Garethx

Is the Larry Sanders 45 on Modern, "I'm In Love" / "You're My Girl" (Modern 1053) the same guy? On repeated listening via youtube I can't decide.

Strangely I prefer the instrumental cut of this on the flip. The vocal is still a great record though.

Thanks for the explanation Paul.

Paul makes good points at ever but I think the comment about not being dictated to by the deejays comes across as high-handed to be frank. Bottom line is that without the efforts of the few deejays who bother to break newer sounds there wouldn't be the possibility of reissuing this material. Like in the wider music industry the deejays on the rare soul scene are part of the mechanism for selling records. Unlike the wider music industry they are an essential part of the process as they set the agenda for which tracks come to be deemed in-demand. They create the impetus these days rather than being drip-fed by dealers or record companies. That's one of the big differences between now and the scene's heyday (as is the sheer speed of turnover of unfamiliar material). On the other side of the coin to this instance of re-isssuing a rarity if you have un-issued material (particularly by relatively unknown artists) the 'right' deejays are the vital cog in building up some demand for that product. Record companies (big or small) can't have it both ways with regard to this extremely specialised market. I think the rare soul deejays are so annoyed in this instance because it seems to them that John Anderson dips into the rare soul arena nowadays only when he feels he has something to gain. Which is of course his prerogative, but he should not be immune to criticism if he causes a degree of upset by creating the perception of treading on some toes. John can rightly point to a track record as some kind of godfather of the scene but let's be clear that he did so primarily as a businessman. We'll all be grateful to him for his lifetime's work but it was carried out as a business, not some altruistic charity. Bottom line is that without the few deejays playing the Hopkins Brothers in recent times the band themselves would never be given the chance to finally see some fruit for making the record forty-odd years ago. Anyone who wished to could have found the band and put this out any time in the intervening years, but it would have been pointless as there was no demand for the record. I think it's understandable that the persons creating that demand feel let down because it makes the task of finding and playing the 'next Hopkins Brothers' that bit more difficult.

The 12 is longer at 4:17 than the 45 (3:42). You wouldn't have thought that the 30 or so seconds makes much of a difference but to me the 7 inch version always sounds 'chopped-off' as one of the percussion breaks into a vocal crescendo at the end is truncated. UK 45 used to be everywhere, but in my experience the US 45 is strangely difficult to acquire, particularly on an issue. Cheap when it does turn up though.

The great flip:

The Invitations is a great record. Full stop.

Sebastian is correct. That sleeve was only in use until the very early 60s. Anyone got any ideas where this might have been pressed?

Go to Boots or any chemist and buy a bottle of Surgical Spirit. It's under a quid and performs exactly the same function as expensively packaged versions of Isopropyl Alcohol / Ethanol sold to the art or craft market. It contains none of the pollutants of lighter fluid.

The second file you've posted sounds just like a Doug Banks vocal but over a different instrumental take to the finished Argo 45. Are these both on the same acetate? Like Tony says above it was not completely unusual for acetates to be cut at 78rpm well into the 1960s.

The Doug Banks is a masterpiece of Big City soul and a record I could never bring myself to sell no matter how much I loathe "I Just Kept On Dancing". This is more like a songwriters' demo and lacks all the peaks, troughs and tension in the arrangement and the masterful vocal control which makes the Argo release so great. The vocalist sounds white to me. Interesting though and thanks for posting it.

A tiny amount of surgical spirit on 100% cotton wool, although in scan above the adhesive has seemingly already caused the coating of the paper to lift away slightly. The surgical spirit should remove the glue residue so the label is cleaner but I couldn't guarantee that it will produce a result which gives the appearance of the record never having been stickered. As always test on something of no value.

This 45 is relatively early in the Sims story. While the plants like Monarch, Columbia Custom were supplied with a 'Sims logotype' this one seems not to have been. It's not unusual for a particular plant to concoct its own logotype where none is actually supplied: think of Monarch presses of labels like Satellite where they simply render the logo in a typeface of their own choice. This even extends to established labels. Volt is an interesting case. Various pressing plants would have been supplied with the flat artwork for the 'lightning rod' device, but not the typesetting for the falling characters 'V O L T' within the logo. Look at your Volt records and you'll see that the 'Volt' wording in the logo is rendered in any number of ways in terms of angle and typeface dependent on which plant pressed the 45s. As an aside the 'Nashville' stamp which is on this (and thousands of other releases on myriad other record labels) refers to the manufacturer of the machine which produced metal parts (the metal 'mother' and so on) and will probably appear on all presses of the record which metal parts were sent to, even though the Sims label was based in Nashville TN. I'd be interested to know the identity of this particular pressing plant if anyone knows, as I don't.

This was the Wallace Brothers' biggest national hit and may have meant pressing at a different plant to the run-of-the-mill Sims releases. From the typesetting of the title / artist information it looks like the same NY plant which produced tons of independent labels like Frisky, Genuine, Triode etc. so i'm assuming it's legitimate enough. This 45 also has Monarch and Columbia presses too, which is not that common for Sims label 45s.

There are a variety of reasons why Ember would have used a library photo for the cover of that album: rights issues, cost issues and also the now uncomfortable idea the identity of the black woman on an album cover didn't matter as long as it was a black woman. Bottom line is that's not Etta James. Not even remotely!

I'm guessing that like many entertainers she had a variety of wigs but her signature look was as a blonde and that was the way she seemed to want to present herself through almost her entire career. An early publicity photo of The Peaches with a fairly young Etta:

That's definitely not Etta James. It was not unusual for R&B albums of the time to be housed in artwork not remotely connected to the artists. Regarding Etta James's ethnic background her father was rumoured to be the caucasian pool player Rudy 'Minnesota Fats' Wanderon. Her mother was of mixed Filipino-African American heritage.

