Dean Rudland

It is an incredibly rare record - the full storey is in Super Funk Volume 5 on BGP. It was a custom press of 200 and I think those two on popsike are the only two that have come up for sale. I think it really is a case of suck it and see, if your lucky you may hit the jackpot.

Roger surely you see this is different. It was sold as an exclusive and then it wasn't. I understand why it was done, and at least Expansions had the honesty to print a different label - I know others who wouldn't and haven't. But if I'd gone out of my way to make sure I got a copy - because I thought it was the only way I could get the vinyl - I'd be a little annoyed (just a little). For the record I've bough this on CD, download, and vinyl and I think that any DJ playing it in a soul club would be better buying the radio edit on download and playing that. I think the sax solo is great for home listening less so for a club. Dean

I think everyone should check out 'On My Way To Harlem' an incredible song from Gregory's new album, that reminds me in its rhythm of Lady Day and John Coltrane.

The Dot single was recorded by the same producer - Dorothy Hester - as his Doro single, and is from around the same time.

I think Tony Rounce knows where all the London reggae overstocks went. He has a great story about him and Steve Barrow finding it in the mid 70s, but I can't remember it properly so perhaps he can be tempted to tell it.

Thanks Matt - though I think I had very little to do with it other than saying that I thought it was a very good idea to the powers that be at Ace. Their OC Tolbert - which I had even less to do with - is a gem too.

absolutely amazing last night. What a voice and show. Dean

We have as a quick glance at our Fame Studios Story shows. https://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=59&release=8849 Dean

I thought that the board may want to see the full details on the Fame Singles Box that Tony Rounce and myself have put together for Record Store Day. I've seen the mock-up box and it truly is a beautiful item. This link also lets you see a couple of other RSD related Ace items https://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=2088 The highly limited edition "Fame Singles Box" is something very special indeed. Within its packaging can be found faithful facsimiles of four of the rarest Fame singles from the 1960s, including the company's first ever 45, by the Del Rays, Northern Soul classics by James Barnett and Art Freeman, and Jimmy Hughes' Island Soul rarity 'You Might As Well Forget Him', plus a bonus, a previously unissued test pressing. Packaged in homage of Fame's own original mailout envelopes, this will be snapped up quickly by the thousands who queue outside their nearest participating stores Dean Rudland

Or for the first time as we now know. Dean

Thanks Dave. Should I be having senior moments before my 43rd birthday? I must have been keeping Cloud Of Sunshine to myself back then!

Great LP and Cloud Of Sunshine is one of my all time favourites. I think we comped it on an Acid Jazz Totally Wired comp in the early 90s.

I was hoping the same Chalky, but alas no. According to Billy Vera who produced the Rainy Day session she was part of some sort of religious cult, and that perhaps that claimed her. The thing that surprised me when I worked on that release was how good an album the Mainstream release was. I had had it down as a two tracker since the day I got it.

Can you not remove a post anymore?

Agreed. It was on a deleted Kent Crossover CD. I've put it on the Stax Southern Soul compilation which is coming out on Kent at the end of March. The whole horn arrangement is very reminiscent of something from Isaac Hayes early albums (Ike's Mood I think) Dean

Bob is right. And its prevalence shows how much of the collecting world is dominated by people who came up buying funk and soul on the back of wanting to get hold of the samples from hip hop records from the so called 'golden age'. In my mind it's far less annoying - though probably just as ridiculous - as OVO.

Nev I don't think I'm cherry picking. The point I'm making is that when a record is going this big, the artists will have been alerted by someone tracking them down and asking them if they have a copy of the record. When they are contacted they will soon find their way to reissue companies who by their nature will want to put the track out. Not one if us is set up to just release unreleased tracks. I'm not saying this is right, but it's part of the complex nature of any scene in the age of very easy worldwide communication.

Chalky this wouldn't sell, CD singles aren't very popular. What's more it would give the bootleggers a fantastic high quality master to cut there 45 from. And it would be in the shop within days.

It's nothing like that at all. Those of us who work for record companies spend years tracking music down, and have discovered loads of unreleased masterpieces that have enriched the soul scene. When we do that we talk to the artists that have also made the records and if they have an in demand record they ask us to release it. Often we are tipped off to these people by the very people who have found the records in the first place, who have searched out the artists to try and get more copies of the records. Once these processes have been put in place its hard to stop them. Its not ideal, but why put out a CD and find yourself bootlegged like Lou Barretto did. I'm afraid it isn't going to happen. The rare soul scene doesn't exist in a vacuum of record discovery but rather a complicated eco-system of people all going about discovering music in different ways, from artists and record company owners. All of these people have their own vested interests and are ultimately going to work towards these. Also wasn't Ian Wright playing this long before anyone on the rare soul scene was?

