Garethx

Hi Pete A slight overreaction maybe and reading the language again it looks pretty po-faced, so apologies for that. Anyhow, this is off-topic and maybe better left to another thread.

Hi Steve My point about the review being embarrassing wasn't that Freddie Butler isn't a quality record: it clearly is and always was. I get annoyed when people in perceived positions of power try to lie to me. Kev's bullshit story looks no better with thirty years hindsight. It was obviously easier and more financially rewarding to manufacture and sell bootlegs than sourcing original copies of the Kapp lp and selling those. I'm not accusing KR of being behind the bootleg, but such a review helped to sell the things. At a time when the average Northern fan was much younger the actions of the few who ran the scene in those days smack of cynicism, greed and exploitation. Certain aspects of the Northern scene will always look crazy to outsiders and in many ways the lore of the scene has been moulded by some deeply suspect characters, hence its idiosyncracies. Cover a record up by all means if you want to, but don't lie about its true identity, just keep schtum and let others work out what it is if they can. A review like this insults the intelligence of the audience in just the same way as later, perhaps more high profile, scams.

That's an interesting post Steve. The Number 1 record is presumably the 7" bootleg of Freddy Butler on Kapp. Shows how potentially embarrassing it can be to review cover-ups. The copy of FW he's referring to is the one now in Tim Brown's possession. On the earlier posts I think it's potentially very exciting if another copy has come to light and I'm sure whatever price the record will fetch in an open auction will cause a lot of reaction either way. If the record is Berry Gordy's personal copy it wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility to speculate that he will potentially be aiming to buy it back, pay any auction commission and consider it a value-for-money promotional expense. I think I'm correct in saying that while Motown Records as an entity has gone through several phases of ownership since he sold his interest, he still has a considerable stake in the publishing rights of the song catalogue: a far more valuable asset than ownership of a recording company. With the Motown 50th Anniversary in full swing the auction of such an item would create some media interest (at least in the world of music if not beyond) if handled correctly. If auctioned I'm sure this 45 will break established price barriers for a soul record, but I don't know that it has a high enough profile outside of the Northern Soul scene and a select band of Motown collectors to challenge things like the Velvet Underground Columbia acetates and so on in terms of sheer collectibility. The idea of the record being bought by a 'non-fan' as a purely-collectable asset doesn't seem viable in any way to me: in overall terms in that particular world it's worthless as an art object (it's not unique and the story behind the record is of limited importance to those without direct involvement or fan interest). I wonder if things might have been different with this record if Soussan wasn't involved in its original Northern scene exposure. Had it been found and spun uncovered or not bootlegged I'm sure it would still have been the biggest record on the scene for at least a time but maybe the level of mystique surrounding it would not have been as sustained. If it had been spun in 1973 as opposed to later in the decade it may have got lost in the welter of truly definitive sounds around at that time. I'm not dismissing the Frank Wilson 45, far from it: I think if you strip away the hype and history you're left with a really wonderful slice of joyous and memorable pure dance soul. The thing about this record is that it is impossible to disentangle it from that hype and in a way its become a totemic object representing all the idiosyncrasies surrounding the scene.

Does anyone know who James Barnett was?

Ask and ye shall receive. J-Brew was selling one for £300 quid via this link from yesterday. Don't know if he still has it.

There was a copy of the Communication 45 on ebay towards the end of last year from a Chicago seller. A good record as far as I recall.

Would imagine this one would come with a very hefty pricetag these days: I've noticed the Lost In The Crowd side creeping onto the playlists of the more discerning deejays again and hasn't been a particularly easy record to locate for the last fifteen years or so.

Both America and John Edwards versions of this song are great records for different reasons. I really love John Edwards voice and this is a great example of him metaphorically 'singing the telephone book', plus the extended guitar solo is tremendous. America were a great and in some ways underrated group: it's a pity they are probably best known over here for "A Horse With No Name": not their best work in my book. There are some wonderful clips of the band doing Tin Man and Ventura Highway on a German TV show in 1974 on Youtube. George Martin once said that he considered them to be the most talented songwriters he ever worked with.

The scan directly above looks like the styrene issue, as opposed to the ebay one which is definitely vinyl. A lot of the later Okeh 45s are on both materials.

