Garethx

Dave Flynn sorted the list into alphabetical order over on FB which makes it more manageable to read. A very entertaining and thought-provoking article and list Butch. As others have said it will aways be impossible for any listing like this to be 'definitive' or set in stone, so much will be down to personal experience and taste. External factors can change things over time. A box of Lester Tiptons turning up would be nice, but imagine having to remove a storied and mythical disc from the list. Some paragraphs give a clue as to how to be an effective and successful record collector. I wish someone had given me the advice to never sell a good record until I had a spare. I know i've been guilty of selling proven gold to buy flavour-of-the-month sawdust.

Great stuff. Here's to the next 40.

RIP Otis. Truly an all-time great.

A true giant of soul music. Rest in peace Don.

^ Yes

RIP George.

A fitting epitaph. RIP

I Got The Fever is probably one of the defining classics of the early Northern scene. RIP Billy.

Thanks for clearing that up Ady.

I agree with you Dean. It's worth bearing in mind that while his most commercially successful period was while signed to Elektra this music had a more temporary feel. While the Elektra tenure produced some great music the tracks with commercial appeal have a less lasting character: "Sign Of The Times" was his only entry onto the R&B singles chart in his career. The late 70s re-cut of "Ordinary Joe" was played in mainstream soul clubs in the UK, but as was the nature of that scene (concentrating on fast turnover of new music every week with no oldies throughput to speak of) only for a matter of weeks. "Look At Me Now" was collected by Northern Soul fans as a cheap single throughout the seventies, as was "Ordinary Joe" to a lesser extent. What we now think of as Callier's classic period, the three Cadet albums, were almost completely off the radar anywhere until practically the early 90s. While the "Can't Help Myself" album seemed to turn up in deletion lots over here the first two seldom did and were always relatively difficult to source. While I'm sure certain fans never stopped listening to these albums in isolation from the time of their release, they were not collected as there was really no dance scene on which to play tracks like "Candyman" until the 1990s and no real collective appreciation of Terry Callier as an artist. I would argue that it was the Modern Northern scene (and particularly Robin Salter) getting hold of "I Don't Want To See Myself" at the tail end of Stafford, start of Rock City (so 1985-ish) which really led to that particular record filtering down to other club scenes via the eventual Acid Jazz issue, which led to a rekindling of interest in TC's career. Trying to clear a couple of things up from some of the recording points and chronology raised above: "Look At Me Now" was recorded just before it was released late 1968 as mentioned by others, rather than in 1963. The unreleased at the time material from the session includes another version of Candyman knows as "Blues", and a fairly so-so dancer in the vein of Look At Me Now called "You Were Just Fooling Me". There are two earlier sounding tracks eventually released on an MCA compilation called "Essential: The Best Of Terry Callier on Cadet": these are "Lover", a midtempo ballad reminiscent of the type of material Gene Chandler was recording in the mid 60s, and "Take Your Time", a latin-tinged number. These both would have been quite dated if recorded in 1968. I would speculate they were left in the can from a couple of years earlier. They're both quite nice but as they are as close to mainstream Soul as Callier ever recorded there might have been reluctance on the part of Chess to see any sales or radio potential given Terry's highly distinctive but relatively unmodulated folk-blues voice. I think the company knew they had signed a real talent but at that time no clear vision of how to best harness it. Getting his songs recorded by The Dells, Jerry Butler and Brenda Lea Eager etc. was was probably that next step. While Jerry Butler's version of "Ordinary Joe" predates Callier's Cadet 45 by two and a half years there is a Callier version released on the "First LIght" album in the 1990s which was laid down some months before Butler's. It's a long, loose and rambling version with an extended Fender Rhodes solo but with the central riff taken by Callier's acoustic guitar (unlike any of the subsequent recordings of the song). It's closest in character to the way he would play it live for the next forty years. It was maybe fanciful of me to think he could have enjoyed the crossover success of Bill Withers or Richie Havens. While some of his material had a gentle, wistful nature which could have appealed to many markets, a lot of it was a very particular telling of the Black experience of the time. There is a real anger and fire in "Dancing Girl" or "Bowling Green" which maybe wouldn't have played well on even the most adventurous or progressive pop or rock radio stations of the time.

Really sad to hear this. Terry Callier was a monumental singer and songwriter whose music has sustained me throughout the greater part of my life. I was lucky enough to meet him on a number of occasions as a fan and he always seemed everything his music suggested: honest, witty, wise and compassionate but with an understatement which belied his huge, huge talent. It's fairly well documented that he perhaps didn't quite get the breaks in his career which others experienced. He signed to Chess at a time when the great company's powers were beginning to wane. I think the way he saw it was as a position of great privilege to follow in the footsteps of some of the great folk bluesmen on one hand and on the other an opportunity to work with Charles Stepney, a genius of a collaborator with whom he made some truly unforgettable and timeless music. This was at a time when other African American singers with a broadly similar sensibility, particularly Bill Withers and Richie Havens were crossing over to a far wider (i.e. white) audience. I don't necessarily know if TC would have enjoyed the pressures of being a big star but it certainly seems manifestly unfair to this particular fan that he was to die in relative obscurity in his own country. Rest in peace Terry.

