Garethx

The Reachers doesn't have any dates on the label as far as I know. I'm sure it was around from even before the early 'modern scene' days: maybe even a late Mecca record.

Apologies for labelling him a 100 Club regular, but Wolverhampton is the north. I remember him telling me that his soul music dream was to entice Benny Troy to these shores and have him do "I Wanna Give You Tomorrow" backed by the full Joe Loss Orchestra.

It opened its doors as The Motown Bar but quickly became known as The Soul Bar after a legal intervention from Universal Music. I recall the opening night as being quite exciting. I think the licensee was a bloke called (if memory serves) Dennis, whose day job was as the Market Inspector. He was a transplanted northerner and a sometime regular at the 100 Club. Jim D had a weekly residency there for a few years as did another mate of mine, Gordon King from Stockport. I played records there for both of them but in truth it was a tough place to get any reaction from the 'crowd' (often no more than five or six people) to anything more demanding than the most obvious Motown or Stax hits. Despite living up the road from the place it was never somewhere you would gladly go for a quiet drink. The situation with the dealers was pretty much as you've mentioned above. Years later another acquaintance of mine, Sophie from Brighton, took on the license. She persevered with it as a kind of 'world music' bar (pot plants and Gilberto Gil CDs) but it was difficult to ever make a success of it. It's still open and seems to be some kind of bar/cafe attempting to cater for the local trustafarians.

Pub leases in London are still vastly overvalued, by as much as 40% across the board according to some analysts. The area in which I live in London used to be famous for its pubs. One by one they are all shutting down. Utility supplies like electricity, gas and water have increased in price by practically a third over the last four years. Factor in the effects of the smoking ban and the licensed trade as a whole is in dire straits. The Pub companies who own the freeholds behave like medieval lords of the manor, their area managers swanning around in their BMWs while their tenants, faced with bills they can never pay, quietly contemplate suicide. It's practically impossible to make a profit on draught beer sales if you are tied to a particular supplier. Most tenanted pubs who still survive tend to do so from food sales, hence the rise of the gastropub. That presents a whole load of other issues which are not particularly relevant to this particular proposition. My biggest concern with it is that the idea itself is fatally flawed. Music themed pubs as a whole are now an anachronism. One themed on an obscure cult would be doomed to failure. The soul scene in London is now pathetically small. Annual blow-outs like Soulgate and the 100 Club Anniversary aside most venues struggle to attract customers. If the concept of a Northern Soul themed pub could exist successfully I would have thought an area like Greater Manchester would be a far more viable location.

I'm not after an English single. I am after the US single.

It has less than zero potential from so many perspectives.

Thanks.

A great post Ian but one thing we must bear in mind is that the commercial heyday of the Northern scene was a relatively short time: '72 to (at a push) '78-9. It's been almost thirty years since the Casino closed and far longer since Ian Levine was the top man. There have been thirty-years-plus of discoveries which he wasn't involved in. I know he used to claim that the Stafford scene was fuelled by his reject boxes and to an extent that's true. This isn't an anti-Ian post because his legend is cast in iron, but we've always got to remember that context is everything. Fact is that finding and breaking records in that heyday was numerically like shooting fish in a barrel: invent a musical 'scene' which has no real rules and then find things which fit in with that vague blueprint. Factor in the idea that the most sought after examples would be viewed as junk in the backyards of the country where the music was made and you can't fail but succeed. Play the records to young people who are up for anything in a magically exciting setting involving nationwide travel, staying up all night, relatively easy access to the strongest pharmaceuticals known to man and so on and so on. Anyone who didn't find and break records back then had to be a certified loser. Contrast with today. The rules have been written in stone for decades. The American record dealing community have been exposed to Northern Soul interest for a lifetime, there are price guides everywhere. The punters know the rules and argue about them infinitely on internet message boards. Any collector who can unearth great sounds and any deejay who can still break great records in 2010 gets my vote.

Thanks but that's the French Strata East 45 (the studio version from the "Winter In America" album). The Arista single is a completely different cut: an edit of the live "It's Your World" version but with overdubbed horns. The French 45 is still plentiful but the US Arista 45 from 1976 seems very elusive.

Great stuff. I remember reading the Echoes article at the bus stop going to school and marvelling at the label scans, particularly the Troy Dodds. Can anyone name all the cover-ups?

That's entirely possible Bob. The thing which was different about the Cole Black Brown and Bobby Patterson 45s was that Garry had the entire runs shipped to him in the UK, then sold them on via his list to Japan, Holland etc and a few copies wholesale to other UK dealers. This obviously wasn't the case with The Montclairs 45, which tends to appear from US sellers on ebay. The other 45s were done at his suggestion. Maybe this one wasn't but it stems from that timeframe. The typesetting and label stock is of the same order.

