – like many of you – spend a fair amount of my on-line time connected to Facebook. Despite the fact that a lot of people find the application to be a nuisance, I find it extraordinarily valuable in its ability to create a sense of virtual community.
I’m able to log in and interact with family and friends, close and far afield, connect to people of like mind (political and philosophical) and stay connected with other DJs/record collectors.
It has been mentioned here more than once that I first got turned on to some very cool records via Facebook posts.
That said, one of the distracting aspects of the site is the ‘ticker’, which runs highlights of my friends activity, even if it involves people who are not mutual ‘friends’, which is where our little story begins.
A few weeks back I glanced over at the sidebar, noticed the name of a DJ I respect and saw the words ‘Northern Soul’. My curiosity piqued, I clicked on the ticker and read the thread.
What I saw did not make me happy.
Those of you that read the blog on a regular basis will be familiar with the fact that I spent some of my musically formative years (back in the 80s) as part of the NY/NJ garage/mod scene.
While I met many, many very cool people, and had my musical horizons expanded greatly – especially in regard to soul music – there was always a contingent on the scene of people who came at the garage music ‘thing’ from a decidedly primitive/lo-fi angle, not unlike the bug-eyed, knuckle-dragging characters in a Big Daddy Roth cartoon.
My direct involvement with the scene came to an end toward the end of the 80s, but I still have many friends and acquaintances from that period, many of whom stuck with it a lot longer than I did, some all the way into the present.
This is not to say that I gave up on the music I was turned on to back in the day, because I still listen to vintage garage, psyche and pop on a daily basis.
However, the breadth of my musical tastes has widened considerably in the decades since then, and it has become apparent (at least to myself) that I approached the music in question from a more inclusive vantage point (which if you have any interest in this, you can dig into it over at Iron Leg).
I only belabor this point to make another one (look out), which is that there are people out there – the aforementioned primitive/lo-fi crowd, who look at soul much the same way they did garage punk, i.e. with an elevated appreciation for ‘rawness’, which isn’t such a bad thing, unless of course it precludes appreciation (and invites denigration) for anything that rises above that very simplistic criteria.
When I read that Facebook thread, what I basically saw was a group of these people enthusiastically shitting all over Northern Soul (not really including my friend the DJ who took what I would consider a much more measured tack).
Now, as our friends in France are wont to say, chacun à son gout (a phrase I picked up from my old man), which basically means ‘everyone to his taste’, i.e. not everyone is going to dig the same stuff.
Certainly words to live by…
But – big but here (heh heh…) – it is always important to make distinctions between matters of taste and fact, a line that was blurred drastically here, not to mention (to paraphrase Dean Vernon Wormer) that drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
I understand that many people only dig a certain, wilder ‘flavor’ of soul music which is cool, but to suggest (as some of these people did) that Northern Soul is somehow not soul music, is dangerously uninformed about the music, as well as the Northern Soul phenomenon in general (about which many know little other than the name itself).
Anyone who has followed this blog over the years knows that my definition of ‘soul’ music casts a wide net, reaching from the early transitions from gospel and R&B all the way up into (and including) the disco era. I think that it’s important to realize that soul was (and is) in a state of evolution, influenced my many outside sources, musical and cultural.
There are artists whose careers are of such a depth and longevity that this evolution becomes visible (audible) over the course of their discography.
More often than not though, soul singers, by virtue of the fact that they didn’t get to make very many records, end up being identified with one specific sound (whether or not that specific sound is indicative of their talent in the broader sense).
It is important to note that Northern Soul is unusual (though not unique) in that it is a retroactively formed genre classification, when a certain kind of record (often but not exclusively obscure) was initially gathered and played out by DJs in UK soul clubs like the Twisted Wheel and the Golden Torch to which soul fans gravitated.
No one set out to “create” Northern Soul, but rather the name ended up being applied parenthetically to a group of sonically similar records (listen for the popping snares, sweeping strings, honking baritone sax and chiming vibraphone accents), many unjustly neglected when they were released, that were being listened and danced to in the North of England by a largely white, largely working class audience.
The sound – in brief – was bright, uptempo, imitation-Motown, i.e. pop-inflected, well-produced urban soul.
That Northern Soul is approached differently by most American collectors/fans and DJs is without question. Our experience is almost exclusively second-hand, and as a definable ‘taste’, it is often marginal.
