Garethx

I think that makes sense, but also bear in mind that some manufacturers were just cheaper regardless of which process they used. Two I quoted above worked almost exclusively in one method: Monarch almost exclusively in styrene and ARP exclusively in vinyl. Both could produce a product to a notoriously low price. This is all probably a tangent to the main discussion but probably goes some way to answering one of the questions as to why some records seem to be far less common than others. As another aside I may be one of the only people who actually doesn't mind styrene records. They very rarely warp like vinyl and largely avoid my pet record-collecting hate: off-centre pressings. Fidelity on Columbia-pressed styrene could be brilliant (same for Bestway too). The really shit styrene seems to be that produced by Mercury-Philips: almost always shocking for issue copies throughout the 60s and 70s. Their styrene demos, conversely, are often fine. I wonder if a higher grade compound went into the moulds for these?

I don't know that one can make this a rule of thumb, although I can concede that Columbia for example continued to press vinyl promo copies of titles which never seemed to see the light of day on anything other than styrene. RCA too. Warners and MCA continued to order vinyl for release copies (alongside styrene) for as long as they sold 45s. At least half of Columbia's plants had the capability to produce both styrene and vinyl 45s well into the late 1980s and maybe beyond. Certainly one thing that changed was the number of plants. Columbia de-commissioned or sold a great many of their record manufacturing facilities by 1990. Promos for major labels would generally have been pressed at a far higher unit cost than issue copies and we can make an educated guess that styrene was far cheaper to manufacture than vinyl. I've mentioned on here before the example of Motown production staff stating the company policy of getting promos pressed in very high quality for radio (at RCA typically) and then the copies sold in shops would be costed at a fraction of that (at far cheaper facilities like Monarch and ARP). Bottom line is that the companies cared enough that the media used by radio stations should sound as good as possible but quality for consumption in the home was not as important as cost.

That's a very pertinent question Steve. Like any industry the music business evolved over time and the seventies was certainly a time of huge structural change. I think the seventies can be characterised as a time when the huge corporations tried to sew up and screw down the music industry. The idea of giving radio deejays the choice of which side to promote went out the window. In the 50s and 60s record arms of companies were sidelines to other areas of enterprise: RCA with recording and broadcast hardware, Warners with film production and distribution, Columbia with television etc. In many ways The Beatles changed everything and the large corporations saw how recorded music could be a huge entity quite in and by itself. The corporations became different types of organisation. Where once it was possible for 'record men' to come from the creative side, it now became the case that more and more important positions within record companies came to be filled with people from a finance background. A lot of decisions ceased to be taken on broadly creative grounds and became questions of simple economics, purely driven by the imperative for profit. In the 1960s a 'large independent' like Motown, Laurie, Jubilee or Scepter could still have hits. By the mid '70s these types of companies could no longer exist in the same way. Even Motown was floundering commercially by the middle of the decade under the strain of distributing its own product in the face of competition from larger entities, despite still having hits. RCA, Columbia and Capitol came to be run like small despotic governments and a huge number of bewildering decisions were taken with the apparatus of production. Pressing plants were rationalised, distribution became monolithic and less regional, and promotional budgets came to dwarf every other cost. A select few artists became obscenely rich but the character of the industry had changed forever.

Cody Black on Universe.

Not exactly a common label (far from it in fact) but what about Baby Washington on J-2?

Mmm. Rarer than I thought then.

What Does It Take. Scarce rather than rare.

A couple of releases on Arctic are scarce as opposed to truly rare. Junior too possibly.

Very interesting reading.

The Vivid Sound-released "Soul Shack" and "My Faith In You" are great unissued Northern. Screaming raw soul. "Soul Shack" turned up years later on a Rich records compilation* credited to Rodge Martin & Jimmy Church. I'm guessing Jimmy's link to The Beat and Night Train TV shows was representation by radio DJ and artist manager Hoss Allen. *"The Rich Records Story" Blue CD

Here's a link to a topic where it's mainly just recommendations rather than tortuous debate on the exact meaning of the term:

Cheers John and also to Alan T who kindly sent me a clip. Great to hear her magnificent voice on another side. Good luck with the sale Dylan.

Sugar Boy has been on refosoul here for some years masquerading under a cover-up name. Great little record.

Dylan I've never heard the other side. Would love to hear it and I'm sure a clip would aid the sale.