In the mid-late 80s Stan Lewis and/or his son re-issued a number of records from the Jewel-Paula-Ronn labels for the sweet soul and ballad collectors market, primarily in the far east and in continental Europe. Garry Cape mentioned this here when we talked about the re-issues of the Charlie Cole Black 45 on Jewel, which at the time was relatively hard to find as an original but has subsequently become much (much!) easier to locate. I'm sure this particular Montclairs re-issue 45 was aimed at the sweet/ballad market overseas and the fact that "Hung Up On Your Love" appears on it is completely incidental to the fact that Montclairs 45s were in demand from a completely different market at the time. I don't think the UK rare soul scene was in the minds of the Lewises at all in this. Bear in mind that at the time Hung Up had a value to UK collectors of about ten to fifteen pounds and was never particularly hard to find. It's only comparatively recently (in the last six or seven years) that you would have had to pay anything over £25 for an original of Hung Up; issue or demo. It was pressed in bulk and many, many copies made their way over to these shores as a comparatively recent release. In fact I've often thought the chance of a bulk find of the track was greater here than in the US. It's only really in the last few years that demand for an original pressing of this has finally overtaken supply and even then I feel the price is an inflated one. As an aside this run of 'archive' Jewel/Paula/Ronn singles also included a 45rpm outing for Bobby Patterson's "Recipe For Peace", one of the outstanding dance tracks from his Paula album and a record which never had a 45 release in the US at the time the album originally came out.

1986-87 as I recall. While it is strictly speaking true that this is numerically the smallest run I don't think it should sell for any more than £15.

Hi Looking for a very clean copy of Arista AS 0225 issue GIL SCOTT-HERON & BRIAN JACKSON THE BOTTLE Part 1 c/w THE BOTTLE Part 2 Thanks in advance gareth

That is a very pertinent point Bob, as all your contributions to the thread have been.

This old chestnut comes up again and again. To my mind the explanation directly above doesn't definitively state that the version on the Groove City 45 has a Steve Mancha lead vocal, merely says "if I recall right". It isn't any of The Professionals but it sounds nothing like Steve Mancha to me. He had an incredibly distinctive voice and the tone and diction on the Groove City 45 are both unlike any Steve Mancha vocal either as a solo artist or as part of a group. He may have appeared in the vocal backing on the record (he wrote the song after all) but I'm convinced the lead voice is not his. Mancha's voice was far more flexible and far purer in tone. In my mind Mancha was one of the all time great Detroit soul singers and the voice on 'The Professionals' take of DMBC (rather ironically) sounds like that of an amateur.

Here's Sharon Soul's press shot from the middle of the 60s. According to soulfuldetroit.com she is definitely Sharon Seiger who later wrote for The Moments, Whatnauts, Linda Jones and Susan Phillips among others. A quick listen to as much material from SS and SP that I can lay my hands on strengthens my belief that they are one and the same.

Here's the track that got me wondering about all of this: susan phillips - hes gone - which appears on one of those Cholo-Soul bootlegs. I think it's a tremendous early 70s ballad.

Sorry. Double post.

Here is the blurb from the amazon listing of Soul Twins Volume 3 CD, scheduled for release by Castle in 2007, but never to my knowledge released: "The Third Volume in the Soul Twins Archive Series Takes Us to the Soul Sound Studios of all Platinum Records Inc. In Englewood, New Jersey. The Two Consecutive Albums (3005 and 3006) were Both Released in 1971 and have Long Since Disappeared Into Annals of Northern Soul History. The Heartstoppers were a New Jersey Foursome - Betty Baker, Tina Lee and Sisters Joyce and Geraldine Curry - and Released One Self-titled Album and a Handful of Singles for Joe and Sylvia Robinson. Susan Phillips was a Staff Writer at all Platinum under the Pseudonym Sharon Seiger and is also Known as Sharon Soul. Here We Feature her Solo Album Soft, Sexy, Soul which Has Eluded UK Collectors for Many Years." The Castle / Outta Site website features a packshot. It's very small but you can definitely make out The Heartstoppers lp cover and what is supposedly the Susan Phillips lp cover: https://www.outtasight.co.uk/products_discography.php

Hi all. A few questions about Susan Phillips which i would be grateful if anyone could answer. Does anyone have a copy of her All Platinum album Soft Sexy Soul? Can anyone confirm the rumour that she is Sharon Soul of Wild Deuce / Coral fame? I have a vague recollection of seeing an image of the All Platinum album which featured an African-American woman on the cover (never seen the actual record in the flesh though) and a Wild Deuce press shot of a white lady. Vocally they are close enough to possibly be the same singer but confirmation would be great. There are some songwriting credits on other records from the Robinson's family of labels (on artists like The Whatnauts) which feature a Sharon 'Soul' Seiger or Sieger who is supposedly 'Susan Phillips'. Is Sharon Soul of northern soul fame also known as Sharon Seiger? Did "He's Gone" ever appear on an All Platinum 45? There's a gap in the AP discography on Soulful Kinda Music on the number 2328, which the site has down as Just How Long / ?. (Just How Long is the reverse of All Platinum 2335, Key In The Mailbox.) Thanks in advance for any answers.

Fantastic.

One thing I've always wanted cleared up and wonder if anyone can provide an answer: is this the J.T. Carter who was a member of Johnny Maestro and The Crests?

Johnnie Taylor from the "Wanted: One Soul Singer" lp on Stax. Also issued on French pic sleeve 45 as Fromidable Rhythm & Blues No. 7; Watermelon Man coupled with "Blues in the Night". These days an expensive item. There are other vocals to Watermelon Man by the likes of Gloria Lynne, but I'm guessing it was probably the Johnnie Taylor played in an R&B club.

Sebastian is correct and I was (very) wrong. after listening to all three records again I must backtrack 100% on my original statement. There are indeed clear and important musical differences in all three tracks which I'm speculating were played by the same core group of musicians a few years apart. In their own way all three great records.