This is not to say that there aren’t any Northern Soul fans out there, but that here in America, the scene as it were has never risen above a level of specialization (as opposed to the original scene in the UK where it was a genuinely popular movement, often placing older records into the contemporary pop charts).
There are certainly regular nights where Northern is prominently spun (I was lucky enough to DJ at one of them last year), as well as several rare soul weekenders, but almost nothing like the UK scene at its peak where thousands of fans would come out on a weekly basis to places like the Wigan Casino (voted the Best Disco in the World in 1978 by Billboard magazine) and the Blackpool Mecca.
This only goes to explaining that I understand that to many people, Northern Soul is at best a curiosity, and at worst hugely misunderstood.
It also bears mentioning that many musical scenes (at least in my experience) are clannish and parochial, in which the denizens of one group find little to like or relate to in those of another, whether it’s soul fans who can’t abide anything funky or primitivos who won’t listen to anything that sounds like it was actually created with aspirations to chart success.
In the end, the point I wish to make, and have endeavored to do so in this space before, is that Northern Soul is not only extremely vital and exciting, but is also, indisputably “soul”.
This is music made by some of the finest singers, producers, arrangers and musicians of the day, and is with rare exception well within the accepted confines of soul music in both style and substance.
The mix you see before you is a response to the uninformed ranting I saw – or at least a brief placed in evidence – that you can download and pass on to the haters in your corner or the world.
The set list of Funky16Corners Radio v.96 – Condition Red is assembled from all over the map, with cuts from Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Georgia, Florida and even that heretofore unsung soulful stronghold of Reading, PA.
There are contributions from some of the finest soul labels of the era, from Revilot, to Okeh, to Chess, Mirwood and of course Atlantic. You get solo singers (like Tony Clarke and the underrated Billy Harner), great harmony groups (like Philly’s mighty Ambassadors) and naturally some of the tightest backing groups of the day.
If there is a connecting thread, aside from the aforementioned instrumental building blocks, it is that these records are to the last anthemic, engineered to grab a floor full of dancers and lift them ever higher (not hard to picture when you’re working with BPMs often in the high 140s!).
So, pull down the ones and zeros, and if you are so inclined, pass a copy on to someone who needs convincing.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back later in the week with some more.
Peace
Larry
Also, make sure that you check out the POAC link below (click on the logo)
If you want one of the new Funky16Corners stickers (free, of course) click here for info.
Check out the Funky16Corners Store at Cafe Press
PS Head over to Iron Leg for some very tasty UK Folk Rock.
Blue Eyed Soul, Chicago Soul, Funky16Corners, Instrumental, Northern Soul, Philly Soul, Soul, Soul 45
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Chicago Soul, Funky16Corners, Northern Soul, Soul
Themocracy
Excellent overview of the Northern Soul Scene.
As someone who goes to the occasional Northern Soul night here in Blighty, when the missus and the bairns let me out – the scene is still alive and kicking with teenagers and twenty some-things getting switched on to the vibe and into the moves.
Personally, I’m not particularly into classic northern soul – being more of a mod jazz/r&b man myself. But the general attitude of folk in the Northern scene is anything but clannish – with all kinds of sounds catered for.
Measured tack…*sigh*, I *am* getting old.
“It also bears mentioning that many musical scenes (at least in my experience) are clannish and parochial..”
And *from* my parochial perspective, in Britain, as likely to be based on fashion or haircuts as on any actual, discernible, musical characteristics. It’s through this cynical filter that I tend to view any musical scene, especially one that’s fan rather than music-centric…and ESPECIALLY if it’s out of the UK.
“Northern Soul” is pretty much only known to highly motivated Yanks in the geekiest of musical circles. I worked for years in the world of used and collectible records and it was just never spoken of. It’s a Brit phenomenon. Here we speak of Motown, Philly, Memphis, Chicago..or of specific labels…until we get to the uber fans. So basically, I’m confessing my ignorance and parochialism. And thanking you for expanding my perspective on the Northern Soul scene.
That said, the American artists that made Northern Soul records were likely as unaware of that scene when they were recording them as I was, later…growing up a music fan. Like all recording artists, they were to some degree targeting a listening and buying public and there were scenes they were trying to penetrate. It’s not likely the dance floors of northern England, several years in the future, played a significant role in these artist’s creative process.
