Garethx

Another thing has just occurred to me. Paul's point of view has it that deejays are just a cog in a wheel which turns to sell music and ignores the fact that deejaying in itself can be a skill. The very best deejays elevate the thing beyond taking one record off and putting another one on after it. Part of that skill at its apogee is finding and playing records before others. Yes, one-upmanship is part of it, but it's only a part.

Look at the example of Tommy & The Derbys: had this not been covered up for over a decade would it ever have got a legal re-issue? It turned out to be a really rare record anyway but had it been spun uncovered the mystique would not have built, that's a simple fact. While Paul's comments make a lot of sense from a purely ethical/moral standpoint surely he must concede that deejays have a huge role in making vintage soul music accessible and one of the greatest tools at the soul deejay's disposal is the cover-up. A record which is covered up always has a head start in terms of scene acceptance. However uncomfortable that makes some feel it's long been the case. Human nature practically dictates it. Historically cover-ups have been a massive part of the scene (possibly the one aspect that truly sets it apart from others) and as George and Steve say above are perhaps more pertinent now than ever before. Let's face it, in the scene's 70s heyday finding good unknowns to play was like shooting fish in a barrel. These days it's extremely difficult. Those who make the effort to do so should feel free to protect the identity of a record for as long as it takes others to do the detective work and uncover them. Covering up new releases is more problematic but if the record company and artist are made aware and agree in the pursuit of gaining more interest for their output I see no great moral stumbling block. If covering up a forthcoming release results in more sales it's surely a good thing, no?

A twelve string guitar.

Don't think there's a connection between Ed and Arthur Wright? As Bob A mentions above Ed was the group's manager and the production credit is more likely contractual than technical. Herbie Williams arranged at a number of studios while working for Pied Piper: Detroit, Chicago, NYC to name but three documented locations. As others have said a truly fabulous double sider and one of the true building blocks of what became the 'Northern Soul' sound. Think of the splash this would create in 2011 had it been unknown/rare/unissued.

Sorted now thanks.

Hi Looking for a nice clean original of Kenny Smith Lord What's Happening To Your People GAR 317 Demo or issue. Not interested in the Goldspot version. TIA for any replies. gareth

Both originals, just different pressing plants for regional markets. The matrix will be the same because that's on the master sent to the respective plants. American Group Productions (through Bell) pressed at Bestway in New Jersey (the white banner copy you mention), ARP in Michigan and Plastic Products in Tennessee to name just three plants. I have AGP singles pressed at all three plants. Keep the one which sounds best on your home record player as there's no financial difference in the various pressings. A white demo might be worth slightly more than the issue on this title as it was quite a big hit.

Should be possible to get a mint copy with "You Boy" on the flip for about fifteen-twenty quid. That's Mid-Town 271. Mid-Town 270, with "It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog" on the reverse is a bit harder to come by and sells for upwards of £80 these days. Three tremendous sides and both essential 45s I reckon.

Great information Keith. I think there is a pronounced Detroit sound in these tracks and they share a lot of similarities in the rhythm section (particularly the drum sound) to Bobby Williams' Sure Shot sessions. It's interesting to read anthologists generally pronouncing these tracks to be among the weakest of Bland's Duke recordings. That may well be the case (after all they had a lot to live up to!) but I'm still a fan of a lot of these sides: "These Hands" is possibly his best Northern dance track and the duet with Vi Campbell, "Dear Bobby", is a potentially wonderful ender for 'real soul' deejay sets.

^ Wow. I've never seen that Lee Moses demo before. The issue copies don't include the "& The Disciples" credit either.

Rick Cooper's post above instructive and I'd go along with pretty much everything he writes. One thing to bear in mind is sound quality. Motown for example would press deejay copies at much higher cost than the resulting issue. A typical order would be demos pressed at RCA on very high quality vinyl and subsequent issues pressed at ARP and Monarch for a fraction of the unit cost. I've seen comments from former Motown production staff stating that if one were collecting their product from audiophile point of view one should stick to the promo copies, adding that the ARP vinyl pressings were sonically "little better than a 78".

