Mick Howard

Ted For me in this particular case the word "Masterpiece" is just not enough! This is one of the best Soul songs ever recorded IMHO - a stunning vocal which makes me well up every time I hear it which 'aint that often due to its rarity. Mick

I think you're right there Martyn. Seem to recall actually reading it in the national press - something to do with faulty gas fire I recall? Mick

I certainly remember Bedfords Nite Spot 'cos I went towards the tail end of the 70's. Would I be right in saying that Ken Cox of EASC had a few all-nighters there? I also seem to recall that these all nighters were around the time when Nev Wherry, who was such a nice guy, died - I think there was a two minute silence one time. Mick

Lars Bang on my friend. Wondered how long it would take someone to identify it. Wexler was indeed an avid collector of Jazz of the 20's and 30's but I bet it was nowhere near like that Joe Bussard..... Mick

Hi there Keith So we (i.e. the 'Soul' fraternity) were'nt really the first 'anoraks' were we? Re the question - jazz is certainly a connection.... Mick

I thought I might share the following extract from an autobiography that I am re-reading: "When we were young men, though, business was the last thing on our minds. We were record hunters, fierce and indefatigable. To discover, in the back of some basement in Far Rockaway, a carton of unopened, still-in-original-wrapper sets of Black Swans - a label owned by W.C. Handy and responsible for Ethel Waters's first recordings - was an experience second only to orgasm" Although the book from which the passage comes from was published in the early 90's it is actually describing the 1930's, although you knew that didn't you? How many of us on here have felt the same way as the writer, particularly that last line? We don't even have to change the sentence much either - a carton of unopened, still-in-the-wrapper sets of Swans. How brilliant is that? Finally, can you identify the writer? Mick

Neil At the time that volume 1 of The In Crowd was published I was reliably informed (if that's possible on the NS scene...) that a 2nd volume was in the pipeline, however, Mike & Stuarts' expenditure was not re-couped for volume 1 and it therefore proved impossible for them. Mick

Bill Lucas - Cause I Know You're Mine - Dionn promo (at Lifeline Saturday/Sunday from Des Parker) Freddy King - 100 Years - Federal Maurice Jackson - Forever My Love - Weis Harold Hutton - Lucky Boy - Chess Johnson Sisters - I Found My Place - Broadway promo Mick

I'm Not Built That Way - The Hesitations & Hold To My Baby - The Cavaliers Head & Shoulders - Patti Young & Merry-Go-Round - Tommy Frontera Cool Off - The Detroit Executives & Mighty Lover - The Ideals There are many, many more... Mick

Just received an e-mail & they've put together a 5 minute film about it here... https://www.vintageatgoodwood.com/gallery/video.aspx Mick

Yeah but Dave Did you see CapitolSC's post earlier? He got the same response as did I. Churned out by his minions probably. Mick

Martyn Ah yes my old mucker Johnny Cockrill - he invited me to join but I don't do Facebook - too much sharing of personal information for my liking..... About St Ives; I had planned to go but since discovering that its not an all nighter and that its £8.50 (& that's with the discount from the Cambridge Soul Collective) for just 6 hours (8pm to 2am) I've decided to go to Lifeline in Wolverhampton instead (£10 for 10 hours!). BTW do we know each other? I only ask because we seem to have mutual aquaintences. Mick P.S. Apologies to others for going off thread

Martyn It came to me in a flash yesterday - it was Melanie wasn't it? Mick

If you're going at the end of this month Debbie please do;) Mick

Yes Martyn That 'skippy' dance they did - it wasn't quite shuffling but it was like that. I think I know the girl you're talking about but I don't think it's Wendy. Would I be right in thinking that she wore her hair quite long and that it was jet black? Anyway, great times -strange clothes! Mick

Definitely not rock & roll. I posted the photo. Her name is Cheryl Bush and she was in the year below me at School. She was, however, along with others who wore similar clothes into the more 'funky' sounds, 'Mecca' stuff if you like, and they were the first ones I saw who took to wearing those red plastic sandals that we wore as kids & that became quite popular amongst Mecca and Ritz types. Mick

Now Kieran, you know that's not true. Mass popularity fills the floor! I remember dancing myself (that is, on my own on an empty dancefloor) at Stafford back in the day to newly discovered but yet to be proved Quality tunes..... But back to Toms original question; there is some truth that the more slower, mellow tunes, even if they are of Quality are just no good in the middle of the night and a good DJ knows better. Slower, mellow should not, however, be confused with rousing beat ballads in the vein of Kell Osborne which WILL generally fill the floor. Mick

Wiggy Methinks the wider ones with the big turn-ups are the Skinners. First saw them around 72 when a couple of 3rd year (I was 2nd year) lads wore them - they'd bought them from a shop called Harry Masons (I think) in Hull - near to Scarboro Records I recall. Thought they were cool as anything & promised myself I would save up to buy a pair. It took me another year and I'd moved from Yorkshire to Norfolk by then. Got myself a crisp white pair with something (dice I think) embroidered(ish) on the back pockets. Within a very short period they had to be ditched because of the Bay City Rollers. Mick

Oh Debbie Truly wonderful & really does show that when it's good live then it's very, very good! Mick

Massive for sure but much earlier than Keele. Big for Keb at Stafford covered as The Embers, Playing the Part of A Fool. Corking. Mick

Definitely a case of 'horses for courses'. Providing the artist is good then there really 'aint nothing like the live gig and I should know; I've been to a fair few over the years. Rock, pop, reggae, Soul you name it! Like some have already said there are always 'bad' gigs amongst the good and that goes for live Soul too but I agree that most of the Soul artists are now 'of an age' so the really great is becoming less and less likely - did anyone see Martha Reeves on Jools Holland last New Year? Oh dear! For me: Best live Soul gig - Lorraine Chandler & Eddie Parker at Stafford TOTW Some of the best of the rest - Red Hot Chilli Peppers in Manchester, Dexys Midnight Runners in Koln (Germany), The Jam in Essen (Germany) and The Alabama 3 everywhere (3 times already). Mick

