Garethx

How are you Colin? I refuse to bite on the Gayle Adams line of questioning. I will say that I think she was a pretty good singer, and really rate her 12" on MCA with Tyrone 'The Smurf' Brunson "In This Love Triangle" from about 1985 or 86, but that's for another thread, really. Soulful disco: how about The Controllers "People Want Music." I think that's a pretty good case of people who typically made very soulful music clambering on board the disco bandwagon and making a record which is both very soulful and very disco-ey.

On reflection Ellipsis is not disco-ey enought to warrrant such an epithet, agree that it's a brilliant record. How about Bileo? that's almost definitely disco, with it's 'climbing' bassline.

Shifty listed the original at £400 (VG+) in November. Wonder who got it...

Ellipsis "People" Briarmeade.

The TSU Toronadoes were a fantastic group, and I never tire of hearing pretty much any of their records (try things like I Still Love You (Ovide/Volt) or Play The Music Toronadoes (again Ovide/Volt), Got To Get Through To You (Atlantic) and the other side of Nothing Can Stop Me, Only Inside (Ovide)). Must mention the other side of What Good Am I, Getting The Corners (I know somebody else has already.) Whenever I hear this spun in clubs (I know Trouble has played it a bit in the past) I always think "this is brilliant, I must find out what it is" and then realise that I've had it for years: maybe the sign of a great record in that it always sounds fresh, despite being really catchy.

Can anyone post up a soundfile of the re-issued version of Jimmy Burns' "Can't Get Over" on Dispo. I have a soundfile of the original, rare release, but understand that the re-issue is a different mix or version. It is the latter I'm looking for. Thanks in advance, gareth.

I can recall going to a second hand record shop in my youth and marvelling at the high prices the proprietor had placed on the first two Elvis RCA albums, whch used to hang on the wall with big price tickets for years on end. His logic was simple: people might as well not buy them at £500 as not buy them at £100. Tourists used to come in and take pictures of the albums. Occasionally they would buy other, cheaper items, so he was happy with that. Eventually, they did sell for his asking price (I think it was more a case of everyone else's valuation catching up with his). He had a piss-up and sold the shop the next week.

Also, if Fosland were selling his item for two/three times its actual value it would heve been priced at around £15.

For once, I can say that I agree with Pete. But, everyone likes to see their mates do well with their record sales. However, there is a very big difference with the cases I think you're alluding to and the Fosland one: honesty. People got on his case because they believed (correctly) he was deliberately misrepresenting his items for sale. In the end his bloody-mindedness and high-handedness seemed ludicrous in the light of his actions. In cases where people are selling 'big' records that they wouldn't ordinarily want to get rid of, putting high opening prices on them is one way of conducting the sort of 'reluctant sales' we sometimes see on here. Of course a professional record dealer wouldn't get very far by pricing his stock in such a way. If you think collectors are selling their records for ridiculous prices on forums such as this I think you have right to say so, but in the end people will vote with their wallets, and I think you may see posts with reduced prices on a lot of these types of sales.

Bank statement, credit card bill, electricity bill, gas bill... quite a bit of unsolicited junk mail...

The LPH albums aren't really as good as they could have been, despite the odd good track. Leslie Wilson is a really fantastic singer, maybe one of the best soul voices never to have been a household name. Stick with the 45 on this one: as Jock says, two great sides.

ROD has hit the nail on the head quite succinctly here. My wants list looks fantastic, as I'm sure most people's does. I always tend to think of the next record coming in as the one to put the icing on my collection. Some chance. You can spend years dreaming of owning a particular record, yet when it finally turns up it's often a case of opening the mailer it arrived in, playing it once to check condition, filing it away and concentrating on the next one... a strange hobby in many ways.

Great tune from a major artist on a major label that never turns up: Bobby Womack: "Baby, I Can't Stand It" on Minit. You see literally thousands of copies of his other Minit singles, but I've only ever seen a couple of these in twenty years: one issue; one demo. Obtained the issue last week via a mate from a collector in the Midlands: price £5.00.

The really short copyright protection used to be in Belgium, but the period has been standardised across Europe now. I think they had a protection period of 21 years after the artists death. When the original law was passed it probably meant very little, given the musical output of Belgium.