I think all the obsession about the 'detail' or lack of it in Quadrophenia misses the point massively. It was a film I'd always avoided seeing until the opportunity arose to watch it at the NFT with a talk by the director Franc Roddam beforehand. He thought it was interesting that a whole generation of mod revivalists had tried to use the film as a template on How To Be A Mod when the entire point of the original subject matter by The Who was a vicious satire on conformity itself and the damaging effects on a borderline personality of being made to follow a set of rules imposed by society on one hand and the peer group on the other. A lot of the period detail in Quadrophenia is indeed wide of the mark: the scooters are wrong, Sting's haircut is wrong, blah, blah. Yet to me that is immaterial really because not one jot of of that detracts from the film's emotional power and resonance. Sitting in a cinema and muttering that you 'wouldn't have worn those socks in 1973' would be to kind of miss the point.

Very insightful and honest post Len.

Very sad news. Chuck's live shows were, as everyone has said, something else.

Maybe I was a bit harsh in saying it's just another song. Laura Barton wrote an interesting piece on it in The Guardian a couple of years back which gives it its due: https://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/21/hail-hail-rock-n-roll

Rhys's story about the song is interesting but tantalisingly incomplete. Presumably the other people he mentions who bought the master to Amy Mala Bell were The Wildweeds or people connected to them via the Syncron Studio in Connecticut. Rhys's version makes no real mention of how the song became the record or how Tobi Lark/Legend got involved. The original germ of the song was obviously a good one, but it is the arrangement, production and the vocal which makes the finished record a masterpiece. it's ironic that the cheque Rhys received was probably off the back of Kylie Minogue's execrable version which shows that without the beautiful Tobi Legend vocal and the majestic arrangement of the Mala 45 this is, let's face it, just another song.

That's such a lazy and ill-informed posting that it demands some sort of reply. Why make the tie-in with the stage play Once Upon A Time In Wigan? These are two completely separate entities. Suggesting putting on a stage play to raise funds and awareness is laughable (as if stage plays themselves require no funding, no research, no casting, no directing, no publicity). This is not a film version of an existing play, it's from a completely original script. Comments about records played in '73 not getting a look in today are puzzling and to be honest completely irrelevant. The figure mentioned as a funding target is not the entire budget. A production company, sales agents and so on and all that entails are already on board. As for demand for the film being only within the scene that's a crazy standpoint. The film and the scene are also two completely separate entities. The film is not being made as an instructional manual for prospective converts or a nostalgia piece for those who have been on the scene their adult lives. It's a story about growing up in the North of England in the '70s and uses being on the scene as a very important part of the background story. The way the story is told will have a universality beyond the confines of the back-story, like any quality drama. Audiences for films can go beyond those who actually have first hand experience of the subject matter. How many who saw "Saving Private Ryan" got shot at on the Normandy Beaches, for example? Pointing out that this is hardly likely to be a 'profitable investment' when I suspect (forgive me if I am wrong) you are not an expert in feature film finance is unhelpful at best and mischievous at worst.

Sugar Boy has been on refosoul here for some years masquerading under a cover-up name. Great little record.

Extremely sad news. There aren't ten better singers than this man in the whole of soul history.

It's a leap in logic to say that any attempt to portray something in art is necessarily 'commercialising' that subject. I can't speak directly for Elaine Constantine but I would imagine that this is a story which is very personal to her and one she wants to tell through the medium of film. You seem to have a very one dimensional view of film in general. Not everything on the big screen needs to be a flashy commercial blockbuster on one hand or a 'Mutiny on the Buses' on the other. I don't think the aim of this film is to 'revive' interest in Northern Soul or if it even needs reviving. As I said above I understand scepticism about any project like this as one of the guiding principles of Northern or rare soul as a scene or movement is that it was entirely created by its participants, maybe the first thing in Britain ever distinctly like that in character. It wasn't a case of the music industry or television channels or daily newspapers in London telling young people what clothes to wear or what records to buy or what night clubs to go to. Its very underground nature was one of the defining reasons why it was so important to the people who followed the lifestyle every weekend and maybe the biggest key to its longevity. If someone who was on the scene wishes to make a film about what it meant to them and how it shaped their values we should respect their choice to try to tell that story.

I wonder what musicdonkey's agenda is here. A handful of posts all critical of this project. Accusations of a 'cash-in' are so wide of the mark as to be ridiculous and need to be answered. Elaine has been working on this project for a very long time. As Byrney and others have said above this is the best chance the soul scene will ever have of getting a decent representation on film. Here is a director with long-standing first-hand knowledge of the thing but crucially also one with real talent and vision. I can understand a degree of scepticism given previous attempts to represent Northern Soul in a feature film but the crucial difference here is that the creative drive behind all of this is from someone who's been on the scene whereas projects in the past have been written and directed by people who by and large were not there. I know we all like to grumble about aspects of the scene every day here but the simple fact is that at its heart is the genuine magic we all fell in love with: the music, the dancing, shenanigans with chemicals and the friendships (and rivalries) which have come to last a lifetime. These are stories that deserve to be told. They are part of the fabric of ordinary people's lives, experiencing something extraordinary during their weekends. British cinema has been chock-full of 'coming of age' dramas based on the lives and angst of the middle classes. Here is an opportunity to try to represent some of the particular magic of the NS phenomenon with all the style and passion that the topic merits.

Can only echo all of the above. A very sad day.

Very sad news. So many great performances from an exceptional singer, but my favourite of them all was "I'll Make It Up To You" on Kent. Timeless soul music of the very highest quality.

The ballad version of "Color One Tear Black" on the other side of the Strike 45 is a truly incredible record.