Thanks Tony, I knew I wasn't imagining Rob playing it and that time frame seems completely correct too: early 90s rather than late 80s. I'm guessing Dave Porter would have been the UK point of contact for the Vivid Sound stuff. Mark was certainly a font of knowledge on Japanese releases in those days. I remember him doing a fantastic tape for me of Japanese-only things which were coming through HMV (in very limited quantity) at the time. Much of the stuff is still underexposed now, while some tracks, like Tommy Tate's I Can't Do Enough have since rightly become classics.

This isn't as commonplace as you might expect on a US 45 these days. Dave Thorley is selling one at www.topdogrecords.co.uk for £20.00

The Japanese Vivid Sound CD has been around a very long time. I'll try and dig mine out (CDs are in the cellar) and see if there's a date on it, but I'm thinking late 80s. Hard to believe that was getting on for twenty years ago now.

It's a can of worms really Mike. Releases like the Torch 45 were presumably made to be sold commercially at a profit, while a one-off carver of an unreleased track is generally done with the aim of having a 'playable' copy of the recording for deejaying purposes only. I see an ethical distinction there, others don't. In my book playing this on anything other than an original studio disc until the legitimately licensed release comes out would be effectively deejaying with a bootleg: unnecessary when A) the tune has been hammered for about for two decades and there are literally thousands of underexposed, legally released sides worthy of turntable action to be getting on with. Obviously we see examples of people selling carvers of rare/unreleased tracks in quantity through ebay and so on, which is dodgy from every standpoint. Can anyone say definitively who first spun the Spencer Wiggins record in Northern Soul clubs? I have a memory of Rob Marriott playing it and wonder if he was the first to do so. It would have been a shame if this had never been given a wider audience outside those who buy Japanese compilation CDs and at the time the conflict over the ownership of the recording wasn't widely known.

I think the bone of contention was that Vivid Sound Japan should never have released the track in the first place as it was a Fame recording rather than a Goldwax one as Tony outlines above. Good to hear Ace are finally putting this out legitimately. I'm sure it will eventually be a strong-selling 45 at some point, but it will be good to hear it in context alongside other Spencer Wiggins' recordings of the time: a truly awe-inspiring body of work. As an aside it might make a good media thread if people were to post up a "Northern side of Fame" topic as there's no doubt the various incarnations of the Fame band could really cook with gas when it came to danceable soul (as opposed to the deep soul they are perhaps more famous for). I've been playing Arthur Conley's "I Can't Stop (No No No)" almost constantly these past few days which really bounds along with much gusto. Along with the obvious classics like James Barnett, Arthur Freeman, Clarence Carter, Brothers Unlimited etc. there is a wealth of great uptempo music from this quarter on various labels.

Yes. I'd love to know how they square that one.

Many topics on here about this record. An unissued Goldwax recording done at Fame Studios, possibly at the same sessions as Spencer's last Goldwax 45, Soul City USA / I Never Loved A Woman. Doubts about who actually owns the master have meant there's been no definitely legitimate release so far. First appeared on a Japanese Vivid Sound compilation some years ago and has appeared on several UK pressed 45s of dubious origin since then. These can be picked up for various prices, but shouldn't be too expensive.

I find it interesting that it's specifically Detroit records which were once regarded as serious rarities which seem to be turning up in quantity over the last few years. There are of course isolated examples of this happening to records from elsewhere, but in the main in seems to be Motor City sounds. Can anyone offer any theories as to why this should be the case where it doesn't seem to be so with long standing rarities from Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, L.A. etc. Local dealers in Detroit just searching harder? Longer-standing exposure to wants lists from overseas? Simply more stock lying around in warehouses, peoples' homes, garages etc. I'd be interested to hear what others think.

To add to the rare soul credentials of "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree" Tony Orlando's backing singers Dawn are rumoured to have been none other than The Debonaires on Solid Hitbound.

Billy Shields is Tony Orlando of "Tie A Yellow Ribbon..." fame.

Sorry Rod, playing fast and loose with the term 'rightful'. Should have said 'a new audience.' I still think that if and when the "next Salvadors" turns up that the guy accused of playing deep funk in his first set at the 100 Club would probably be the first one to find and play it. A more pressing worry for me about the current scene is that those deejaying with so-called "popcorn and R&B" would probably not be able to look up from their Tennessee Ernie Ford collections long enough to recognise such a thing.