Pretty heartbreaking to see Lynn Davis in this footage... she looked so happy.

Tommy Tate recorded a couple of records under pseudonyms: Tommy Yates on Verve, and Andy Chapman "Happy Is The Man" on Atco. The reverse of the Atco disc is not TT, but apparently blue-eyed soulman Ben Atkins of Memphis Nomads on Youngstown fame.

Nancy Yohiro.

I will concede that some Thelma records are more than competant. A couple are fantastic, such as Peace Loving Man and Martha Starr's Love Is The Only Solution / I'm Lonely. I also really like Joe Matthews' Is It Worth It All as well, even though it may be considered generic dross in some quarters. My answer was hasty and slightly tongue in cheek, but I stick by my basic point. Pete's proposition was highly hypothetical. Unless he's got a time machine his pile of ten free Thelma singles is fairly likely to comprise all the mediocrities on the label. The likeliehood is that ten random Philly singles would yield a better afternoon's listening, for me at least.

I would imagine it's relatively easy to come by, unless the world has gone completely nuts. It was generally imported as a new release i.e. not just at Soul Bowl. Try Craig Moerer. It's called Are You Leaving Me. I like a lot of Lee Shot Williams records, and I like this one too. Anglo have got it for a tenner...

It's Lee Shot Williams on Chelsea Avenue. it's been played on the modern scene on and off for about twenty years.

For hard and fast soul The Brockington Singers "Stretch Out" on TSOP. For something slower Bobby Bennett "Days Go By" on PIR. They're not all pop singles, and weren't all in your local Woolies in 1975.

My honest answer would be any nine of the Philly singles and Thelma 112 from the other pile, if it was there. It doesn't matter how much the Thelma singles are worth, how many of them rise above being generic dross?

I was just trying to make the point that we each approach our soul music from a different angle. In the past I've owned records like the Melvin Elling and Sherlock Holmes 45s (not The Vondells or the Antellects, which would have been nice from a financial point of view if nothing else) but I now find them a bit trite, amateurish and lightwieght. I'm not advocating that rare soul playlists become wall-to-wall Philly, merely pointing out to the original poster that a lot of PIR discs have been spun in the past and that successive generations of the northern soul scene have seen a place for them. I firmly believe there should continue to be a place for them, because they are soulful and dancable. I'm sorry that Party Time Man muddies the waters on this topic somewhat, as most people appear to hate it with a passion. I would say that it's not actually that bad a record, and that, in avoiding oldies venues in the main, one I've seldom actually heard out.

I take issue with calling much of this music wishy-washy. The O'Jays, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Anthony White, McFadden & Whitehead, Don Covay and so on were all really great soul singers, and I can't agree with categorising it as 'watered down' pure and simple. The commercial uptown 60s soul that forms the blueprint of Northern Soul is surely a watered-down version of something earlier, more primal, more bluesy, more gospelly etc. Yes, the musical backing on the Philly records is lush and polished, but then again isn't it on many major-label 60s records that are classed as holy-grails of the northern oldies circuit? A degree of production sophistication shouldn't necessarily bar a record from northern soul scene acceptance: we wouldn't have things like The Velvetts, Shawn Robinson, Tony Middleton and thousands more like them which utilise kitchen-sink arrangements from musical directors who later on that week may have been scoring a Hollywood film. 'Wishy-washy' to me sums up lame attempts at soul like Melvin Elling, Sherlock Holmes, The Vondells, The Antellects, The Spidells etc. Compared to these a record like I Love Music sounds powerful, focussed, concentrated and, not that it should really matter, Black.

Philadelphia International don't really need me to be their PR man: Ralph Tee and Searling have done a pretty good job on that front for the last few years. All the tunes I listed above have been played at Northern Soul venues at one time or another, and as I stated some were pretty big records. I'm sorry if they don't fit in with your personal perameters as to what constitutes a good NS record, Baz, but to say they are not soul strikes me as ludicrous. I'm puzzled as to how you would classify the output of the Philadelphia International-era Blue Notes or O'Jays: black, but 'not soul'? I'm sure many more people would disagree with your analysis than would agree.