Uk Street Soul - The Tsr Label

[Derek Pearson]

Now I realise this may be of no interest to many northern fans but bear with me as there's a very similar parallel going on regarding the music.

What words would you use to describe the term "street soul"? Well I'd say it was low budget, bass driven, poorly distributed, UK black music from the urban areas of the early 90's. Listening to it now it's easy to hear many of the artists weren't the best singers and some of the production wasn't too hot either.

Can you see the similarities that street soul music shares with northern soul releases? Alright northern isnt bass driven.

During the late 80s-early 90s I DJ'd on pirate radio stations in and around Bradford and was sent and bought loads of these twelves (many of them as white labels). I was always curious as to how many they sold and where they were distributed. I suspect they only travelled to the cities with a large black population ie. London (where many of these tiny labels originated), Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford etc. The booming Pirate Radio station culture of this period fuelled the release of this genre on tiny record labels that sometimes only had one or a handful of releases.

In this thread I'll post up soundclips and label scans of releases on the TSR label which featured twelves by Special Touch featuring Duval "You're so good", Gold In The Shade "Over you" and Cruise.

Street Soul seems to be a period and genre very overlooked by collectors, obsessives & historians.

onwards, derek

[Guest]

Sounds interesting Derek, my lad Lex DJs locally, has done for years, gets his interest from his old man!!,... also found out he'd half inched lots of my 12" US funk/disco(shock-horror!!), and, yes it was the harder pieces, which apparently still go down well when mixed into some of his sets today, I keep asking for them back, but his excuse is "....at least people are getting to hear them, which is better than them sitting on the shelves" and he's right of course...anyway getting back on track...he has 1000s of 12" records in a lock up and I should imagine among them will be lots of local (Bristol) stuff, some from the seminal period you call "Street Soul", when I see him next, I'll ask him if he knows of the TSR label and any Bristol labels....it'll be interesting to see what, if anything he turns up.

Derek.

[Derek Pearson]

hey up Derek - hows it going down there in Bristol land? Think you were living down there in the early 90's so you'd probably recall the whole Massive Attack period. I'm sure I saw a book recently by someone documenting that whole period of Brisol street life. Sound clips of the TSR 12"s on the way...

derek

when you back up north lad?

[Derek Pearson]

he has 1000s of 12" records in a lock up

whooah nearly shat mi pants there Derek hehehe...

[Derek Pearson]

You're so good - special touch feat duval - uk tsr 12"

14560 refosoul

[Derek Pearson]

Over you - gold in the shade - uk tsr 12"

14562 refosoul

[Derek Pearson]

Get your lovin - cruize feat gee morris - uk tsr 12"

14564 refosoul

[Derek Pearson]

here's the incomplete discography:

Cruize feat Gee Morris "Get your lovin" TSCRT 2 (blue label)

"Get your lovin" Donyx/Soula muffin mix TSCRT 2

Special Touch feat Duval "Your so good" TSCRT 3 (red label)

Gold In the Shade "Over you" TSCRT 5

Special Touch feat Duval "Your so good" (blue label)*

"Your so good inst"

* sold this recently & forgot to jot down the cat no-damn!

anybody got anymore?

I'm lead to believe the Special Touch 12" that has Gold In the Shade's release on the flip is highly collectable and quite pricey? Think Girth Devon was selling a copy of the Special Touch voc/inst 12" on here recently for £6.

onwards, derek

[Derek Pearson]

he has 1000s of 12" records in a lock up

about a month ago I saw a tiny ad in the classifieds of a local paper which read "big stock of soul/disco 12"s just in". To be honest I'd seen this ad run for a few weeks but didnt have the time or inclination to do anything about it. Anyway we had a free Saturday recently and I rang him up asking if he had any soul/disco 12"s for sale, he replied "thousands". I didnt tell Miranda what he said so we drove out there, (Miranda) with no expectations and Derek with a pocketfull of money. Now I've never heard anybody talk about this shop before and I know loads of what the young uns call 'crate diggers' round town. Perhaps they've all kept it quiet Mmmm. So in we goes and its full of rock vinyl and old 7"s, I ask where the 12"s are and he points down the stairs. As we get into the cellar Miranda gasped as she saw boxes and boxes and boxes of twelves marked "70s/80s" & "90s/current". Soul/RnB one wall, house/dance the other. Must admit in all my years of rummaging I can't recall the last time I've seen so many twelves in one room. We spent at least 2 hours solid looking and only did a third. Bought a few nice little things. We intend to go back soon (obviously).

derek

[Derek Pearson]

Cruize feat Gee Morris "Get your lovin" TSCRT 2

wonder if this was the Gee Morris who was occassional lead singer of Innocence who scored in the UK charts with a bundle of tunes on Cooltempo throughout 1990-92?

