The Northern Soul Roots of Soft Cell
Miss Gloria Jones
Listen/Download – Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
Listen/Download – Judy Street – What
Greetings all.
The middle of the week is here, so what better time for a couple of very tasty bits of Northern Soul (with a very interesting backstory)?
As someone who experienced the 80s firsthand, I have to admit that I don’t find nostalgia aimed in that direction all that entertaining, especially since so many of the nostalgic aren’t old enough to have weathered it the first time.
You see, alongside MTV, crazy haircuts and quirky new wave music, there was of course the reality of the Reagan era, during which the American right kicked open the door and let in the wide variety of religious and political pests that 30 years down the line have completely infested this country.
So, you’ll understand if I’m not in my garage slapping together a time machine so that I can take the ride all over again.
This is not to say that the music was all bad, since a lot of it was very good. The best of new wave was in essence high quality reworking of the 60s pop palette.
One of the biggest new wave hits, that has become a major musical symbol of the era, is Soft Cell’s 1981 hit ‘Tainted Love’.
I’ll even cop to digging it the first time around, years before I had any idea that it was a synthesized reworking of a Northern Soul anthem.
In fact, a few years on, during the whole mod/garage explosion of the mid-80s, when I was initially clued in to the fact that the song had originally been recorded by a singer named Gloria Jones, I was still a decade away from even the tiniest inkling about the existence of the Northern Soul movement.
As a result, I didn’t consider Soft Cell’s covering of ‘Tainted Love’ to have any more subtext that Phil Collins’ execrable mangling of the Supremes’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’.
Flash forward twenty-five odd years and yours truly is neck deep in the sounds of the Northern movement, with all manner of storming Wigan faves spilling out of my record boxes. I’m rambling around YouTube looking for videos of Northern Soul dancers (and of you haven’t seen them, you simply must on account of it’s a wild bag that they were/are in) and I happen upon a short documentary that featured lots of the acrobatic terpsichorian delights.
About six minutes into the video a song came on the soundtrack that knocked me on my ass with its propulsive tempo and pop hooks. A little bit of the Googling, and I discover that the record in question was called ‘What’ by a singer named Judy Street.
A little more exploration on the interwebs and I found myself a copy of same, since I wanted to give it a good home and hear it blasting over some of those big club speakers we all love so much.
Once I had my hands on the 45 (a 1977 era reissue, but more on that in a minute) I started digging into my reference books, and back on the web and I discovered something very interesting about ‘What’, that were I a bigger Soft Cell fan, or a resident of the UK, I might have already been aware of, that being that the group had their second UK hit with this very song, which, not at all coincidentally was also a huge Northern Soul anthem.
‘Hmmmmm…’ says I, realizing that I was going to have to dig a little bit further.
Two hits in a row by one of the great synth-pop acts of the 80s, both yanked from the Northern Soul canon was indeed a curious thing.
As it turns out, aside from the odd juxtaposition of styles, it wasn’t that curious at all.
But first, a little musical history.
Gloria Jones was still a teenager when she was discovered by songwriter/producer Ed Cobb (who also penned ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’ for Brenda Holloway) in 1964. The following year she recorded Cobb’s ‘Tainted Love’ for the Champion label.
Jones’ version of the song was – when I finally heard it – a real shocker, every bit as propulsive and soulful as the Soft Cell cover was wan, dissipated and blasé. It was immediately obvious how it had become a very popular spin on the dance floors in the North of England.
Jones went on to record a stack of 45s for Uptown and Minit in the 60s, eventually going on a European tour with the cast of ‘Hair’, where she met none other that former ace face converted into post-psychedelic mushroom gobbler Marc Bolan of T-Rex. She and Bolan fell in love and had a son, performing together until his untimely death in 1977, after which Jones returned to the US and recorded both as a solo and as a backing vocalist.
Jones was herself a songwriter, composing a number of songs for Motown artists, co-writing ‘If I Were Your Woman’ for Gladys Knight and the Pips.
There isn’t much information out there about Judy Street. Her original version of ‘What’ was recorded for HB Barnum’s LA-based Strider label in 1966 (I’ve never seen a picture of the original label), and promptly dropped off the face of the earth. Interestingly enough there was another (inferior) recording of ‘What’ by Melinda Marx (daughter of Groucho, seriously) on VeeJay. Come 1977, and Judy Street’s recording is a popular Northern Soul spin, so much so that John Anderson reissued it on his Grapevine label, where it went on to become the label’s biggest selling 45.
