Ian Dewhirst

Oh you shouldn't believe everything you hear about Show Biz dearie! It's all quite innocent. I was talking to my associate Andre and he thinks you have a cherubic face which will work well in a video. We were wondering whether you may be available for some personal choreographing by our resident choreographers Lionel Blair and Wayne Sleep to be held at the Rainbow Hotel this weekend and then we'll all go dancing at the famous nightclub Heaven. Oh, by the way, could you please bring some leather undergarments please as we'd like to assess your body shape? Monty De La Prenuer

Clyde McPhatter "Please Give Me One More Chance" Bobby Hutton "Lend A Hand" Ian D

Bloody Hell. Haven't seen him since he sold me the Pointer Sisters at Burnley Cricket Club in 1974! Please give him my best! Ian D

Dunno where the 'all vinyl's were boots' thing came from. Hundreds of vinyl copies originally came from Bostocks @ Bradford Market in the early 70's (via the MGM warehouse in the U.S. I believe) and none of 'em were boots! Ian D

Blimey. Must've been lonely dancing by yourself in your bedroom all those years then? Ian D

Also let's not forget that the Northern Soul scene has always been full of cantankerous characters - it's part of the nature of what has always been an elite scene. When anyone came onto the scene in the early 70's they were automatically classed as 'Divs' or 'Wallies'. It was like a form of induction or baptism by fire into a scene, which, despite what you read on here, doesn't suffer fools gladly. Maybe it's because the Northern scene requires a bit of passion and dedication and that idealogy continues to this day as can be evidenced by this very forum. Also despite the harshness of some of the contributors on here, most people I think have a healthy respect for each other. It's 'the devil you know' and the 'he's a twat but he's OUR twat' type of syndrome....... All that's happened, is that Soul Source and the Internet has provided a means of people actually airing their views to all and sundry instead of just at various events or via fanzines, as in the past. So naturally the loudest, most controversial and most obnoxious ones among us tend to get in there quick LOL! Ian D

Hi Tommy, I just pm'd you 4 lots of sleeve notes I did for the Northern Soul Story 4 CD set I did earlier this year. This may help as it looks at Northern Soul from a hands-on personal perspective whilst it was happening at the time.... Hope it may help! Best, Ian D

Agreed! It's pretty failsafe if you have a lot of records. I do mine aphabetised in the following sections:- 1) Rock/Pop Albums 2) Soul/RnB Albums 3) Compilation Albums 4) Reggae Albums 5) U.S. Soul/RnB 7"'s 6) U.K. Rock/Pop 7"'s 7) U.K. Soul/RnB 7"'s 8) U.K. Reggae 7"'s 9) U.S. Northern Soul 7" 10) U.K. Northern Soul 7" 11) U.S. 12"'s 12) U.K. 12"'s 13) U.K. and U.S. Rock/Pop 12"'s 14) Reggae 12"'s 15) CD - Artist Albums 16) CD - Northern Soul 17) CD Compilations Always worked for me. I can generally go straight to what I need within seconds. I generally have a re-filing session about once a month which takes a couple of hours or so, but that beats the frustration of not being able to lay your hands on something quickly! Best, Ian D

Hey The Screamer! Yep, Gary Fields bought my cracked Joe Mathews bless him. Even though it played just fine it had a big wadge of masking tape holding it together. He bought it because of the history of the record and what it meant to him....... Next time you see him can you let him know that I've been saving all my cracked records over the last 20 years specially for him LOL...... Ian D

Now that would really be pushing it! Ian D

Blimey, definitely a ropy old mix though Eddie. Wouldn't have said no to a couple of your mate's copies though..... Ian D

With both these records especially, I just have a gut feeling that they were black/white combos since there are definite rock influences in both of 'em. At the time the likes of Sly & The Family Stone, the Chambers Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Taj Mahal, Eric Burdon & War etc, etc were blurring the lines between Rock and Soul, so it wouldn't be unusual to have a black/white combo that were fusing the elements. But I guess this is all conjecture until someone can dig up some info......... Ian D

Nope. "Smoke Your Troubles Away" was by the Glass Family on Earhole Records. And this is a rare soul forum isn't it, hence the perfectly valid question as to whether there may be any other records on the Inner Ear label? If you're not interested, then maybe don't read the thread! So we're still down to whether the Crow were a black or white band? Likewise World Column.... Ian D