Natural Thing, Silent Voice, Lets push it, A matter of fact etc

Interesting.

derek

[Guest uroffal]

Now I realise this may be of no interest to many northern fans but bear with me as there's a very similar parallel going on regarding the music.

What words would you use to describe the term "street soul"? Well I'd say it was low budget, bass driven, poorly distributed, UK black music from the urban areas of the early 90's. Listening to it now it's easy to hear many of the artists weren't the best singers and some of the production wasn't too hot either.

Can you see the similarities that street soul music shares with northern soul releases? Alright northern isnt bass driven.

During the late 80s-early 90s I DJ'd on pirate radio stations in and around Bradford and was sent and bought loads of these twelves (many of them as white labels). I was always curious as to how many they sold and where they were distributed. I suspect they only travelled to the cities with a large black population ie. London (where many of these tiny labels originated), Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford etc. The booming Pirate Radio station culture of this period fuelled the release of this genre on tiny record labels that sometimes only had one or a handful of releases.

In this thread I'll post up soundclips and label scans of releases on the TSR label which featured twelves by Special Touch featuring Duval "You're so good", Gold In The Shade "Over you" and Cruise.

Street Soul seems to be a period and genre very overlooked by collectors, obsessives & historians.

onwards, derek

Remember the term 'street soul' very well as I worked in a record shop at the time in London (as we were in an urban area we tended to specialise in soul/dance - even stocking import 12s, which was very unusual for a high st chain at the time.

I'd say your definition is pretty much spot on from what I remember of it.

The whole 'street soul' thing was massive and I'm trying to remember some of the artists (I used to have a load of white labels from those days as we were a Gallup shop at the time and were often fed white labels for 'favours' if you know what I mean!).

Lot's of them had nationwide distribution through a company called Jetstar, who mainly dealt in Reggae, but started to move into the independent UK soul artist market. I think they were based in Harlesdon, but memory isn't so good. I remember in particular an artist called Rick Clarke whose 'I'll See You Along The Way' was fairly popular, Tongue 'n' Cheek were another one distributed through Jetstar who had a couple of minor Dance/R&B chart placings.

Seem to remember the term 'Street Soul' initially referring to US stuff like Keith Sweat - Just Got Paid and some of the other Teddy Reilly (?) produced stuff, but the term stuck more with the UK acts - think Soul II Soul were initially branded in this way as their initial single 'Fairplay' was a B-side that took off locally at first through Pirate radio play I guess - we sold them in their drove loads until they deleted it and re-issued it as the flip of their next single.

I might remember some more later and I'll ask my partner when she gets in as she and I were both in buying at the time for the same chain of shops.

Edited April 5, 2007 by uroffal

[Guest uroffal]

Massive Attack's version of 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' was enormous down here too.

[Guest]

hey up Derek - hows it going down there in Bristol land? Think you were living down there in the early 90's so you'd probably recall the whole Massive Attack period. I'm sure I saw a book recently by someone documenting that whole period of Brisol street life. Sound clips of the TSR 12"s on the way...

derek

when you back up north lad?

Hey up Derek, Only just read this post, don't know how I missed it but there you go better late than never....I certainly do remember the Bristol music scene at the time, my lads were in their late teens/early twenties and very much into it, especially Lex the budding DJ, occasionally went to some of his gigs like the supportive father I am....and no doubt ended up showing him up, ha!

Still not got round to asking about TSR and what, if any local stuff he has but will eventually I'm sure, at the time he worked for Vital record distributors and I expect a lot of local issues went through them

and knowing Lex he probably had his finger on the pulse so to speak, anyway we'll see and I'll let you know what's (if anything's) what, hell, maybe if he's in a good mood he'll let his old man have a look round his lock-up he! he!

Don't know whether you class Retford as up North Derek, but I'm looking to Lifeline in a couple of weeks, maybe see you there?

Derek.

