Canadian Related Soul Stuff -- mid 60's

[Roburt]

A few bits from north of the border ... 

 

Edited July 22 by Roburt

[Roburt]

PLEASE MOVE TO ... ALL ABOUT THE SOUL ... 

[Kenb]

coincidence... i was just cleaning up some filles. There was a rumpus about who "owned the band name" on this single;

Joe Vargo ( who dis-associated himself from the band)  or Jimmy Mann. It didn't get past a court injuction (raised by Joe Vargo).

 

[Roburt]

A couple more bits from north of the border ... 

[Soul-slider]

For a great 'home grown' Canadian Northern Soul 45 that's still fairly unknown on the scene, look out for this banging dancer...

 

 

Edited July 28 by Soul-slider

[Kenb]

4 hours ago, Soul-slider said:

For a great 'home grown' Canadian Northern Soul 45 that's still fairly unknown on the scene, look out for this banging dancer...

 

 

that's also ridiculously coincidental...Ron Leppard and the Nite Train (billed) featuring Jimmy Nite.

[Mal C]

Here ia a few Canadian releases down Under, as some may know I collect Australian, and W&G are up there fort me. These are all via W&G and Viking Records with a few via Festival thrown in. The Regents and Contagious Sound Of The Plague are especially good,  Canada Goose 'Higher & Higher' you find those all over the place in Canada... Jerry Palmers version of 'Walkin the dog' is a good one...

There was an APEX (Femme) Version of Joanie Sommers - Don't Pity Me out Canada, remember tim Brown selling this one.

 

[Mal C]

[Sebastian]

On 28/07/2024 at 11:23, Soul-slider said:

For a great 'home grown' Canadian Northern Soul 45 that's still fairly unknown on the scene, look out for this banging dancer...

 

 

 

Jimmy Holiday's own original version is a thumper as well:

 

 

[Rick Cooper]

The Eddie Spencer- If This is Love, turned up in a job lot of singles that Ed Balbier got for Global Records when I worked there in 74. Ed never told me where he bought the records from but he usually went to New Jersey and Philly. Dealers there would sometimes offer him a deal on a container full of records. This shipment had a fair amount of Detroit labels such as Topper, Soulhawk and Miracle but no other Canadian labels. As Eddie Spencer was getting radio play in Detroit and Cleveland (from the info above) and Arc had a US office the Canadian copies must have been shipped to the US rather than get US pressings made, unless they just used the same label for a US pressing.

There was around forty to fifty copies of If This is Love in the shipment but about twenty were cracked. The records had been packed in 50 LP size boxes so the top ones were squashed in the centre and some cracked from the edge and then round the label. I took one home and made a drinks coaster from it.

[Roburt]

So did The Eddie Spencer's "If This is Love" get it's 1st UK club spin by someone who bought one of the copies from this shipment ?

 

[Rick Cooper]

5 hours ago, Roburt said:

So did The Eddie Spencer's "If This is Love" get it's 1st UK club spin by someone who bought one of the copies from this shipment ?

 

Ian Levine had been playing If This is Love for a couple of months before copies turned up at Global. I remember Colin Curtis phoning to buy a copy. I think it was priced at £5, quite a sum in those days. If Ian hadn't already featured it I'd probably have just put it at £1 as an interesting alternative of The Precisions, which Global had thousands of copies of at 50p.

[Roburt]

Ian Melia put a Grant Smith & the Power 45 ("Thinkin About You") up on Facebook today. They were Canadian & Eddie Spencer had been the group's lead singer ahead of Grant Smith being hired. Lots of stuff on garagehangover about them.

Edited August 1 by Roburt

[Roburt]

You takes your choice ... English or French lyrics ... 

[Rick Cooper]

Some other Canadian singles I had in the mid 70s came from Oldies Unlimited in Telford. This was a place that sold packs of singles as well as pop oldies, there are some previous discussions on here that give more info. With Terry (Mr Tee from Kidderminster) we managed to get access to the stock rooms, not easy as the owner was reluctant to let anybody go through the boxes. Most records we found were multiples of early 70s Philly and New York labels. Terry was selling at the Mecca as well as his shop so took quantities of lots of titles, the best one was Andre Maurice- Cream of the Crop. Scattered through the boxes we started finding small quantities of Canadian singles. In the end we got, Eddie Parker -Love You Baby, Timmy Willis- Mr Soul Satisfaction and two Precisions titles on Stone, Billy Butler -I'll Bet You on Brunswick and Ben Aiken - Satisfied on Warners. The Stone singles were around 4 to 8 copies of each and the other two one offs. There were no other Canadian singles so how and why these got in to the 70s US lot is a mystery. 

Canada was also the base for the ex Yorkshireman Martin Koppel, who was one of the earliest dealers to send loads of US singles to the UK. I dug out some of his first lists from 1972/3 to see if he offered any Canadian records. From the ones I've still got all his stock was from the US. Lots of Detroit labels such as D-Town, Premium Stuff, Revilot, Golden World, Groovesville, Soulhawk, Thelma, Moira etc but only one Motown disc (Earl Van Dyke -The Flick). Other labels included Okeh, Brunswick, ABC and Giant. It appears that Canadian soul singles weren't around in enough quantity to make it worth looking for, also Detroit had loads of old singles in large quantities and very cheap. Looking at his lists you can see how quickly he picked up on the in demand titles and putting up his prices and asking for bids on the big records. If anyone who knows Martin it would be interesting to know if he ever talked about finding singles in his home town of Toronto.

As a "by the way" he had The Constellations -I Didn't How To for £1 in Sept 72. 

 

[Roburt]

Oldies Unlimited were great for cheap UK, US, Canadian & Euro copies of soul 45's / LP's.

It's been posted in the past that they even managed to get hold of a couple of copies of Shrine 45's. They had no idea what they had & sold them each for a few pence. His soul 45' packs were always good value (from around 1980 onwards they were full of TK label stuff. But he also got hold of lots of Motown45's & stuff on US indie labels. I got loads of mint soul 45's on Italian labels from there in the 80's. The owner was good (from our point of view) coz he'd charge more if the cut had been a hit or if it was by a more famous artist ... if it was more obscure (label / artist wise, he'd always sell em really cheap).

I also managed to get access to his 'old stock'. We got a lock-in in his old chapel warehouse in Telford & picked for around 4 hours -- got loads of decent stuff but nowt really rare (others had been in there before us). Never got that many Canadian 45's from there though.