Ady Croasdell

There are a lot of great records that take a few hearings though , as someone stated in this thread the Hy Tones took a long while to get off the ground and DJs like Karl Heard getting behind it helped a lot. So unless it was Marvin's version of Do I Love You (pure fiction folks) or something equally earth-shaking, I don't see your suggestion working Rod. Thanks though. Ady

Correct but slightly different plans are still afoot and I should know more in a month or so. Ady Still available on our Etta CD of course

Harry Gates 'Love Will Find A Way' original publisher's acetate from Shelley Haims' collection. Harry wrote a few Detroit releases mainly for the Enterprise label.

No we don't have a mailing list as they are usually a very limited run and I think there is more chance of a DJ playing a record if he's paid cash for it than got it as a freebie. I've also on occasion done cuts for other DJs to play them out before release but apart from on the Modern Soul scene they don't seem to have either played them or had much effect. One of the problems is that it takes two plus years to break an exclusive record, a figure Butch roughly agrees with, and licensors don't want to wait about that long before royalties start coming through, even though they've waited 50 years since recording them

Don't worry I have every intention of doing that and the releases always sell enough to make them worthwhile but I feel they should be heard out more, not just at the 100 Club.

I wasn't particularly a fan of the Dean Courtney myself as I felt it was too Wigan friendly for my tastes. Did you think any of the Sharon Scott's were better than the released records? I certainly did and I really like the RCA 45. Similarly the unreleased Nancy Wilcox beat the released ones hands down, though the release wasn't so hot in the first place. There was a much bigger buzz when the first lot of RCA/Pied Pipers got played in the 90s than the equally good recent batch. I know a lot of collectors like Eddie Hubbard and the Soul Hit crowd loved them but it only partially crossed over onto the dancefloor.

Wossat? Label that is.

However good they are. I just got a tape through of a storming mid 60s out and out Northern track. Once it's cleared I'll play it at the 100 Club but following Matt's thread I'm wondering if many people will get as big a buzz from it as I do. I think the oldies crowd are mainly happy to relive their youth and if a new Frank Wilson record were discovered, probably wouldn't bother to listen. The rarer soul crowd don't seem to get excited about tape discoveries as they are never going to be able to collect them in original form and when they get issued on a UK 45 don't bother with it because its not vintage US pressing. Even when records go on to the anniversary single the DJs don't usually pick up on them. I remember Richard Searling and many others raving about Dean Courtney's 'Today Is My Day', describing it as an ultimate Wigan record, yet once it was on 45 nobody bothered, and that was with Sharon Scott's sublime 'Putting My Heart Under Lock & Key' on the flip. Records like Luther Ingram 'Oh Baby Don't You Weep' did go big but it was mainly down to the mod scene rather than the Northern. Oddly a lot of the new 100 Clubbers seem keener on the funk edge or R&B than the classic Northern sound. They are open-minded and enjoy it all but their preferences are different to those of us who grew up through the 70s. I'm not bemoaning it, just observing and putting a plug in for people to pick up on some of the old Kent and 100 Club anniversary singles and actually play them out; I think a lot of them deserve some spins and they would be new classic Northern for dancers who must be bored with the top 500 by now.

Doesn't the Supremes label look like the Discovery label design, as in the Bootleggers 45.

Jock and Dave you got pm!

Mal, the Saints and sinners was on Broad St in a seedy dungeon club at the back of an all night cafe frequented by pros. For some reason it was full of our Northants nighter crowd and the only Brummy was Slip who may have hung around with our lot so perhaps he arranged it. Didn't run long but more than a one-off

If our local nighters had been busted then a lot of the crowd would go up to the Wheel or other Northern nighters or even the gay bar in London called Le Douce or summat similar

I'd add Kim Weston Helpless, Esquires Get On Up and And Get Away , Homer Banks Hooked By Love, Tony Clark The Entertainer and several of those Bri Phill listed. And the Harborough nighter was the one the Wheel crowd came to the night it was closed down

PS Dave may have used the term in his shop in 68 but it wasn't in common usage until 70/71 after the B&S usage

hi Brian, no it was a nighter scene. Main ones for me were Kelmarsh, Market Harborough and Bletsoe plus Saints and Sinners in Brum which was full of our crowd and one Brummie! That's the point of the thread, were there other areas as into it as that, apart from Lancs, Yorks and some North Midlands towns?

Not trying to be different but i heard the Havens Polydor LP version in the 60s and have always preferred the intimacy and emotion of his which. i think Spyder loses in the tempo. Undoubtedly Havens would be more like Lightfoot's original which I don't think exists in any form but I'd love to hear. Havens is the ultimate break-up song

I think we're talking 71 at the latest. By 72 it was getting big in a lot of places

The only other oddity in 68-70 I know of was the Portsmouth club that advertised in B&S but unlike our Northants /Beds scene it didn't seem to have links to the rest of the old soul world

let it out baby

No, nice chap but he was proclaiming Northern was dead 15 years ago

Oh yeah, another thing Most of the still photos they used were from the Northants/Beds scene that was running parallel to the North at the same time but of course didn't get a mention as it doesn't fit the white working class northern soulies blueprint.

I thought it was poor, full of sloppy generalisations and completely inaccurate assumptions like the factory workers and miners bit, the 70s north of England depression and the "you worked for a pittance and spent your Saturday nights on the dancefloor venting your anger". Even as a skint student in 1969/70 my weekends always started on a Thursday night at North Park Kettering dancing to 'Here I Go Again', 'Judge Baby I'm Back' etc and took it on from there. The country may have been depressed but we weren't. I could waste the whole day going through it so I'll just mention two points. Norman Jay did a disservice to the singers, producers, songwriters etc when he said something like "a lot of the records played were just demos". That's a lack of knowledge about 60s black American music and the Northern Soul scene which makes you wonder why he was asked his opinion if he cold get it that wrong. The Tony Blackburn sideshow doesn't really deserve correcting but as it shows the state of Wigan at the time I'll tell it how it was. Mick Smith and I were record hunting down Portobello Road and went in a shop that only had a few LPs. I found the TB Polydor one with 'I'll Do Anything' on it so we bought it for 50p. Back at the flat we realised how dross it was but for a laugh decided to get an acetate cut and send it up to Keith Minshull who was DJing at Wigan then. We called it Kenny Gamble (the writer) and didn't tell him who it really was so that the joke would go further. Unbelievably it did and went massive which confirmed our view that Wigan had gone a long way downhill in those recent months. It was contrived as a joke about Wigan and worked.

Super Gabby, thanks i could use a sound file too if poss. say hello if you're coming over for any LCFC games