The Terri North thing is pretty competent for a Preview single. Only the lack of a strong hook prevents it from being a very good Northern record. If it is Teri Thornton I must mention how highly I rate her Columbia 45 "Either Way I Lose" / "Why Don't You Love Me", one of the best 'Island' sounds.

If the original scene ever had a message or a creed it was that young peoples' lives didn't have to be directed by a central government committee or a cartel of record company heads and television executives in London. You could hold your own allnight dances. Find your own anthems and take all the strange substances that The Men didn't want you to try. You could dress in the way you wanted to rather than in the way 'tastemakers' in some brainstorming session hundreds of miles away decided. You could travel the country and meet up with people who felt the same way. Above all you didn't have to settle for things generations of people had been expected to settle for. You could escape. For eight hours on a Saturday night. Or for a whole lifetime. With more millionaires in the Cabinet than at any time since the 1930s, Little Mix at the top of the charts and tax-dodging Phillip Green dominating the High Street (in between the riots and strikes) I think those values should be as relevant as ever.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to speculate exactly what the positives might be but my over-riding interest in all of this is that if a film should be made using the Northern Soul scene as its source material that it should be given the best chance to succeed by having a soul fan at the helm. Elaine's film is the best chance we'll ever have of accomplishing that aim. A wonderfully talented director now has the chance to create something with the potential to live outside of the normal (pretty rotten) experience the scene has had with the mainstream media. If the film happened to be commercially successful I don't think it would necessarily follow that it would have a massive impact in the ways Bearsy mentions above. I enjoyed Trainspotting but it didn't make we want to move to Edinburgh and become a heroin addict. I don't know if the reason for making the film is to Save The Scene, or increase venue attendances or to ensure there is someone to sell our records to when we all peg it. None of those considerations would ever go away if the film were not to be made or if the idea of the film never existed. That is a fact. Elaine is a film-maker who wishes to tell a story or convey a series of emotions about her life and her experiences first and foremost. Getting a feature film off the ground is a tremendously difficult enterprise and any reservations about aspects of the publicity machine inherent in that process have to be put into the correct context.

Yes, Pete Waterman's contribution was banal and predictable. But it was also enthusiastic. Bottom line is that the teaser for Elaine's film was shown to a national audience numbering in the millions. That's got to be a good thing for the project. To succeed as a film it must break out of a ghetto of 'scene only' acceptance. The word must get out to a wider audience than the few hundred who go to venues, buy records or post on internet message boards in order to get the film made. There's the potential here to create something meaningful and memorable which has the rare soul scene at its heart and where the values which got us all interested in the first place are central to it. Would Elaine have got on without The Hitman? Highly doubtful. Let's look at the positives in all of this.

I doubt that Lucifer on Nico is the same act. Here is the Invictus group's main guy, with something of a storied history in music. https://www.islandmusicfest.com/performers/past-performers/2011-performers/eugene-smith/ His voice is a dividing point for me, but I can see why others rate this 45.

Canadians.

Extremely sad news. There aren't ten better singers than this man in the whole of soul history.

From household names I would nominate Wilson Pickett's "I've Come A Long Way". Maybe Bobby Womack's best song and a sensational performance from WP and the American Studios musicians right at the top of their collective game. Arthur Conley is an almost criminally under-rated vocalist in my opinion and a few of his performances are spookily soulful. On "Otis, Sleep On" he captures a level of pathos which is practically super-human. The Soul Children's "Move Over" is a staggeringly soulful record where the interplay of the two male leads never fails to take the breath away. Add a great Hayes-Porter song and the perfect Stax backing track and you have a record which is hard to beat. The Masqueraders Amercian Studios recordings are near the pinnacle too. "I'm Just An Average Guy", "Let's Face Facts", "Please take Me Back", "This Heart Is Haunted" are all simply magnificent performances.

One which should definitely be on the list is "I Made It Over", the cruelly neglected flip of Jimmy Robins' "I Can't Please You". An eloquent, dignified and moving performance from one of the great vocalists. To hint at an entire lifetime's humanity and struggle in just three minutes embodies the genius of the finest soul music at the genre's artistic peak.

edit.

Latimore's "Rain From The Sky" is a much better record than Adam Wade's original, even though I like that too in some respects. Bobby Womack's "Can't Take it Like a Man" is far better than Gerri Grainger's. Coke Escovedo's "I Wouldn't Change A Thing" easily beats either Johnny Bristol or Diana Ross. Close one but Esther Phillips' "Home Is Where The Hatred Is" shades Gil Scott Heron's original.