{"id":636,"date":"2010-06-08T15:33:46","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T20:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/funky16corners.lunarpages.net\/?p=636"},"modified":"2015-02-04T09:20:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T14:20:00","slug":"the-northern-soul-roots-of-soft-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/funky16corners.com\/?p=636","title":{"rendered":"The Northern Soul Roots of Soft Cell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nMiss Gloria Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Listen\/Download – Gloria Jones – Tainted Love <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Listen\/Download – Judy Street – What <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Greetings all. <\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/em>)?
\nAs someone who experienced the 80s firsthand, I have to admit that I don\u2019t 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.
\nYou 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.
\nSo, you\u2019ll understand if I\u2019m not in my garage slapping together a time machine so that I can take the ride all over again.
\nThis 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.
\nOne of the biggest new wave hits, that has become a major musical symbol of the era, is Soft Cell\u2019s <\/strong>1981 hit \u2018Tainted Love\u2019.<\/a>
\nI\u2019ll 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.
\nIn 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.
\nAs a result, I didn\u2019t consider Soft Cell\u2019s covering of \u2018Tainted Love\u2019 to have any more subtext that Phil Collins\u2019<\/strong> execrable mangling of the Supremes\u2019<\/strong> \u2018You Can\u2019t Hurry Love\u2019.
\nFlash 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\u2019m rambling around YouTube looking for videos of Northern Soul dancers (and of you haven\u2019t seen them, you simply must on account of it\u2019s a wild bag that they were\/are in) and I happen upon a short documentary that featured lots of the acrobatic terpsichorian delights.<\/a>
\nAbout 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 \u2018What\u2019 by a singer named Judy Street<\/strong>.
\nA 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.
\nOnce 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 \u2018What\u2019, 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<\/a>, which, not at all coincidentally was also a huge Northern Soul anthem.
\n\u2018Hmmmmm\u2026<\/em>\u2019 says I, realizing that I was going to have to dig a little bit further.
\nTwo 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.
\nAs it turns out, aside from the odd juxtaposition of styles, it wasn\u2019t that curious at all.
\nBut first, a little musical history.
\nGloria Jones<\/strong> was still a teenager when she was discovered by songwriter\/producer Ed Cobb<\/strong> (who also penned \u2018Every Little Bit Hurts\u2019 for Brenda Holloway<\/strong>) in 1964. The following year she recorded Cobb\u2019s \u2018Tainted Love\u2019 for the Champion label.
\nJones\u2019 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 blas\u00e9. It was immediately obvious how it had become a very popular spin on the dance floors in the North of England.
\nJones 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 \u2018Hair\u2019, where she met none other that former ace face converted into post-psychedelic mushroom gobbler Marc Bolan<\/strong> of T-Rex<\/strong>. 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.
\nJones was herself a songwriter, composing a number of songs for Motown artists, co-writing \u2018If I Were Your Woman\u2019 for Gladys Knight and the Pips<\/strong>.
\nThere isn\u2019t much information out there about Judy Street<\/strong>. Her original version of \u2018What\u2019 was recorded for HB Barnum\u2019s <\/strong>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 \u2018What\u2019 by Melinda Marx<\/strong> (daughter of Groucho<\/strong>, seriously<\/em>) on VeeJay. Come 1977, and Judy Street\u2019s recording is a popular Northern Soul spin, so much so that John Anderson<\/strong> reissued it on his Grapevine label, where it went on to become the label\u2019s biggest selling 45.
\nIt was during this time period that a young lad named Marc Almond<\/strong> was (according to famed DJ Russ Winstanely<\/strong>) a habitue of the storied Wigan Casino, where he first heard, requested and danced to the records you see before you this fine day.
\nA 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\u2019s \u2018Tainted Love\u2019 and \u2018What\u2019 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.
\nI don\u2019t 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 <\/em>culture has all but erased. Would such a scenario be possible today, where McLuhan\u2019s <\/strong>Global Village has rendered international communication and sharing of obscure facts but a mouse-click away? I doubt it.
\nEither way, I hope you dig the tunes and I\u2019ll see you all on Friday.<\/p>\n

Peace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Larry<\/strong><\/p>\n


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