Garethx

It was withdrawn and is probably the rarest Twinight 45. I've seen more copies of things like The Kladirons than this 45. I'd value it at far more than £50.

A pretty good record and a pretty rare one too. How much are you looking to pay?

Sorry, no sounclip. A great record.

Court of Love is a classic. Get your ears tested Mr Gibbs!

I would direct anyone who questioned Marvin Gaye's vocal range and power to look at the footage of him doodling and extemporising an embryonic I Want You whilst laying in a prone position on the recording studio couch at some point in the mid 1970s. This footage shows that he had a very real and very special talent which few American vocalists will ever match. As for his voice not portraying emotion I really am speechless. Rather than reel off a list of records which never fail to possess the power to move me to tears I will point to one performance alone: a spontaneous piano jam of Distant Lover performed on the hoof for a camera crew who followed him to recreate his Belgian odyssey in the early eighties. It is a performance which marries the angelic purity of Sam Cooke at his best with the darker tone of a man who perhaps had too much of an idea that within two years his life would arrive at the tragic junction where he would depart this earth. Truly mesmerising. I can agree with a line of opinion which has it that he largely wasted those great talents, but to characterise his singing as no more than the thin high-tenor of a mere journeyman is being mean-spirited. But in terms of a soul singer we all ought to love, I would single out Bettye Lavette.

Don't agree with the school of thought that has Marvin Gaye inferior to many of those mentioned. He was a phenomenal singer, blessed with awesome range, technique and not a little power too. No-one could probably touch him in technical terms. He may have a somewhat patchy and mercurial recorded legacy, but to say that he didn't come near any of thse admittedly great singers does him a cruel disservice.

OV Wright, Johnnie Taylor, Spencer Wiggins, Marvin Junior, Bobby Womack. And Bobby Bland. How could I leave him out?

To me these kind of songs define soul music itself and set it apart from other forms of music. Few can deliver a lyric of this type with more power, honesty, humanity and emotional intensity than Otis Clay. Check "You Hurt Me For The Last Time", "Tired Of Falling In And Out Of Love", "The Woman Doesn't Live Here Anymore", "Love Don't Love Nobody", "Pouring Water On A Drowning Man", "You're Gonna Hate Yourself In The Morning" (from the pen of the aforementioned Sam Dees), the immortal "That's How It Is" and my current favourite, "I Lost Someone" for stellar examples of his uncanny ability to translate others' lyrics of pain, regret and recrimination. Truly a spectacular exemplification of the consummate soul singer's art. But my favourite example of this type of soul song is Denise LaSalle's "Trying To Forget About You". Words can't express how wonderful this record is, and the line on the fade where she sings "... and if I ever find myself crawling to your door again, I'm gonna stay right there, stay right there, until you let me in..." before breaking into what can only be described as an anguished howl is one of the greatest, truest parts in all recorded soul music. The lp version has a precious extra twenty or so seconds of the agony and is well worth seeking out.

This is the same Ed Bruce who you may have seen capering about in a cowboy hat. He went to High School with Steve Cropper, so the Memphis information is correct too.

Desperately sad news. Can only echo the comments above regarding Gerald's quality as a singer. Rest in peace.

Yes, my mistake. It is issue only.

An original WDJ of If You Move You Lose went on ebay about six or seven weeks back for relative peanuts. Keep searching, they're still out there... BTW I don't think this is quite as good as "Careful" and wonder what the reaction to that particular 45 would be if the scarcity of both discs were transposed.

A thorny subject, this. I too, love the Willie Hutch Dunhill 45, and consider it one of the greatest records given a second chance by the UK Northern scene. Is it overplayed? The answer is, as others have pointed out, surely a case of context. I personally never tire of hearing records like Willie Hutch, Mel Britt, Eula Cooper, Eddie Parker, John & The Weirdest or any of the great soul records which are widely considered to be the building blocks of the scene, but in the correct situation. When I'm in the right frame of mind, these records are capable of evoking a heady brew of nostalgia and sheer joy that records like this exist and have been rescued from obscurity. Do I want to hear them every time I leave the house? No. It's not just the Top 500 oldies which fit into this category either. Much as I love Ellipsis, Joseph Webster, Locations, Hamilton Movement etc. these records too have become sounds which fall into the category of "probably hammered a bit too much". I think the problem is a wider one than just a preponderance of overplayed records. There are simply too many people who think that getting behind the decks makes them a deejay. There are too many people who consider themselves collectors because they buy the same overexposed records as everybody else. There are too many local soul nights which exist to give these people a platform. It feeds back into a thread discussed a couple of months back which tried to establish the identity of the last record to go nationally massive. The scene is simply too fragmented: in reality a myriad local scenes, with the occasional big, country-wide blow out. My solution would be to give the really good deejays much, much longer sets than they are currently given at allnighters and soul nights, as the really good deejays are given in the wider club world. It is patently a nonsense that a Butch or Soul Sam are allocated the same airtime at an event as a local 'collector' who is basically playing records which everybody in the room could own if they wanted to. At an allnighter I want the pre-eminent deejays to take me on a journey through Northern Soul: playing classics, exclusives, well considered obscurities and so on throughout the breadth of the genres which have come to encompass Northern Soul. They cannot do this in a 45 minute spot, and it is this which has lead to the overplaying of the current big sounds as listed above, to the exclusion of records which might be lesser known, but which would be of interest to collectors and dancers alike. A really good deejay can play a set in which unknowns rub shoulders with the biggest sounds of all eras, but it needs thought, skill and space. Deejaying is a skill (in the right hands an art form) and not everyone has that skill. In the wrong hands even the greatest record can sound tired.

What's the Johnny Steele clip like? Both records of his I've heard are really good, particularly his Fame single.

Niice one.

Paul, you must be thinking of Wherever You Were. The track mentioned above is the other side of Mr Soul and would generally go for no more than £30 tops, surely. gareth.

So there is definitetively no 12" original of Glenda McLeod?

I'm convinced Ian Clark and Mr Cosgrove himself played this off a light blue label 12".I

Are there any 12" copies knocking around?

For sale Kittie Doswell "Just A Face In The Crowd" HES VG+ (some very light and intermittent marks which do not affect play in any material way: essentially very clean, but not quite a M- grade) £250 Soundfile on JMs Rarest of The Rare here https://www.raresoulman.co.uk/rarest-of-the-rare/39 Please PM if interested. gareth.

100 Proof Aged in Soul released a version of this on their second Hot Wax lp. This sounds pretty similar (if not identical) to me, with Steve Mancha singing lead vocal. May also have been a 45 too. It's been sampled quite a bit in hip hop circles.

Thanks for posting this Dave. Always a pleasure to hear Carol Anderson's great vocals.

Here's a picture of GSC today.

A white (!) George Clinton. LP only in the states (Probe or another of the ABC labels, credited as The George Clinton Band). Presumably released here on a 45 on the back of Northern (Mecca first?) spins.

What a very good record Bunny Sigler's "Everything Gonna Be Alright" is too.