Northern Soul, while in retrospect has definable musical characteristics, is to a degree, an example of revisionist genrefication. Yes, it exists as an actual (fan-based) scene in historical *proximity* to the creation of the records but I’m still doubtful there was a feedback loop between the artists and the inhabitants of the scene. The records were immune to the scene…if not the other way around.
This bears similarities and has distinct dissimilarities to the “Sunshine Pop” phenomenon, a genre that also didn’t have a name when the records were being made. Unlike Northern Soul, Sunshine Pop never even had a scene and is purely a conceit flowing from fans, collectors and critics. Is it a genre? I think so, that’s easily supportable.
You have made me rethink my estimation that Northern Soule was a scene without a genre (where Sunshine Pop is a genre without a scene) and recognize that there is a musical underpinning to support the idea of a genre of music.
Michael – I’m a fairly big fan of sunshine pop and I didn’t even think of it when I was writing this ( I should have!). The genres that came to mind were the fairly recent formulations of “titty-shakers” (a term I hate) and “new breed”, both retroactive.
Surprisingly a fair amount of US soul artists were tapped into Northern Soul at it’s peak, including performers like Major Lance, Tommy Hunt, the Showstoppers (who had a kind of second career in the UK) and JJ Barnes, a huge star in England.
I agree that very few soul singers were making records for a UK audience to start with, but many took advantage of the re-ignition of American soul in England (especially when their records started charting again in the 70s).
BTW I wasn’t referring to our exchange, which was not only cordial but informative. – Larry
Well, damn…deflate my ego, why don’t you. 😉
Your ‘haters’ readily accept the reality of a NS style and just don’t like it. I like it…but have questions about the interplay between the notions of scene and genre.
As I observed on FB, there seems to be value placed on obscurity. A record, perhaps an excellent record gets extra credit for being obscure. I get it. Being the deep digging insider lends cred and cachet.
I won’t pretend to know what is or is not a NS classic. Is “Shake A Tail Feather” considered one? Or is it not obscure enough? I really don’t know. It sounds like one. If it is, does that mean the Purifys were NS artists or is that just an NS record? Because “I’m Your Puppet” certainly doesn’t sound like an NS record.
I get that NS was a scene. I get that the records favored by the scene frequently share certain characteristics. I even get that a certain selections of artists recognized the presence of a particular audience and produced work for it. I still lean towards it distinctly being a scene and away from being a genre because it’s mainly driven by the tastes of the consumers and not by the innovations of the producers.
For the most part producers were emulating other American artists who were successful in the U.S. Even in their derivative act, they were responding to something other than northern dance halls.
Let’s imagine that in 2012, a huge scene breaks out of Hoboken and spreads to hipster enclaves from coast to coast. People are just going nuts for Soviet balalaika records from the early ’60s. We can call it the Hoboken sound and enumerate the identifiable characteristics of the records that drive them wild in the clubs…so we can articulate what constitutes the style…and we can actually see the scene happening. There would be records that would become commonly understood to be exemplary of the Hoboken sound and popularly understood to *be* Hoboken sound records. It would still be an illusion that anyone recorded them in the Hoboken style. It would be fashion as the tail wagging the dog. I think this is the case with Northern Soul.
I see the disinction you’re making and it is indeed a valid one, i.e. scene vs genre, though in this case I would suggest that one has created another. Of course, if the criteria is that genre must precede scene, then Northern wouldn’t qualify. Lively and intelligent conversation which unfortunately tends to fall on deaf ears (but I’m glad we’re having it anyway).
@Jon- I just wanted to clarify that the clannish types I was referring to were various and sundry US scenesters from my own personal experience.
Larry, can you think of another instance where a scene preceded and begat a style?
That’s a tough one. The original Mod scene was a lifestyle that coalesced around Black American music of a number of sub-genres, i.e. blues, soul jazz, R&B, and soul, so much so that it gave birth to Mod Soul (in the end much more diffuse than Northern Soul). The Belgian popcorn scene is akin to Northern in that it gathers together various styles that meet a tempo/feel requirement. What bot of those examples have in common is that they spawned collectors genres, though the popcorn scene had/has established dance nights/scenes much the way Northern did. That can’t really be said about Mod soul except in a vague sense (i.e. there are Mod soul nights but nothing akin to a movement, at least one that surpassed the original lifestyle/fashion movement).
I would add “Swamp Pop” to the list of retroactively applied genre labels.
I have no problems with the music commonly labeled “Northern Soul”, but I do have an objection the use of the term itself, precisely because it was applied retroactively….and even more so, because it was applied in relation to a scene physically/temporally/culturally separate from the source of the music.