It was during this time period that a young lad named Marc Almond was (according to famed DJ Russ Winstanely) a habitue of the storied Wigan Casino, where he first heard, requested and danced to the records you see before you this fine day.
A few years later, he had the good creative sense to cut a small but significant segment of one scene and paste it on top of another, creating two pop hits (one huge, one not so much). Chances are while any number of soulies were poleaxed when they heard Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘What’ on their radios (or saw them on Top of the Pops), the vast majority of the pop audience had little or no inkling of where these songs had come from, or that so many of their countrymen and women had been dancing to the original versions of these songs for years.
I don’t know about you, but I find this kind of cross-pollination to be very interesting, and the kind of thing that the post-modern, post-internet, post-everything else culture has all but erased. Would such a scenario be possible today, where McLuhan’s Global Village has rendered international communication and sharing of obscure facts but a mouse-click away? I doubt it.
Either way, I hope you dig the tunes and I’ll see you all on Friday.
Peace
Larry
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Themocracy
Excellent piece Larry, and bang on about the 80s – always loved the 12″ where it mixed into Where Did Our Love Go.. On a similar theme it was Heaven 17 how reanimated Tina Turner’s 80 career.
PS always though Tainted had a similar riff to The Boy From New York City
I can’t also help but notice that David Guetta’s huge worldwide dance hit “Sexy Bitch” seems to borrow its main riff from “Tainted Love” as well.
Ah, the many uses of a Northern Soul track! Fatboy Slim’s Rockefeller Skank (Just Bros. Sliced Tomatoes); The Go Team’s Bottle Rocket (Shirley Ellis’ Soultime) – it really is a strange world….probably the only genre where you can go to a soul night and hear Johnny Sayles “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” followed by blue-eyed blonde Liverpudlian beauty queen Lynne Randell’s “Stranger in my Arms” and NOT clear the dance floor inbetween! Great post as always Larry – now where’s my dancing shoes…….
Thanks Gail! I forgot all about the Just Bros/Fatboy Slim connection, and I’ll have to look for the Go Team track which I haven’t heard.
Here’s the link Larry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JizsZgPR0N8&feature=related
And by the way, many thanks for listening in to Work Your Soul and for your kind comments! I’ll let you know when the next edition is up and running 🙂
Tainted Love still gets everyone up on the dance floor. I remember Almond and Jones performed it live not long after his horrific accident.
Also regarding Fatboy Slim, don’t forget he also used Ann Robinson’s “You Did It” for his song “Gangster Trippin” from the same album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxtUh4g2A0k
Also on the back story tip. Soft-cell covered The Supremes “where did our love go” as the b-side to Tainted Love. They therefore made almost no money out of the hit as the forgot the cardinal rule of writing your own b-side to a cover so you can at least get royalties out of the record.
Not Northern samples but out and out theft – Culture Club’s Church of the Poison Mind is basically Frank Beverly and the Butlers “If that’s what you wanted” and The Jam “Transglobal Unity Express” is “So is the sun” by World Column. Never knew that Melinda Marx was related to Groucho – unreal!
A classic. I dig both the Soft Cell (my first exposure) and the Jones versions.
What I find fascinating however, and I never see this mentioned anywhere, is the absurd amount of Rockabilly covers of Tainted.
Have a look:
https://www.versionsgalore.com/2008/11/26/tainted-goods/
I’ve been searching for the Judy Street version of “What” for a couple of years. I’m so glad to see it featured on your blog. While trying to track down Street’s take, I came across a completely different [but equally vibrant] version by Tina Mason from a 1967 Capitol Records LP called IS SOMETHING SPECIAL! It was produced by David Axelrod with arrangements done by H.B. Barnum, the writer of “What.” It can be downloaded from iTunes and has been reissued on CD.
As for Gloria Jones, she wrote one of my favorite Jackson 5 songs “2-4-6-8.” I wish more of her music was readily available.
If you’ll excuse me now, I’m off to locate the Melinda Marx version of “What.” Love your blog!
Thanks Candy!
I’d heard the Tina Mason, and despite some conjecture by collectors that Mason and Street were the same person, I agree that it’s a different version.
cool post…
also another soft cell cover of northern soul that comes to mind: “down in the subway” by jack hammer