You're right Pete and Rod but I deliberately chose those two for that reason: the scene moved on from these records in 1976 because there were always more records (and indeed other types and styles of record) to focus on in the coming weeks or months: that's not really the case now and 'forgotten oldies' like these resurface because they have something in common, soundwise, with the few new tunes which are current. The so-called 'funk' played at the 100 Club last weekend traces back directly to sounds like these: minor-key, rough-edged soul records which were once massively popular for a time. I don't think that there's suddenly been some seismic departure musically. What is very different is the context and circumstances in which newies are played now. It takes months or even years to break even a brilliant record now and once it's been bootlegged or comped that doesn't stop it getting spun even by the so-called top jocks; the sheer number of people going out to events may be broadly comparable but the idea of a weekly huge venue with a concentration of genuinely competitive deejays in one place is something that can probably never be contemplated now; the age of the average niter-goer is now so much higher in comparison as to be mind-boggling (young people tend to have a minute attention span, whereas old 'uns will pretty much suffer anything); and I think a crucial difference is that the amount of people looking for fresh sounds to deejay with is exponentially smaller.

I didn't hear too much at the 100 Club on Saturday night which deviated from the template of quality rare soul as we know it. I can think of an occasion there a few years ago when Keb played a few new things from his KayDee productions empire which raised a few eyebrows, but this was nothing like such an occasion. The fact is that the scene has deviated from finding the next "You're Ready Now" soundalike since the early seventies. Some records which break the mould in a given time can come to have a pretty short shelf life (Black Nasty anyone?), where others become accepted classics ushering in a host of imitators (Kell Osborne on Titanic and Sam Fletcher giving birth to other Popcorn-style sounds being played springs to mind). Other sounds seem to need decades to reach their rightful audience (examples I'm thinking of here are records like Rufus Wood "Before 2001", Delrays Incorporated or The Delegates of Soul). I maintain that Northern Soul isn't a genre of music as such (how can it be when it can incorporate something like Roy Hamilton's "Earthquake" on one hand and Glenda McCleod on the other) but the best deejays have always had the nouse to realise what will work within the format, and how to create sets out of the building blocks: underexposed Black American music with soul as its bedrock. It's to the scene's benefit that the foremost collectors can still be bothered to deejay with the kind of records which are exciting them at this moment rather than trotting out a hackneyed approximation of what was shaking the Torch in 1972.

I think it's impossible to dance to in a Northern Soul style. Doesn't stop it being an interesting record and it fits well into the 100 Club atmosphere. I forgot to mention that Butch also played Willie Tee's "You Gonna Pay Some Dues" in his first set: a classic, flowing midtempo fingersnapper and about as far from deep funk as it's possible to get!

This topic mystifies me a bit. I thought Butch played maybe one record which might be classed as deep funk: I don't know what it was, sorry, but it was a long way from Fatback band style 70s street-funk as in the misleading Youtube clip above. He played an instrumental which can best be summarised as "Tighten Up with stings" but that's been on his playlist for at least the last six months as far as I can recall and has always received a really good reaction from the floor as it has a lot of identity and atmosphere. I'd be interested to know what contributors feel about records like the Milton James 45 on Dor: so different from traditional northern in practically every respect but has been a staple of Butch's sets for some years now. I suppose because it's a sixties recording it escapes the ire of the purists. I think both Butch and Marco played the Talmadge Amstrong cover-up, which while a long way from traditional uptown Northern Soul is a tremendously earthy southern obscurity with a lot of soul; similarly the Salt and Pepper 45 is also a long way from something like (off the top of my head) Lynne Randell; but to me it fits in perfectly with the ethos of the 100 Club: a basement in the middle of Cosmopolitan London, not a church-hall in rural Lincolnshire. It's also worth mentioning that Marco played a couple of things first time out like the Tempests and Precisions cover-ups which would be classed as classic group harmony Northern in anyone's book, so to characterise these sets as purely funky is slightly misleading. I think the balance was just about right on Saturday, as the other deejays offered a counterpoint to what else was going on: Keith has his own thing going on with lighter and more melodic stuff, Mick threw a few classic oldies in and Ady offered a few unfamiliar sounds with the classic textures of (non-funky) uptown soul. To me the strength of the 100 Club has always been its eclecticism. Playing sets of largely unfamiliar records is sometimes going to be challenging and not everything is going to stick and become a classic, but I applaud the intention of trying to keep things fresh.

On Glades from 1976. Written and produced by Jerry Washington himself. Price has come down from a high in the last couple of years and it should be possible to pick up a nice copy for about 3-350 pounds.