In some circles this is called ‘cultural appropriation’….at least to the extent that the term is allowed ‘universal’ context.
Ya know, in it’s day this ‘sound’ sold very well in the largest music market in the world, the U.S. Probably much better than the charts of the day reflect. Certainly, on the whole, many more units were sold in the U.S. than the UK.
As Michael say’s above, “It’s not likely the dance floors of northern England, several years in the future, played a significant role in these artist’s creative process.”
It would be hard to find words more to the point.
“I agree that very few soul singers were making records for a UK audience to start with, but many took advantage of the re-ignition of American soul in England (especially when their records started charting again in the 70s).”
Actually, I would suggest that the numbers [on all accounts] were minimal when compared with the number of artists plugged into the funk/disco boom of the 70s. A boom so large that when it suddenly abated, the entire recording industry almost collapsed. Billions and billions of dollars were made at that time.
Of course some people [obviously not Larry] would say that disco wasn’t soul. But then that just leads me back to my original point. Who gets to ‘name’ the music?
It’s an important question amongst those with Afro-roots.
@Ana – All good points, and I think that there’s also a much deeper discussion to be had in how all of this relates to ideas of race and class, especially in how people listening to this music perceive the people making it. One of the issues I think about when people start looking for music that is somehow deeper, rawer, rougher or somehow “more authentic” (something probably every collector/aficionado has done at some point) is how they perceive that music through the lens of race and/or class. I don’t think anyone should ge precluded from enjoying any music, but rather that this is a discussion worth having.
Larry…I don’t think ‘raw’ equates with authenticity, or I should say, I don’t think it has to. There’s always that huge question of personal taste. Some people simply like ‘raw’ more than ‘polished’. The problem, as I see it, is with ‘authenticity’ itself. At it’s heart, the notion is basically mythological….as though there’s a basic ‘primeval’ state to found. In essence, it’s a metaphorical hunt for Eden.
That said, I do think there’s a definite quality of condescension [on the part of some folks] when it comes to only recognizing certain types of music as being “valid”. Drawing a distinction based on “authenticity” is specious at best. It reflects much more on personal presumptions than cultural reality.
I might also add, that when personal presumptions concerning ‘authenticity’ are somehow added to that greatest of all pseudo-sciences, racialism, the mix can quickly turn toxic. Most notably under the guise of valorization.
It occurs to me that perhaps the closest analog to Northern Soul in terms of the relationship between genre and scene that we’ve had in the U.S. might be Beach Music.
Ana – I agree that raw does not equal authentic, but I think a lot of people, especially as it applies to music. I’m trying to remember the book about the blues that basically blew the lid off of the idea that the Delta bluesmen and their audience were somehow rural naifs, and that the repertoire, both live and on the jukeboxes and the radio were much more cosmopolitan and inclusive than a lot of people assumed. There’s a certain amount of those same issues at work when considering white audiences and their perceptions of music made by blacks or even poor, rural whites. That the majority of modern consumers of much of this music hail largely (though not exclusively) from the white middle class, generations removed from any real connection to the music makers.
@Michael – Once again, another great comparison I failed to mention, in re Beach music, though the Beach sound has a much more immediate connection to their music with live bands (many composed entirely of white) playing r&b and soul entertaining on the scene as far back as the mid-60s. It’s a culture I find fascinating and want to explore.
Anna, I just wrote and deleted a lengthy comment that made the same points about authenticity as yours but much less succinctly. I’m guessing you probably would view the entire concept of “selling out” similarly to me as well.
There *can* be a relationship between authenticity and polish. But there isn’t any correlation by default. Craft is no evidence of a lack of authenticity. MGM didn’t do hank Williams any favors with the orchestrations, for example but Brian Wilson, became more authentically himself with access to the best tools and personnel on earth.
I mention the race of the musicians because it seems to relate to the segregated live music scene alluded to in Guralnick’s “Sweet Soul Music”, in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and the rest of the South that spawned players like Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, and the house bands at Muscle Shoals and Memphis studios like American and Stax.
Larry, as with the comparison to Sunshine Pop…the analogy breaks down. You’re right about Beach Music. The similarity is that the repertoire, both live and on recording, initially consists of material that predates the scene and that was not made with reference to the scene. This of course changes more dramatically in the case of Beach because unlike Norther Soul, it quickly becomes as much a live music dance scene as one fueled by DJs.