Records like "Do Right Man" and the Fred Williams 45 on Solo are probably too slow to ever become big nighter records although they are absolutely fantastic pieces of soul music. I heard the Fred Williams 45 years before it was used on Funk compilations and always viewed it as one of those 'deep with a beat' things rather than something funky. In retrospect I can now see that it is exactly the type of classic-era soul music which would appeal to people who got into older black music through the hip-hop scene. I think the idea of 'Dap Walk' going down badly was forged when it was played by a soul scene dj at a venue with some funk scene punters in attendance. It's one of the very building blocks of the funk collecting scene and playing it there would be akin to a 'funk dj' doing a Northern spot and playing something considered really obviously great but at the same time cheesily old hat.

Bestway in Mountainside New Jersey which was connected financially to Amy Mala Bell invented (or certainly popularised) styrene. From the fifties until the mid 1960s the majority of their styrene releases had screen printed 'paperless' labels. In fact their press ads in the trade magazines boasted about the records being paperless. Other pressing plants specialising in styrene were Shelley Plastics in Huntington Station NY and of course Monarch in Los Angeles. Shelley records can be distinguished by the raised XXs in the run-offs. They were the plant which pressed Shrine releases among others and even experimented with styrene album pressing. Allied in LA also produced styrene 45s. Numerically the biggest styrene manufacturers were the majors like Columbia and Philips / Mercury. Columbia in Santa Maria California generally pressed styrene records for outside clients and vinyl 45s for Columbia until switching exclusively to styrene in the mid '70s. Columbia's plants in Pitman New Jersey and Terra Haute Indiana generally produced only styrene 45s. Mercury's biggest plant was in Richmond Indiana and produced mainly styrene singles. It later became known as PRC. Shelley and Monarch always used glued labels as far as I know, but the gluing method was different at the respective plants: you'll notice a lot of label lift on the Shelly 45s and hardly any on Monarch 45s. With styrene pressing the labels were attached after the record had been injection moulded and cooled. With vinyl the label is fused during the pressing process.

I should clarify that with the above post regarding James Brown I'm not advocating the wholesale playing of Marva Whitney / Vicki Anderson hits. That would be too easy, no matter how good they are as pieces of music. A lot of people will slate me for this but I believe for any record to have true legs on today's allnighter scene it should have a degree of exclusivity. That doesn't logically mean it should be expensive in monetary terms, but I do think it should mean a record which you can't hoover up dozens of copies of on gemm or musicstack. That's a purely personal opinion and I respect the views of others who may not feel the same.

RS played the Sounds of Memphis 45 covered-up as none other than Willie Hutch!

James Brown's name always gets dragged up whenever Northern Soul fans profess a dislike of funk or its suitability for the Northern Soul scene. James Brown songs and productions actually lend themselves pretty well at times. 'The Was A Time" was pretty massive at one time wasn't it and if you ask me Gene Chandler's version is actually less suitable for 'northern dancing' than Brown's version, let alone the Dapps or Dee Felice Trio versions, also produced by James Brown. I understand Karl Heard and others have also recently had success with "Funky Horns" by Jay Bush on Vangee, which is more or less another straight rip off of There Was A Time. Bottom line is that many JB records from the mid 60s onwards were certainly syncopated but were also pretty fast and furious, pace-wise. I could understand Meters-style funk not being compatible with rare soul rooms, or George Clinton-style funk for that matter, but a lot of JB funk sounds perfectly acceptable to me from an NS perspective: quite a few of Marva Whitney and Vicki Anderson's classic King singles sit right at the apex of funky-soul or whatever you want to call it.

