Dave Godin: A Bit of Blues And A Lot Of Soul

Blues & Soul Article Preparing For Visit To Wheel plus Soul Fans Name Checks...are you mentioned?

Here are scans for the B&S issue 48, December 1970 where DG announces his plans to visit The Wheel, interestingly there were concerns about it being closed down then! I will post up the report on the actual visit soon.

Blues & Soul Report Dave Godin Visit To Twisted Wheel & Pictures

My latest Public Service Post! B&S number 50. The iconic report of DG's visit to The Wheel. If anyone recognises themselves in the pics or recognises others who are still into Soul Music, perhaps they could post their info on here + anyone who was there but is not in the pics?

Later on I will post up issues where DG gives name checks to those who wrote into him about soul records, maybe you are in there?!

Blues & Soul 1975 Dave Godin Column 'Northern Soul Is Dead' Shock

This DG B&S column is in issue #170 September 1975. Reading it again reminded me how disappointing his columns could be sometimes, especially when he went on a rant about something.

Commercialisation insofar as ‘dumbing down’ the essence of Soul music was a relevant topic but could have been adequately covered in 2/3 paragraphs IMO. However, I was particularly interested in his scathing review of the re-release of Lorraine Ellison’s ‘Stay With Me’ which he describes as artificial, fraudulent & insincere, an opinion he formed when it was first released. He goes on to say in his view it is a ‘cunningly calculated exercise in plastics emotion’ He also wonders ‘how much calculated conniving went into its creation’ and that L.E. was ‘probably putty in the hands of her producers’ phew!

He then goes on to compare it with ‘True Deep Soul’ such as Piece Of My Heart, Erma Franklin and Soul numbers sung by artists like Irma Thomas. What surprises me is that DG doesn’t seem to know or ignores the fact that Piece Of My Heart and many of the great Irma Thomas songs e.g. Time Is On My Side were written and often produced by the same writer/producer as Stay With Me, Jerry Ragavoy. J.R. also created great Deep Soul with Garnet Mimms & Howard Tate and many others.

This column was written about 8 years after the song came out and Jerry Ragavoy was pretty well known by then yet he isn’t mentioned in the review as maybe having a lapse in taste in DG’s view. I happen to think he was wrong by the way but obviously he was entitled to his opinion but maybe he did not know as much as he thought or he was guilty of shoddy research. No surprise he gives 5 stars to his employer’s Contempo album release!

Comments anyone?