A point about authenticity…lately I’ve been listening to WFMU Ichiban and shows like Music to Spazz by and Fool’s Paradise a LOT. The majority of this music is raw…and flawed…and obscure. And perhaps it really is more authentic…in the sense that it was made and resided at a point in the economic strata of the music business where it seems to have had far fewer cooks (A&R men, producers and suits) spoiling the broth, and therefore, with less input, a truer representation of what the artists were about, left on their own.
The other side of that coin is that there are reasons that few of these artists achieved the acclaim of Solomon Burke or Roy Orbison (let alone James Brown or Elvis Presley). The reasons are evident in the fact that even the early recordings of Solomon or Roy have more too them than most of these obscure records, so those artists became elevated to the meddling of the “experts.” Perhaps that is at the cost of something sometimes called authenticity.
It’s fascinating to listen to these unknown records…or the equally unknown (to me) soul records I come to know via Larry. It may be illusory but I feel like I get afar richer taste of broader American musical heritages than the meager education I received growing up with oldies radio.
Michael – Your last comment really says it all for me. There’s so much out there that I haven’t heard that can only make the “picture” we have of the musical past that much clearer, more interesting and more satisfying. That’s the main reason I do Funky16Corners.
Hey Larry,
Happy New Year to you and yours and thanks for another quality selection (and bonus discussion!).
I am from the ‘North of the UK’ (Scotland), but, born in the early 70s, I missed out on the original Northern Soul scene.
I would say the main criteria I (and I believe other late-comers to ‘Northern Soul’) use is that a song is from the US, from the 60s or early 70s, and is both soulful and danceable.
Of course, whether Dave Godin, Roger Earle (Twisted Wheel) or any one of a number of other DJs from the Blackpool Mecca, The Golden Torch or the Wigan Casino rated a song as such helps!
Northern Soul as a scene is still going reasonably strong here in Scotland, with a host of one-off and regular nights (and ‘all-dayers’) in all sorts of towns and cities around the country.
I’m happy myself to employ as wide an interpretation of any genre as possible, the main criteria for what I consider to be ‘good music’ being whether or not a track moves my feet or my emotions (or, for the ultimate hit, both!).
F16C and IL continue to deliver the good stuff, whatever the genre!
Looking forward to what you’ll bring us in 2012, Larry. 🙂
Stu, Glasgow
“I’m trying to remember the book about the blues that basically blew the lid off of the idea that the Delta bluesmen and their audience were somehow . . . .”
Is the book you’re thinking of, “Escaping the Delta” by Elijah Wald? I recall that this was a central thesis of his.
Interesting discussion n’all that – but what’s missing for me is the UK context to Northern soul and a sense of just how much these lads and lasses in the Midlands/north of England(& Scotland)really really loved the music.
Authenticity and passion wasn’t the issue – this music spoke to them in a way nothing else did. Most were in mindless factory jobs and all they lived for was the all-nighter at the weekend – hairstyles/fashion really didn’t come into it.
I know a couple of Mancunians who as 60s mods, used to go to the Twisted Wheel and then went on to the Wigan Casino in the 70s. This was their music – it was an integral part of their identity.
Of course the music was made by black American artists. And yes, Northern Soul is a term that was applied retrospectively in a very different context. But it’s not just a label like “swamp-pop” or those other terms being bandied about, it’s not even a sound as such – there was a wide range of music getting played as well as the up-tempo stuff. It’s a cultural phenomenon, that still impacts on the UK music scene today.
Northern Soul has influenced artists as diverse as Joy Division, the Smiths, Soft Cell, Primal Scream, the Stone Roses, right up to Amy Winehouse and artists from the “youf” garage scene such as Plan B.
It’s not a term that’s caught on in America, nor should it. Northern Soul is the consequence of the universal power of black American music speaking to peoples hearts, souls and feet in a particular context.
(As a slight side issue – Saturday Night Fever – has a lot of the attitude of Northern Soul – the film was based on a essay Nick Cohn wrote about a mod he used to know at Shepherd’s Bush, London in the 60s – but it could just as well have been a Wigan lad at the Casino a decade later).
Jon- I wouldn’t accuse the UK Northern Soul movement of any of the negative aspects being discussed in the comments. I admire the passion of the soulies greatly in a direct sense, but also for the second life it brought to many of these records.