I'm not 100% certain that this is a cover. It sounds like it could easily come from the same session as their ABC release "How Could I Get Over A Fox LIke You", another Pointdexter Brothers song and released some time in autumn 1968. I say that because I wonder how likely it could be that a tiny independent could muster a Richard Tee conducted session to produce just the couple of masters on this rare 45. To me it seems more logical that this is a leftover of the ABC session. The Manhattans version of the song is listed as being released December 1969 and charting January 1970. The Icemen's Ole-9 45 may well have been released in the wake of the Manhattans having a minor hit but I'm scetical that it's a cover in the true sense.

A couple of other things which were pretty big two-steppers as new releases were Bobby Glover "Happy" on Columbia and Tyrone Brunson "In This Love Triangle" on MCA. Also The Controllers "Stay". I like the first two but not the Controllers track, which sums up my feelings towards the genre: a lot of it lacked the fire that I like in my soul music (compare the Controllers on this to the relative grit and passion of their earlier recordings on Juana). Much of it was far too smooth for its own good and had that 'sippin' Champagne wine' aesthetic that I don't really like. An entire evening of it would be far too much for me although the odd stepper stills sounds great over a big sound system and a few two-step anthems are among my favourite records in some ways: Dee Dee Warwick "Where Is That Rainbow" (either album or 45 cut), Willie Hutch "Out There" from the Foxy Brown soundtrack, Charles Earland "Shining Bright", The 3 Pieces "If Only I Could Prove To You" and so on. Also I really can't think of a better record of its type than Starvue's "Body Fusion", which strangely I never get bored of hearing even for the ten-thousandth time. If someone were to ask 'what is two-step?' that would be as close as definitive in capturing the flavour of the sound in its full glory.

Not saying Colin Curtis was playing out-and-out two-step at the Mecca but it's not a million miles from midtempo things like "Mr Weatherman" to a full-on stepper.

Searling etc. were just cherry-picking the best of what had been an established underground scene for over a decade before. Expansion opening in Manchester was part of it but the term two-step and the two-step parties had been going on since the time Richard was playing stuff like Cecil Washington at Wigan. No doubt it existed in Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield and Derby but London led the way as the two-step capital. Colin Curtis was, of course, playing some of these kinds of records at the Mecca in the mid-70s and had a great feel for what constituted a good two-step track.

I think Dean's post above is pretty spot-on as regards the chronology of the thing. One thing I would add with regard to the links between two-step and rare groove was that the latter was really a case of many of the djs in the former scene crossing over and playing larger, more racially integrated gigs. The early two-step scene was almost exclusively a houseparty scene, occasionally breaking out to playing smaller bars and tiny nightclubs, and exclusively aimed at a black audience. The two-step scene was definitely around from the late '70s and was basically an offshoot of the smattering of soul tracks played on the reggae houseparty scene. As a young teenager in the early part of the '80s I used to buy records from Lloyd Brown in Rhythm Records in Camden High Street and from the deletions room at Bluebird in Paddington Green. The audience of record buyers in both these shops was at least 70% black and as I said in the Milton Wright thread albums were priced or rated on how many 'steppers' they included. I remember being told the Sam Dees LP on Atlantic was crap as I handed over £3 for it and laughed at for wanting to buy the recently-deleted Norman Connors "Take It To The Limit" set for the title track! Rare Groove was kind of a reaction to the increasing prevalence of first Electro (early 80s) and then House on the UK club scene (so mid to late 80s). The djs who were best placed to excel there were the veterans of the two-step scene who had built up large collections and had pirate radio slots. A lot of two-step was played but also a lot of JB funk, something one dealer once described to me to as 'older brother' records. As described in the posts above the major UK labels were able to capitalize on the success of the rare groove scene in a way they never would have been able to with two-step. Rare Groove became the other side of the proverbial coin to House in the mainstream club scene, particularly in university towns.

Hammered in various places for the last decade to be honest.

The P-Vine album "Got To Find A Way" contains an absolute monster unissued track "I Don't Know What I'd Do". I wonder if it's ever had Northern scene spins as it's an absolute belter. Phenomenal singer, right up there with the all-time greats.

We had a long and heated debate on Two Step a few years ago here. The arguments about whether it was geographically a northern or southern phenomenon became quite bitter if I remember rightly. Bottom line is that it was popular everywhere there were large Afro-caribbean communities and that maybe London led the way because it had the largest of those demographics. It certainly had seemingly dozens of pirate radio stations broadcasting these types of records practically round the clock. I never really went to many of those club nights but certainly listened to the radio and bought records in those shops. Often the same albums were in-demand on different scenes for different tracks but certain 'rare' cut-out albums were available quite cheaply because they contained no 'steppers'. I can think of Alice Clark, Tommie Young, Bobby Patterson, Janice, various Japanese Southern Soul and so on all bought for relative pennies while quite plentiful albums like the Archie Bell mentioned above (and particularly Randy Brown albums) all seemed to be way overpriced in the London shops. I used to buy lots of records from people like Lloyd Brown and he would scratch his head at some of the sounds deemed big on what we regarded as the 'Modern Soul' scene. From a record selling and collecting point of view there came to be a lot of cross-pollination: remember Rod Shard saying that he and Dave Withers could offload a lot of what didn't work on the Northern Modern scene onto the two step scene. Conversely a lot of the more midtempo seventies soul came over from the two-step scene to almost create the Crossover sound on the Modern scene, particularly at a time when the current new independent releases collected by that scene were sounding increasingly synthetic and tinny. While two-step records had to have the correct flavour the Rare Groove thing was more inclusive in that while a lot of steppers were played maybe the biggest tracks were JB-produced funk hit 45s like "Unwind Yourself", "Think" and so on.