Amsterdam Russ
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Everything posted by Amsterdam Russ
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It took a good while to find out that it was actually Thelma Houston. I spent ages on a false lead that someone put my way which eventually led to a song of the same name that couldn't have been classified as 'soul' no matter how broadly you wanted to make it. Listening to Dusty Springfield's version - done in '71, I think - I also learned that Aretha Franklin had also done a version. She though, was interpreting Dusty's (in my view) quite weird arrangement, which is a bit like a precursor to drum n bass! -
Lazy? There's only about 50 clips to listen to! The first half of my original uploads (and I'm uploading them in the orginal order, cos I'm anal like that and can't help myself) were mainly uptempo stuff. The 2nd half, which I'm still doing, is mainly more sort of oddities & obscurities that I've found on acetates and which just won't ever get heard otherwise. It's not 'strictly Northern' if you know what I mean. The only track that might be considered as crossover - by my own definition - is this one called Mixed Up Girl. There's no name on the label of the acetate and no one I asked could ID it. Then someone eventually said that it was also done by Dusty Springfield, and that eventually led to it being ID'd as being a Jimmy Webb composition sung by Thelma Houston on an album of hers called (I think) Sunflower. I was so excited when the upload attracted the comments of a professional colleague of Jimmy Webb's. We ended up having a chat via the comments section of the clip. It was fantastic what he had to share. Of course, all those comments have now been wiped out, and that's the worst part of it all. Anyway, after all that build-up, here's the track!
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That's one of the funniest things I've heard in don't know how long. In fact, I just snorted into my wine glass. Sorry... But at the same time, thank you for sharing!
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Appreciated, Pete. I did post it on here when I first got it, which must be at least a year ago, and asked if anyone could ID it. No one did. Also, someone downloaded the soundclip and made a dreadful mash-up of it with Willie Mitchell's The Champion. Dreadful! Thankfully that musical monstrosity didn't stay on YouTube for long though.
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Very much appreciated, Geoff. I'm well over half way in posting everything back up. The next batch are mainly from acetates and include a mix of unknown R&B and soul cuts, a brilliant Mod-Jazz version of James Brown's Choo-Choo, a couple of Popcorn tracks and two very crackly song demos sung by Ila Vann. Might do some more reposting now, in fact...
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Thanks, Mark. That's a lot of clips!! Post up the link to your channel and I'll subscribe.
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Much appreciated. Seems this Google/YouTube account problem is more widespread than I'd realised. interestingly, and at the same time annoyingly, when I set up the new account, I was obliged to give Google/YouTube not only an email address, but also my date of birth, sex, and telephone number. It's not about making users happy. It's entirely about gathering data.
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And you can get most of it on YouTube! Their attitude has changed over the years, but it still seems inconsistent. I'd previous uploaded a couple of Loma tracks without problem, but when I tried the same thing with Ike & Tina Turner's 'Somebody needs you' I got a message it was blocked at the behest of Warner Bros!
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That must have been one hell of a blow, Pete. I appreciate that 300 clips is an awful lot of work. Were you uploading mainly Motown tracks then?
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Unfortunately the person to ultimately blame for deleting the account - and thus all the videos is me. When Google took over YouTube they made all registered users have a Google account and then linked that to the YouTube account (one account to rule them all). Thing is, I already had separate YouTube and Google accounts. This confused Google/YouTube no end and meant that every time I logged into YouTube, they asked which account it was that I wanted to use. The original YouTube account enabled me to manage my channel. The Google account logged me into YouTube, but without the channel being associated with it. Or so I thought. Over the weekend I couldn't get into YouTube with the proper account, only the 'inactive' one. I cleared browser cookies/cache, etc, and eventually managed to log in with the right one. This conflict of accounts has been going on for ages and so I decided to delete the 'inactive' one because, as I said, my HarveySoulFinger channel wasn't associated with it. Wrong! Somehow, and I've no idea why, this account was linked, even though it told me that no channel was connected to it. So, when I deleted it, I also deleted the channel. Initially I thought this wouldn't be a problem - I could just log back into YouTube with the proper account. Wrong again! All I got was a message saying the channel had been deleted. I quickly tried to see if there was a way to reinstate the account, but the methods prescribed on the Google/YouTube help pages didn't work. So, in most respects I was my own nemesis. Except that I hold Google/YouTube responsible for creating the account conflict in the first place and for making things so complex to understand. This is what makes the whole thing even more frustrating. Worse is that starting again means that the tunes that were up there for periods of years will drop right down in the YouTube and Google rankings. Videos I re-add will appear to be duplicates of stuff that's already on YouTube, although most of the stuff I added wasn't on YouTube to start with, which was why I added them. @ Dave - I'll give your suggestion a try right away...