Unlike a lot of collector scenes Northern Soul is really about the dancing first and foremost which as a DJ is something I really dig. Spinning records for other collectors to check off of their scorecards like a bunch of trainspotters is my idea of nothing.
I’ve said it before, but I’m no dancer. It’s my job to make other people dance, and if the DJs end up in heated competition – whether through rarity or even the extreme of cover ups -in order to get the people moving, then all the better.
I think the defiitive book on the scene, one that takes in the history you mention above, has yet to be written.
“It’s not a term that’s caught on in America, nor should it”
Actually, it has caught on in the U.S., in fact the term is used almost universally in a relatively narrow sense [yes, denoting a particular ‘sound’]. And to my mind, that’s rather the point. Is there a good reason why a scene not directly related to the culture which produced the music [in some cases only ‘hearing’ it years after it was recorded] be accorded ‘naming’ rights?
And perhaps that’s a question meant specifically for those in the U.S. because I happen to totally agree with your statement. But I might add that I run into ‘proprietary’ statements by those in UK all-the-time. The myth being that folks in the U.S. paid no attention to this music, which simply isn’t true. We bought the hell out the records. That’s why gillions were made….in response to the U.S. market of the day.
I would never deny the validity of the U.K. scene. It was what it was. People can be nostalgic all they want. But the ‘scene’ was always ancillary, never defining….that’s why U.S. made RnB moved on. And continues to do so.
Ana – I don’t know if in a world where pop culture is in constant flux that it makes sense to take issue with the “right” to name anything. Northern Soul just happened in a fairly organic fashion. People started digging a specific sound, gathered around it (in a major way) and one of the pioneering soul label owners in the UK named it, casually, in a column. I wouldn’t class it as an act of appropriation, akin to someone actually recreating an older sound and calling it their own. If anything – as I mentioned upthread – the Northern scene gave much of the music in question a deserved second act that it might otherwise never have had.I’ve never seen anything that would indicate that the music is seen with anything but reverence. It’s a new audience, discovering music that had been (unjustly) neglected (charting records excepted, of course, but they never formed a significant portion of the Northern canon) and taking to it with remarkable enthusiasm.
BTW – I don’t think many – even within the Northern scene, where the playlists evolved considerably over the years to encompass disco and what would come to be known as rare groove – would consider it as a kind of end-all as far as R&B is concerned. There’s a great book by a cat named Reg Stickings (a Northern fan and DJ) called ‘Searching For Soul’ that was a real revelation for me as to the kind of things the Northern crowd were listening to as the years wore on.
Certainly there are traditionalists (what the jazzers used to refer to as ‘moldy figs’) who bristle at any change, but by and large Northern fans and DJs seem to always be in search of new (to their ears) sounds.
Larry…not beat on a dead dog, but believe me, there are folks who find this terminology insulting. Perhaps it has to do with whether you come at it from the ‘inside’ or the ‘outside’. From my point of view “Northern Soul” is meaningless. In fact, even a short few years ago, I had to ask people what it meant. [I was under the impression it meant ‘Detroit’, which is considerably north of where I live.]
That’s from someone who has heard the music since I was in diapers.
Just to pin-down the whole ‘naming rights’ thing and derivation of the phrase ‘Nothern Soul’…
It is believed (by me and also Wikipedia) to spring from a simple catch-all term that Dave Grodin used in his London record shop ‘Soul City’, when visiting northern-English football (soccer) fans started frequenting the store in the late 60s and requesting copies of ‘old’ soul records, rather than the latest, funkier releases:
“It was just to say ‘if you’ve got customers from the north, don’t waste time playing them records currently in the U.S. black chart, just play them what they like – ‘Northern Soul'”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_soul)
As Larry said, he went on to use the term in a column he wrote and it was picked up by the fans and became a common-place amongst them, to describe the northern-English soul-loving scene (although the love of soul wasn’t confined to the north of England or to the UK, of course).
It wasn’t an attempt to appropriate or even define a genre of music, it was just a handy abbreviated description of the kind of music that generally appealed to that particular ‘in crowd’.
Stu 🙂
Stu
The drop that opens the mix is Godin himself telling that very story!
Larry
“U.S. made RnB moved on. And continues to do so.”