You said it geeselad, It never really was a venue that 'broke' records or at least it wasn't known for it. Those tunes you've listed were 'broke' and played elsewhere. I remember Doug Banks from Warrington Parr Hall (I think) and as for Howard Guyton and The Imaginations I seem to recall hearing them in the early days of Stafford or maybe even before. Mick

Like the guy says in the article, Faith Evans does bear "a striking resemblance" to Flo Ballard so she appears to be the obvious choice, however, his worries about singers acting might be a bit premature. Madonna has proved to be pretty awful certainly but I thought Beyonce acted reasonably well in Cadillac Records (the bio-pic of Chess) and Queen Latifah has had a couple of decent parts. Let's wait and see. Mick

Simon I think that you've kind of changed your thread a bit because now you are talking about the 'struggle' in which case the following consider the following article that I wrote for Soul Up North a couple of years ago - food for thought mate..... Mick July and August 1964, August 1965, July 1967 and July 1968…………. These dates won't mean much to most people but just as May 1959 and April 1981 are synonymous with the social history of black Britons; the former dates are burned deeply in the collective consciousness of Afro-America. Perhaps a further clue to their significance will be apparent if the following place names are added; Harlem and Rochester, Philadelphia, Detroit and Watts. The urban 'riots' that occurred in some of the most deprived areas of USA's major cities in the 1960's were, together with other events, a catalyst for sweeping changes to the very fabric of black and white society and of course this was reflected in popular music, which up to that point had mainly zeroed in on one particular subject – love (it is perhaps ironic that love may have been the one thing that could have prevented the death and destruction that occurred during those times!). If one looks at the Billboard top100 for the years leading up to and including 1967, the year of the last major disturbances, apart from the odd tune which was often either an instrumental or something comedic (A Walk In The Black Forest and I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am, numbers 46 and 47 respectively in the chart of 1965 are a case in point), love and the association with love was the predominant theme particularly in soul music as the following selections show: 1965 I Can't Help Myself by The Four Tops (No 2), My Girl by The Temptations (No 10), The Birds & The Bees by Jewel Akens (No 13), Stop In The Name Of Love by The Supremes (No 20) and Shotgun by Jr Walker & The All-Stars (No 25). 1966 Reach Out by The Four Tops (No 4), You Can't Hurry Love by The Supremes (No 8), When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge (No 20), What Becomes of the Broken Hearted by David Ruffin (No 22) and You Keep Me Hangin' On by The Supremes (No 30). 1967 I Was Made To Love Her by Stevie Wonder (No 14), Expressway To Your Heart by The Soul Survivors (No 18), Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie by Jay & The Techniques (No 21), Love Is Here and Now You're Gone by The Supremes (No 28) and Your Precious Love by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell (No 32). Although the subject matter of love still dominated the American hits of 1968, there was quite a marked change with topics of a social nature slowly starting to creep in. People Got To Be Free by the Rascals, The Beatles' Revolution, Love Child by The Supremes and James Browns Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud are just a few examples. There is no doubt that protest songs, that is music influenced by social events, had been around for a long time. Woody Guthrie's 'dustbowl' folk songs of the 30's and Pete Seegers' output from the 40's onwards is testament to this but it was really only in the 60's that the voice of disapproval for 'the man' began to be heard on a national scale and only then towards the end of the decade simply because the major white performers of the era insisted upon it. Remember that perhaps other than James Brown, major black artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder were forced to wait until the early 70's until they were able to take full artistic control and it is also worth bearing in mind that much of the lyrical content of 'Soul' was penned by white 'tin-pan alley' songwriters who perhaps rarely empathised with what was happening on the streets of black America. Of course, it wasn't only the conflict in local black communities in US cities that influenced a sea change; the 1960's were tumultuous times generally. The assassinations of both John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King five years apart (1963 & 1968 respectively), the Paris student riots, the US University sit-in's, the Viet Nam war and the subsequent rise of militant groups not least the Black Power movement all had a collective impact and shaped the future of music. But let us just consider the years 1964 to 1967 again for a moment. In the context of rare soul or music of black origin that did not get national exposure (i.e. not Billboard 100 hits); whilst songs with a ‘message’ were fairly thin on the ground (apart from many influenced by the Viet Nam war which affected just about everyone in the US), there were in fact a few very fine examples of the genre. Welfare Cheese by Emanuel Laskey and Black Power by James Coit to name just two. The point is that the urban disturbances and the other aforementioned events did not all occur at the same time and this is the very reason why soul music did not change overnight on the 31st December 1969. Slowly, throughout the 60's the establishment in all its guises was having less and less influence on what the black public could say and more importantly on what they were able to see and hear. To quote a certain Robert Zimmerman, the times [were indeed] a changing! Although twenty years on, consider Stevie Wonders' Hotter Than July album released in 1980 and the single Happy Birthday. This huge worldwide hit was in fact a vehicle for Stevies' campaign for Martin Luther Kings Birthday to be recognised as a national holiday which became a reality in 1986. Who said that music never changed anything?

Simon This has been researched and cross-references to Africa are made in various publications not least Peter Guralnicks book Sweet Soul Music & the Southern Dream of Freedom, however, I think that as far as the music itself is concerned it's far too complex to attempt to 'pin-point' a specific "missing" link between African tribal rhythms and the Sound of 'Young' America. Personally I think that the music is an aside; I think the main link is the Afro-American him/herself who's DNA can always be traced a few generations directly back to Africa. Mick