[Guest woolie mark]

this is a really interesting thread derek, and some nice records

i've often thought that there are some excellent 80s boogie tunes by uk artists - a couple that come to mind are powerline and intrigue....................i'll try to post some stuff up in a few weeks time when i've sorted out my sound card

it's also really interesting how uk based vocalists obviously from reggae-derived backgrounds (the vocalist on one of the records you've posted is singing in a very typical lovers rock style) could cross over to a disco/soul style - in a tradition reaching back to the early 60s of course

cheers

[Mike Shawe]

Happened across this thread. I am interested in the TSR label (also Inteigue to some extent) I wondered if anyone has any deep in their collections they no longer want and would be interested in getting rid of? Send me a message. Cheers 

Edited August 13, 2018 by mike shawe

[Roburt]

Derek,

             After I moved south (1988  -- 1st to Northampton & then Abingdon), I used to make very regular visits to the various Rec & Tape Exchange shops in London. I'd always head to the cellars where they'd have box after box of old 7" & 12" singles. Lots was absolute junk (from our point of view) but white label 12"ers (luckily many still with the record labels promo info inserted into the sleeve on an A4 sheet. These 12's would be reduced in price till they reached 25p (originally 10p) each. I'd always come away with a big bag full of likely looking items. Get them home & spun em all ... lots would immediately go in the rubbish bin (rap tracks, electro cuts, etc) but many were good street soul items. Kept all those... only trouble is, 12" singles take up so much space & weigh a ton, so even some of the decent ones were eventually relegated to cardboard boxes in the garage ... have to sort thru em some time soon.

. . . . ALSO ... re: Bristol music scene ... my daughter moved to the city in 1993 & was soon involved with local funksters. Her then boyfriend ran club nights on an old ship in the harbour (The Dug Out was the nite's name I think). So she got to now lots of the folk on the Bristol black music scene (including Banksy & many more of his ilk). That scene seemed to run on a totally separate path to the NS / MS / mainstream funk scene down there back then.  

Edited November 23, 2018 by Roburt

[Steveh73]

Interesting thread - spent some time this afternoon playing some of those streetsoul 12s, all very enjoyable - Rick Clarke, Deluxe, Dazzle to name just a few!!

 

[Jerry Hipkiss]

On 19/08/2018 at 19:25, steveh73 said:

Interesting thread - spent some time this afternoon playing some of those streetsoul 12s, all very enjoyable - Rick Clarke, Deluxe, Dazzle to name just a few!!

 

"Falling in love" by DeLuxe  is a must play whenever I do those sort of nights - hard to get hold of apparently, and always gets people asking about it...

[Geeselad]

On 13/08/2018 at 20:38, Roburt said:

Derek,

             After I moved south (1988  -- 1st to Northampton & then Abingdon), I used to make very regular visits to the various Rec & Tape Exchange shops in London. I'd always head to the cellars where they'd have box after box of old &2 & 12" singles. Lots was absolute junk (from our point of view) but white label 12"ers (luckily many still with the record labels promo info inserted into the sleeve on an A4 sheet. These 12's would be reduced in price till they reached 25p (originally 10p) each. I'd always come away with a big bag full of likely looking items. Get them home & spun em all ... lots would immediately go in the rubbish bin (rap tracks, electro cuts, etc) but many were good street soul items. Kept all those... only trouble is, 12" singles take up so much space & wirh a ton, so even some of the decent ones were eventually relegated to cardboard boxes in the garage ... have to sort thru em some time soon.

 

. . . . ALSO ... re: Bristol music scene ... my daughter moved to the city in 1993 & was soon involved with local funksters. Her then boyfriend ran club nights on an old ship in the harbour (The Dug Out was the nite's name I think). So she got to now lots of the folk on the Bristol black music scene (including Banksy & many more of his ilk). That scene seemed to run on a totally seperate path to the NS / MS / mainstream funk scene down there back then.  

A big hang out for the wild bunch, latterly massive attack and others associated with the Bristol trip hop thing, tricky, porteshead ect

Edited August 21, 2018 by geeselad

[Roburt]

On 20/08/2018 at 19:43, Jerry Hipkiss said:

"Falling in love" by DeLuxe  is a must play whenever I do those sort of nights - hard to get hold of apparently, and always gets people asking about it...

I've got a few bits on HEAVEN SENT and from memory, they're all decent tracks. Probably got their 12" on the label (will have to check). Did the album appear on vinyl or just as a CD ??

 

 

Edited November 23, 2018 by Roburt

[Steveh73]

Just CD for that Deluxe album although her first album was also a vinyl release.

[Guest]

Just as well I saw this post and another from a member looking for information on the Manchester Street Soul scene who'd been misinformed with regards to the TSR label. Let me set the record straight.

The label is the work of Duval Roper and his brother. Duval was one of my best mates when I was out and about seriously hunting back in the day. I've spent many hours in his company, he's genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever met, a legendary well known collector to anyone who was on the scene in London in the nineties when it was nigh on impossible to visit a Record & Tape Exchange in the afternoon, in either Goldhawk Road or Notting Hill Gate, without bumping into him. Forget Bristol or Manchester, Duval and his brother are West London boys, and as I recall they feature on most if not all of their own releases. 

Edited November 23, 2018 by Guest