Frankie Crocker

Pete, the white demo probably never came with the picture sleeve - you could have kept the sleeve and married it up with an issue at a later date.

I wonder if it was the same one? Can't remember the date I sold it but the first guy I showed it to fetched his mate from the Record Bar and he snapped it up.

Hi Dave, the reference to the Union Bar implied we knew where we were going without debating the music policy of Wigan v Cleethorpes. Based in Manchester, you could do Blackpool, Wigan and The Ritz in a weekend so there was no incentive to head cross country to Cleethorpes. The Beachcomber, main floor and M's at Wigan were an unbeatable combination that Cleethorpes could only aspire to.

Kegsy, you'd have been pretty daft (or dead keen) to take in both Wigan and Cleethorpes in the same night. I guess some of the Leeds crew probably achieved it accidentally as they were never much good at reading maps.

Really surprised by the Williams and Watson. £150 in a picture sleeve would be the going rate but most would settle for the record alone. Someone evidently has more money than the rest of us and logically goes to the top man in the trade. After taxes and commission, John has to please customers, consigners and himself plus a large staff so I reckon today's auction prices are about right. I bought Too Late from Soul Bowl in 1976 and sold it at Wigan for the same price, £5.00...funny old game.

Not well up on the Winter Gardens story but had the impression punters would flit between the two. I was based in Manchester and North Wales 1974-1979 so going to Blackpool and Wigan was a no-brainer. I don't recall sitting in the Students' Union Bar debating whether to go to Cleethorpes as opposed to Wigan - it was logical to get the last train from Victoria to Wigan Wallgate AND the music was as good as it gets allowing for experimental attempts to introduce new sounds and blatant attempts to compete with the Mecca spins.

Without doubt, a scorching roster of DJ's but Cleethorpes came after Blackpool and Wigan, building upon the foundations and exposing new sounds as any good venue should do. The Pier never overtook Wigan. It complemented Wigan and forced the Casino to up it's game. Anyone who attended both Wigan and Cleethorpes Pier would have no doubts as to which was the superior venue back in the day and in a historical context.

Ayup Kegsy. You're right that Cleethorpes combined the best of Wigan and Blackpool but it really only served to supplement these iconic venues. I only went to Cleethorpes once and was impressed despite having to sacrifice a night at Wigan. Cleethorpes evolved to cater for the masses east of the Pennines as much as anything with crowds from Leeds, Sheffield and the eastern counties. Back in the mid to late 70's, twenty year old soulies were guided by proximity and convenience when travelling on a Saturday. Back then, despite differing music policies at Blackpool and Wigan, punters tended to stick to their habitual haunts rather than switch venues. Nowadays, much more is made of the Wigan-Blackpool political divide than was apparent then with us youngsters attending and grumbling but not necessarily switching to Cleethorpes. To return to the theme, maybe Cleethorpes was in fact worthy of a mention in the documentary as it made an important contribution in breaking some new sounds and catering for a regional market distant from the north-west.

All worthy venues but none were pivotal like The Wheel, Torch and Wigan. Stafford and The 100 Club were pivotal and deserving of a mention for notable contributions in a historical context. Loads of other towns played supporting roles such as Warrington and Morecambe but these are only comparable to the profusion of regional events such as Stoke, Lowton and Allbrighton - significant but not pivotal.

Pete, you're absolutely right. It was mainstream 1974-76. School trousers were 24 inch parallels with turn-ups and side pockets. Soul patches were for sale in record shops. The pop charts were littered with Pye Disco Demand sounds. Youths were spinning in the streets, bus shelters and factory floors. Every youth club in the country played The Snake five times an evening. The exposure was somewhat embarrassing for the hard core who backed off travelling to Wigan as swarms of divvy tourists went out of curiosity.

No chance. The Mecca was a warm-up for Wigan. Once Wigan started up, no tunes played by Levine and Curtiss topped the tunes heard at Wigan. Even the Ritz eclipsed Blackpool Mecca.

We've planted a Northern Mole at the Beeb. He's really into Northern big-time hence all the backing tracks and oldies popping up. He's keen to make sure all license payers get their money's worth so he regularly drops hints to the programmers about putting on something for minority groups such as aged black-music lovers...

Carstairs I would imagine. Miracle's Love Machine, Pointer Sister's Send Him Back, O'Jay's I lLove Music, the list of early 70's tunes is endless. Check out the Mecca CD's for lists of latest discoveries being exposed in the mid 70's. Can't believe that Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles rarities were sitting around in Florida in their hundreds just waiting to be freighted off to Blackpool in a Wright Brothers plane with Mr Levine Snr chucking Gwen Owens out of the window to lighten the load...

The crease in the cardboard sleeve suggests the packet has been bent by about 90 degrees. Under normal circumstances, no mail would be subject to this sort of force. The damage has been done deliberately but not necessarily by your postie but some rogue in a sorting office someplace. Hope you can get compensation ...

These people were invited to SEX the programme up but for Joe Public. They have now been boxed away in storage to be wheeled out for the next programme...

Job well done Ian. I thought Searling talks so much sense. Dave was spot on though.

Thanks for posting it. Hugely enjoyable. Probably the best potted history so far to date. ALL the contributors came across well.

Ditto, in Los Angeles...

The early Manship guides were priced up in dollars but somehow the figures today speak pounds...go figure. In the beginning, John acknowledged the figures quoted were subject to a deduction for VAT but this seems to be overlooked nowadays. Early on, the price guides gave the ignorant US dealer an advantage they did not have, but the guides have now been replaced by the internet which is used by a large number of dealers who check values on Popsike etc. The price guides are an invaluable resource to collectors, most of whom do not have encyclopaedic knowledge or the experience of the top dealers - the collector travelling the US or browsing the internet simply has to make use of a price guide for details of artists, titles and labels, otherwise they are missing out.

Yes, I noted this one but can't remember if I bid on it. I wonder if Manny won it? It strikes me that records auctioned for big money appear in John's auctions a few months later. Coincidence? I reckon he still turns a profit on those bought for re-sale but the odd loser gains publicity and more importantly, keeps the shop window full of desirable product. At a time when lots of big hitters in the auction market such as Moerer, Stanley and Tefteller have little up for grabs, Manship continues to keep raising the bar.

I paid John twelve hundred for a copy a few years back so it came as a relief to see it upped to £1,250. Two great sides and very hard to find in nice condition so hardly surprising it is trading above the book valuation.

It wasn't a funky sound when it went big at Wigan. It was simply a 'Newie' and one that was well received by the assembled masses. Kinda getting fed up of having funk labelled records swarming everywhere - funk should be kept to the discos where it belongs and out of the Northern dance halls that focus on spinning quality sixties soul (with a sprinkling of quality soulful seventies sounds).

True up to a point as Sandy Holt won a competition at a Wigan Anniversary. He was eliminated in an early round a year later for not actually dancing but going through a rehearsed routine choreographed in his bedroom mirror practising to a Carl Douglas soundtrack watching David Carradine King Fu programmes. Sandy became the stereotype that legions of acrobats sought to parody, a trend that sadly lingers on to the chagrin of the scene.