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Earlier this week my YouTube channel of four years, and which went under the name of HarveySoulFinger, was deleted. I had something like 79 vids of classic and semi-obscure Northern Soul, R&B and some gospel. There was also about a dozen or more unreleased tracks of various types. The channel had over 300,000 views and had accumulated over 400 subscribers, and I know a number of people here had subscribed to it. I'm now trying to rebuild the channel under a new name - Loma Russ - and am re-uploading the video tracks one by one. It's a slow job because as well as uploading them there's also descriptions and tags to be done. Reckon I'm about halfway now. What's really sad about the deletion of the account is that over the four years it was active, a number of artists, friends of artists, and relatives of deceased artists, had kindly commented on posts. As examples, there were comments from relatives of Joan Baker (Everybody's talking), Beverly Shaffer and James "Lucky" Carmichael. A member of Dry Well had made a number of comments about the origin of the group and how they came to sing "Gypsy" (and refuting the long-held belief that Ellen and the Shan-dels was the first release). A music colleague of legendary song writer Jimmy Webb had provided much insight about his friend and the lyrics to one of his compositions that was recorded by Thelma Houston, and which had never been released as a 45 (I have a 45 acetate of it). All those comment are now gone, and that's a real shame. For anyone who might be interested, my new channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOmXkufN7J1zgy116jwvXww Please do subscribe if it's at all of interest. I'll continue to upload the now deleted tracks and get round to doing some new ones. I've a couple of great unreleased soul gems to add. No idea how long it'll take to get back to the previous numbers of views and subscribers. I think it's going to be a long haul! Thanks for reading.
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Vernacular not allowed in class! Movement/Scene = same thing in this context. One just has more letters, a sense of formality, and an extra syllable than the other.
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Oxford Dictionary of English: Movement 2 [ often with modifier ] a group of people working together to advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas: the labour movement. Maybe others think it's a load of bowels, but I'd say that 'Northern Soul' with its "Keep the Faith" musical philosophy could definitely be considered as a movement.
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Just watched the programme. Well, skipped through to the 'Northern' bits. I have to say I'm quite shocked, not by the coverage give to the Northern Soul scene (which was horribly patronising to so the least), but by the standard of British television. Has it really become this bad? I gave up telly about 10 years ago because I thought that 90% of it was crap. At home we still watch programmes via the computer and on DVD - The Wire, Walking Dead, etc, - but I've not seen one of these domestic light entertainment shows for a good decade. It was horrible. The presenters are using the sort of slow speaking tone and adopting the type of attitude you might use if you were giving a talk to a class full of educationally challenged 8-year olds, and even then they still managed to come across as being incredibly patronising. Good Lord. People still pay a TV licence for this sort of thing? Most of the 'Northern' segments had me cringing. "Go on then Tom/Dick/Harry, show us your special trick!" (Oooh, aaah. Isn't he/she good, ladies and gentlemen?). It reminded me of old style holiday camp talent shows... "And here's Charlie from Scunthorpe, and he's got really knobbly knees. Show the people your knees, Charlie! Ooh, aren't they knobbly? Let's all give a big hand to Charlie from Scunthorpe. Now, who have we got next? Oh, here's Martha from Manchester. She's going to sing us a song, aren't you Martha?" I'm sure the people who participated enjoyed themselves immensely, and I'm sure it was great fun to be there. Good luck to them. It's the stuff of memories if you were there. For this viewer though, sadly all the programme did was to reinforce terrible cliches about the Northern Soul scene and carve into stone the scenes supposed retro dress code. More than that, it actually presented it as a retro scene, one which looks back to the dress styles and youthful exploits of soul boys and girls of the early 1970s. Beyond that, what's up with Lisa Stansfield's nostrils? For a moment I thought I was seeing the ghost of Kenneth Williams!
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I agree entirely. It seemed like a nice thought though, that a company with a deep reliance on the Afro-American community might get involved in a sideline such as a record label. Running with the idea in my head, I also wondered - if it was run by General Motors - if the acts might have been plucked from the corporation's own productions lines and factory floors. As I say, a small flight of fancy at the time and one which quite appealed to me.
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For sure I must be an imbecile. Please, I suspect that a list of the top [insert number here] "most wanted 45s on the planet" would be very useful to a lot of us. Could you start with a top 10, perhaps?
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He's not alone. Look out for Belgian music racconteur Eddy de Clerq and delve into his blog. He's not just limited to 'soul', but also covers many styles and has put together some outstanding compilations recently of what people here might appreciate as 'underground' music! https://soulsafari.wordpress.com
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Who are the "big lads"? Please do tell... Are there enough of them to make a "Top 1/2/3/4/500" list?
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Yes, I know. And my post says that I wondered about it back then.
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Know anything about the label at all, Bob? Got a copy of the brilliant Johnny D 45 about 25 years ago and wondered back then if the label might have some connection to the General Motors Corporation. https://youtu.be/4JQ4qzm_4Dg
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