…from an european view the u.s. always had their shitty popcharts-R’nB , as they still have.
but “northern soul” was strictly european :” searching for dancefloor tunes ignored in the u.s. when issued “,might be a good definition if anybody is not sure about the meaning of northern soul these days.
see the chart position (if there was one) of northern soul records you have to admit that nobody paid attention that time.
until some british Beatbands came up imitating american Blues/R’n’B artists , it was the same.
anyway what style you’re looking for : northern ,modern ,crossover ,new breed ,popcorn ,(raw) funk – most of the records loved by the european soul scene did not chart in the u.s. ,and were overlooked ,or classified as trash in the 5os ,60s and 70s .maybe with exeption of some few collectors with focus on local obscurities ,nobody care about that sound in the U.S.
today ,the mod scene seems to be the one, that moves less ,maybe their permanent uniformed imitation of 6os fashion style is so important ,that there is no room for new music discovery.maybe they are satisfied with the same 100 tunes at every allnighter.
on the other side the soul scene in europe is ,as it always was ,a small niche ,but enthusiastic ,and dancing ,from jumping blues to disco/rare groove ,there are waves of soulstyles depending on what people are diggin for , but : at some time everybody will end up ,deeply touched ,emotionally rescued and satisfied by some northern soul tunes.
Frankai
I have to take issue with the idea that “nobody cared about that sound in the US”.
In fact the sound was hugely popular, with most of the lesser known/neglected Northern Soul 45s emulating the “hit” sounds of their time, namely Motown. The individual records may have been commercial failures but so were the majority of records in any genre at the time. The mid-60s were a HUGELY productive and creative time in music and the main reason I blog at Funky16Corners and Iron Leg is to shine a light on as much of that overlooked music as possible.
As Ana mentioned up-thread, the idea that nobody in the US was listening to this music in the first place is absurd. Much of the success accorded to these records was limited to the R&B charts, i.e. urban audiences, and then even further restricted to regional success which was still possible in the days before wholesale homogenization of radio.
All kudos to the Northern audiences for giving these sounds a much deserved second life, but remember that without a US audience in the first place much of this music would never have existed at all.
“that sound” is wrong ,”that songs” is what i wanted to write. sorry about that ,
of course most of the now popular northern tunes weren’t hits then ,due the dominance of the major labels ,or for other reasons ,
for this i am thankful about every info i can get via blogs like funky 16 corners and about every song i havn’t heard before ,you are keeping the lost sounds of decades alive.
but it seems a fact to me that many blues and soul artists were “newly” discovered by european fans first ,and might be still unknown ,or without succsess ,maybe because of the “HUGELY productive and creative time” ,the u.s. had then.
the 60s british beat bands ,brought fame to bluesmusicans that could not live from their music in the U.S. anymore at this time ,and so did the soulscene since the the 70s ,for many records ,and even for some soul artists.
sad but true ,in these cases ,the first time u.s. audiences did not help to keep this music existing ,there are some R’nB artists that earned late fame in europe ,and no one cared about them in the u.s. since years .
take Bettye LaVette as an example ,or Ann Sexton ,who earned ,after 30 years, for the first time some money ,due her performances at the baltic soul weekender.
https://www.balticsoul.de/ann_sexton_story.html?&L=1
Love the conversation. Where I was raised, in Central Pennsylvania, Northern Soul was generally not on our radar. I suppose much of this conversation is too broad; regionally, it seems easier to understand. We listened to Philly, Baltimore, DC, and of course Motown. There were national cuts from all over, but Northern Soul skipped most of us unless one was particularly aware. We may know some of the music, but in my case, it was a European thing. In fact, I enjoy it less than what I was brought up on.
I’m also glad for the conversation. I got Motown and Sixties soul secondhand, and all I ever knew of it coming up was the biggest hits. Luckily for me , the AM “big stick” station in my area was pretty sympathetic to soul hits.
Without question, “Northern Soul” is genre best identified after the fact. In its own time, these were market-driven decisions to begin with. Motown had proven the viability of an independent, Black-owned record company on the national stage, among a fistful of other examples. The music industry is second to none in the popular media for chasing trends in record time, yes? So the industry responded with a flood of imitations. It just happens that there’s a wealth of high-quality gems among them.
The recording technology of the time made it relatively easy to get a song onto vinyl; the technology to make a hit were incredibly limited – a million singers pounding at the door of radio. It’s interesting to think of how differently they might have fared in today’s wider digital horizons.
The audience opening the door happened to be overseas. Americans tend to be blinkered to the art being made under their own noses, but I’m certainly glad for everyone who’d curated these records over the years –