Here's the reason. If you can get the rights and put it out, you'd better do so quickly because every tossing bootlegger will have it on Ebay within seconds if you don't. It would be great to hang around, and Ady C does when its something that is unreleased, but if it is a released item you had better move. I'd rather the group and Soul Junction got some money rather than anonymous on Ebay.

I'm afraid you're wrong there. US writers almost invariably called that sort of music jazz fusion. In the UK Jazz Funk was very much a scene, which covered a certain set of DJs - The Soul Mafia - and covered a vast array of at the times contemporary styles from Japanese fusion to boogie soul. The Snowboy book mentioned earlier in the thread really covers this scene well.

I think that the other thing to remember about rare groove is that it was a very convenient hook line / description for old funk for record companies and shops to sell. In the States for instance acid jazz became a term for new jazz dance music, which copied or were inspired by the records made on Acid Jazz, Talkin Loud and other labels, so when they wanted to sell old records that we would have termed as Acid Jazz - funky organ stuff on Prestige and Blue Note, it was easier to term these as rare grooves. Thus when I was working for Blue Note they could never get how our comps would sell by the bucket load, so they started their own 'rare groove' series to try and grab the market. This appealed to the hip hop collectors looking for breaks etc. Just to add to the confusion because of the cross fertilisation of the non-northern soul scenes at the time, records like Roy Ayers everybody loves the sunshine could easily be classed as jazz-funk, rare groove or acid jazz.

Nick if you were 18 or 19 and used to buying the latest soul releases these were 'rare grooves'. You couldn't buy them in Our Price or Virgin and they took some searching out if you weren't part of a scene with an established collecting ethic. I think that there is a constant upset with people of the rare soul scenes who feel miffed that someone called them rare grooves, which ignores the fact that the quality of what was played was exceptional. Dean

Hi Steve I think the key point is that the people involved on the rare groove scene at the time were new to it. As such £2 Zodiac records - if they were good - were meat and drink to them. The quality of the records that were played was of a fairly high standard, the rarity less spectacular. It was rare in the terms of the scenes in which they came from - which was a contemporary dance music scene. I think Keb's view judges rare groove under the same terms as northern soul - and if you were to do that, the records to be judged against would be those played in the early days at the Wheel, not the super rares of The Mecca, Stafford or later. It should also be remembered that apart from a few clubs - The Cat In The Hat, The Original Rare Groove for instance - the rare grooves formed by of a DJs set which at Warehouse parties could be made up of bits of jazz, mainstream club oldies (like the jazz funk hits mentioned above), new hip hop records or the latest soul imports.

Bob the rare groove scene is one of the most misrepresented scenes by northern soul types, not helped by the absolute tosh that Keb used to talk about it when he was trying to distance himself from it when he was inventing 'deep funk'. The London based black music clubs in the West End in the early to mid 80s played a mixture of new commercial soul, early electro and somewhere along the line added all sorts of black music classics into the mix. When it became clear that these worked DJs started looking for more stuff that worked along these lines, and started looking back. Sometimes this was only a couple of years to tracks that were lost on albums, on other occasions it could be all the way back to the late 60s. A very young scene - teens and early 20s I'd say - and very miced racially - there was none of the depth of knowledge that the northern scene had, but importantly there was no need for it. Like the northern scene in its early days there was tons of funk records just waiting to be stumbled across for a couple of quid. So whilst some extremely rare records were played - Party by The New Jersey Queens for instance - JBs and related productions dominated alongside other well known cuts. Records that were big at the time such as Across The Tracks and I Believe In Miracles rapidly became overplayed anthems, but were better than most black music that has been discovered by any club scene in the UK. The two-step scene was far more black based and liked a sweet soul groove - Leroy's 'All Because Of You' and Starvue's 'Body Fusion' spring to mind - and this scene was under most people who weren't there's radar. But it was noticeable that at Leroy Hutson's gig two years ago, the black part of the audience - ABY excepted - were there for a different set of favourites from the white part. Rare groove was blown away when mainstream London clubbing went all Acid House in 88, and those who were interested in the old fnk & soul joined the nascent Acid Jazz scene, and carried on their excavations.