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This is the story you have all been waiting for since the record sold in John Manships auction a few weeks ago. It all started about 6 years ago when i met a lady through my then used car business. We
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ive heared from a good source that its gone back to a ex pat in oz from carlisle ? anybody comfirm, col
This is the story you have all been waiting for since the record sold in John Manships auction a few weeks ago. It all started about 6 years ago when i met a lady through my then used car business. We got talking about the soul nights i ran with my lovely wife Sue and collecting and playing records. She was intrigued at the fact we still played vinyl in this c.d and laptop age and told me how her sister used to work for a record distributor here in Fremantle that closed down in the mid 70's. Her sister was responsible for all the promo discs arriving in W.A. before deciding whether or not they were an appropriate to get released in Australia. Bearing in mind that Austalian music tastes in those day's revolved around the heavy metal type sounds, very few ' soul records ' got distributed in any geat quantities. Yes there are several soul records on ' Aussie labels ' but they tended to be the more mainstream stuff. The conversation got very interesting when she told me about all the thousands of records that went to second hand / op shops after the closure of the company ( op stands for oppurtunity here ), same as charity shops in the U.K. Salvation Army et al. A lot also went to landfill. I then started to scour every second hand and op shop in and around the Perth area in the hope i would find some of this old forgotten stock. Obviously after some 30 plus years i was continually met with ' sorry we don't have any of those small records, only l.p's. The 45's some of the shops had were just 70's and 80's chart stuff that people had found in garage / house clearouts. I kept going and alway's said to Sue ' you never know there might be a Frank Wilson somewhere '. We can only hope!
It was about 3 months ago whilst in a ' country town ' here in Western Australia i visited a second hand shop. They had everything from furnture, brika brak, clothing to car parts. When i asked the guy in the shop if he had any records, his instant reply was ' what you mean them old juke box things ' ? Nobody wants them anymore. There are a load of boxes out the back that have sat there for years, you can have a look through if they are any good to you. Once i had clerared a space of old furniture i found a dozen or so boxes, each containing about 500 records, some in sleeves and loads without sleeves just squashed together. They had most probably sat there untouched for the last 30 odd years as the boxes were taped up. Sue and i got to work sorting through them box by box. ( Does this sound familiar to some of you ? ). First promo that came out was a mint copy of Dena Barnes on Inferno. Sue then found a promo of Lou Ragland, Judy Street on Strider and our pulses were by then RACING to say the least. Next box contained some Motown stuff and a few Reggae tunes plus some quite obscure U.S labels and a few Aussie and New Zealand soul records. All in near mint condition. I then picked out the Nolan Chance, pulled it out of it's sleeve and to my amazement saw it was in mint, unplayed condition. It was hard to contain the excitement ! Crikey this is a BUNKY and i know of only one other copy that possibly Richard Searling had ! We continued searching and eventually ended up with about 50 records, most mint and a few that were out of sleeves and needed a good clean. There were stacks of 60's and 70's stuff that we left that were just too scratched to worry about. I had a chat with the shop owner about how he got the records and he said he couldn't recall where he got them from, only that they had been in the back of his store since about 1980 and he had another few thousand stored in his garage at home. This was probably some of the stock that i was told about some 6 years before.Unfortunately i couldn't persuade him to allow me to go and have a look through them but left him my number incase he ever decide to dig them out.I have spoken to him since and it seemed like he really couldn't be arsed. ' there's no money in them anymore '. Blimey if only he knew. Anyway we struck up a deal for the 50 records we did find and came away happy to say the least. I knew how rare the Nolan Chance was and to find an unplayed copy is the stuff of fairytales.
That as they say is ' THE STRANGE WORLD OF NORTHERN SOUL ' Tony T Bone. OZ.