Just a thought: the famed Top 500 itself veers wildly all over the place in stylistic terms. Even the Top 10 covers the gamut between sweet girlie pop (Judy Street) to the gritty churning southern soul of James Fountain and practically all points in between. The points raised by Nev, Winnie and others are extremely valid. In the scene's heyday the actual generic identity of a record tended to matter not a jot. If it was played and danced to it became 'Northern Soul'. The period when an unknown Mirwood-style stomper could be found and become popular on a weekly basis lasted maybe two to three years. Ian Levine, Colin Curtis and others are on record as looking for another type of sound because that type of 'typical sound' the scene had thrived on in its early years was becoming harder to turn up, even by the middle of 1974! I suppose at the back of all of our minds is a cherished ideal of what the perfect Northern Soul record might sound like but the facts seem to suggest that Northern has always been a very broad church indeed in terms of what it can reasonably tolerate in stylistic musical terms. I've banged on before here about how big a part fashion has always played in all of this. There are flavour of the month records and flavour of the month sounds now, just as there were five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago. Think of ten to fifteen years ago and the huge upsurge in people collecting and deejaying with the so-called New Breed R&B. That has in the main slipped back out of fashion and been relegated again to side-rooms. The odd 'can't miss' type of record like J.T. Parker will escape from that ghetto, but otherwise uptempo R&B will remain on the sidelines 'til it's next in fashion. Funk seems to have been a buzzword for the last couple of years but I'm not sure how big it actually is. I've noticed people like Big George get the odd upfront nighter spot but to me that seems to be a reflection on the quality of records he has overall (i.e. lots of great vintage Black American music of all types) rather than an expectation of him playing 45 minute sets of hard funk (however you define that) at a Northern Soul venue. The problem in any of this is when a currently fashionable sound filters down from those with a genuine feel and ear for that sound to the next tier of deejays. Bandwagon jumpers always miss the point and end up buying and playing crap records. Playing Popcorn classics like Sam Fletcher and Kell Osborne was a master stroke at Stafford (where a lot of the music was actually really fast and manic) but it opened the doors for deejays with less individual flair than Guy H and Dave T to program other less stellar examples of that kind of sound. In addition to lesser quality records the lesser deejay tends to play too much of one particular thing. Entire sets of Popcorn-type soul became a norm and it kind of missed the point of why the things had become such cult records in the first place. That's where the listening experience for the audience becomes diminished. Is the original poster saying we have already reached that point with the currently popular funk things?

You should probably mention that the other side of The Appointments on Dart! "Sweet Daddy" is one of the most sought-after group ballad records. It would have been for that side that the four figure auction result was reached. If your copy is in good nick it is very competitively priced.

A simple and major technological change of the late 60s was the move to multi-track recording. Layering of different voices and instruments became much easier and production could become more complex and ambitious. Whether this was necessarily a good thing is down to personal taste I suppose.

Very sad news. So many great performances from an exceptional singer, but my favourite of them all was "I'll Make It Up To You" on Kent. Timeless soul music of the very highest quality.

To be perfectly honest Paul I've never had the Quality issue to compare the two, but the Volt b-side is a wondrous record, making it one of the best double-sided '70s soul singles in my opinion. I wonder if anyone else agrees with me?

Bessie Banks on Volt. "Try To Leave Me If You Can" is on both sides of the dj copy. The issue has a bonus in the shape of the awesome "Ain't No Easy Way" and seems far harder to track down than any variant of her Quality 45s.

In terms of similar-sounding records it might be worth looking into The Impressions catalogue as they genuinely invented this type of bouncy harmony dance soul with "Little Young Lover" in 1961-2 and continued to make records in this vein throughout their career. From the Skip Jackson timeframe a great one is "Wherever She Leadeth Me" on Curtom.

According to Popsike there are Bestway pressings of the demo with the labels on the correct sides as well as the more common 'mis-labeled' copies. Tefteller sold one in the last few years. The only issue listed there appears to be a Monarch pressing. Is there a Bestway pressed issue as well? If issue owners could throw up some scans that would be greatly appreciated. Also can anyone offer an opinion as to how the Monarch sounds? I had a BW demo with the labels reversed and it sounded magnificent, as their styrene usually did. As a rule their releases often sound much better than most US vinyl. Monarch, as we know, was often responsible for a pretty shoddy product. Their styrene loses its lustre pretty quickly and is very prone to marking easily and getting noisy after just a few plays.

No. The SWF 45 is from Orlando, Florida. As others have said two tremendous sides.