I reckon the Crow were a rock band and like the World Column from the same era. Great record. It was originally found and championed by the late Dave Godin and first played at Blackpool Mecca when Dave made one of his sporadic trips up there. Colin Curtis eventually prised it from him and the rest, as they say, is history! Inner Ear Records. Rare. Very Rare. Anyone know of any other records on the label? Ian D

Yep. That makes sense. Wish I'd have been around in those days but I was probably still playing with my action man LOL. Cheers Billy. Ian D

Dammit Geoff! My one regret is that I wasn't born 10 years earlier (in '45 rather than '55) otherwise I'd have been hanging around in the same circles hopefully. So glad to hear all this from someone who was there at the time. There's so much disinformation these days that you have to really consider the source (as Leon Haywood said). I could have really done with speaking to you when I put the sleeve notes for the Wheel album together - I got there in the end but it did get a bit painstaking at times because of different people's recollections of events etc. Just lately I've been talking to Greg Wilson who does quite a bit of University lecture work and he was saying that there's a real paucity of reliable information about the club scene and especially the Northern club scene from this era. He reckoned that the Wheel was every bit as influential as the London clubs but just never got covered as much because most of the key media is all Southern biased. Rob Moss echoed these statements just a couple of weeks ago. So when we do eventually meet up we should have a natter about 'correcting the balance! However, like you I've actually got to get some work done. It'd be lovely to organise a Uni tour and talk about this stuff wouldn't it? Ian D

Thanks Kev! Can I be the first to set up a Wombat appreciation society? I want pics of Wombat, I want unreleased material and I want a mint Gemni white copy for further research purposes! Ian D

Let me know when the next one is and I'll try and make it! Funnily enough, there was a Paul Anka visit earlier this year which co-incided with the release of the Northern Soul Story series I did for Sony-BMG - Paul Anka was the lead track on the Wigan Casino volume. So, at the time, I saw that Paul Anka was going to be on This Morning or a similar show, so I did send an e-mail to the show to see if they could ask him about his Northern Soul records, which I think would have made a nice chat subject. But no cigar. Just an auto e-mail response which is par for the course these days LOL. Ian D

Actually when I was re-researching the Wheel era for an album, I was surprised at the amount of live UK white acts the Wheel, the Bag O Nails, the Scene and other early to mid 60's clubs used to put on - John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, the Spencer Davis Band, Long John Baldry, The Animals, Georgie Fame & The Blue-Flames, Them (with Van Morrison) etc, etc from memory. Also, as Rob Moss mentioned the other week, when you look at the Beatles first album it was chock full of covers by Smokey Robinson, the Marvelettes and the Isley Brothers, so the lines were a lot more blurred back then - there seemed to be a much greater fertilization between Pop, RnB and Soul as evidenced by things like Dusty Springfield hosting the Motown show..... By all accounts, Pop and Soul used to easy bedfellows at one time. My feeling is that towards the middle to end of the 60's when faster U.S. 'unknown' records started to get programmed more regularly, mainly at the Wheel, that's when many of the more Poppy records got dropped in favour of the more exotic cousins from across the Atlantic. And eventually a sort of inverse snobbery snuck-in (of which I used to be one of the worst) where Pop was considered second-choice to real soul. Maybe a couple of older readers could be a bit more definitive....? Ian D

From "Ummagumma" to "Oh Babe, What Would You Say" is quite a large step isn't it LOL? Ian D

Now Wombat. There's an interesting record. Almost worth runnng a seperate thread about. I've often spent many a night when I've been bored wondering whatever became of Wombat, so several questions whilst we're on pop thread:- 1) Who was Wombat? 2) Is there any reason why he was called Wombat? 3) What is a Wombat anyway? 4) I actually think "Getting On Life" is a great record in it's own way - thought provoking lyrics, bizarre arrangement and a frenetic production, so were there any other releases from Wombat? 5) A ZTSC collectors record but who was it originally aimed at? The Detroit C&W scene? Ah the rich tapestry of Northern Soul. Doncha just love it. And surely Paul Anka's "Can't Help Loving You" must be the greatest Northern Soul pop record mustn't it? Where did it all come from? I reckon from a golden era when real musicians, arrangers, orchestras and producers used to go in a studio and actually play their hearts out on, like, real instruments LOL! Ian D

Has anyone done any scientific studies into the effects of nicotine deprivation in terms of time-awareness LOL! Ian D X

There weren't that many Isonics knocking around when I had it, so who knows? But the gluing thing was never gonna be a goer was it LOL! Ian D