Ady Croasdell

That's a great sound and hopefully the way things are going to go on the Northern scene for a while; southern Northern is probably less of a conundrum than funky Northern. It's very Bobby Bland sounding, not surprising coming from Texas and similar in some ways to the Melvin Parker I'm playing.

As it appens, the 100 Club sported 5 DJs who all stayed until the end on Saturday; nice one. And it's a shit 'ole.

UK Kent 45 only, first issued in 2002, a future monsta! The TCB is a joke mock up label or has somebody booted it? Ady

Who is famous for basing his vocal style on............................Sam Cooke

Not at all, i was just volunteering a name; unless there are Detroit connections on t'other release.

There's a Thomas Sisters on Dave Hamilton's TCB label late 70s/early 80s

There will be some singles out at the end of March and an LP is eventually planned but maybe not until the second volume early next year

But of course, and I'm sure she will share aher thoughts with us once it's arrived on her doorstep. As Chalky says there will be a volume 2 too. Thanks for the encouraging comments.

Even better, I'd love to hear it or part of it if anyone has the sound.

I could give you many instances where Ace have paid sizeable sums to artists, producers, writers etc and even more where the amount is small but they really appreciate having their work released legitimately with every sale accounted for. Even if it is a small amount they like the recognition and correctness of it; in many cases it is the first cheque they have had for that work. To have their work handled by professionals who issue it in the best possible audio with the most information and history means a hell of a lot to the creative people, as soon as they hear that their work has been booted they feel sick and think the Northern Soul scene must be run by disrespectful money grabbers. If we can still salvage something out of the deal and treat the music how it should be treated, it improves their view no end.

Sorry, I can't help but what a fascinating subsidiary label. Over 40 possible releases and I've never seen one before. Though I may have thought it a reissue series and ignored them. Is it a modern 70s soul sound?

Blimey, I remember that story about the bath too, it could have been me if I hadn't heard and learned.

I think Jumbo and a few from Harboro were there, thanks for sorting that. Ady

It was a generalisation, I'm sure some were dubs

That's one for Tony, President/Joe Boy certainly had a huge cache of tapes and many would be from masters though it was probably a bit random then as sound quality wasn't as paramount or well understood as it is now.

Hi Mike, I'm told by a good friend that it was actually somebody that was called Phil Holt's birthday party that got raided, though I thought it was a club in the Wakefield area, certainly not Leeds. Ady

Tony Rounce told me that most Stateside releases were dubbed from disc, whereas most London were from tape. Ace have accessed many of those London tapes which often the label owners don't have. I met a UK mastering engineer who was present when the UK head of CBS brought in a well played copy of Scott McKenzie 'If You're Going To San Francisco' and said it was going to be a smash and he should get it pressed up. When asked when the master would arrive he was told to do it from disc and that was when cleaning up disc technology was not available. Subsequent CD releases often used that crap dub.

As Bob pointed out what full time post-production studio engineers with state of the art technology, can do with a dub is a long way above anything possible on a home PC set-up.

Ace/Kent has a very good reputation for using masters wherever possible and spending a lot of time and money through our own studios to make it as good as possible. There are inevitably the odd dub on a CD, but a Kent dub would sound hugely different to some other companies dubs because of the work put into it so it is probably best to work out your own preferences for whichever labels you purchase.

When it comes to CDs, I would guess Ace/Kent would be 95% tape since we started.

Arctic would have been safe at Jamie I think, dunno about TK. Some companies did lose the lot but not too many and even if they did there are often copies to be found through producers, European licensees or other sources.

The earlier Kent singles were probably about 50/50 dubs and master tapes as we weren't as good at getting the (masters, particularly for singles for some reason). By the 90s we would be up to 90% from masters and nowadays 95% +. I think all the CITY singles are from masters as virtually all were previously unreleased. I think the Goldmine ones would be all dubs apart from the previously unissued ones as they did not like using masters if there was vinyl to dub from for economy and simplicity.

Not that I know of, the soul scene wants a lot of different styles and probably just as well as the one you describe, that I love, just couldn't keep it going.

I've mentioned this before, butI was the first to see his collection of forgeries when he met me in the YMCA in LA after a copy of Broadway Sissy. He offered me several copies of the lookalikes that were all prisitine and when I checked they were obviously boots, so I wasn't interested. I had 5 copies of Broadway Sissy though (I forgot to tell him that) so I think he gave me a good handful of all the titles once he realised he hadn't been fooled. The point of re-telling this is that I told a UK collector to put the word about that they were boots but people still bought them as they were cheap and they wanted to believe they were real. When they arrived everybody was pissed off but they were buying of Soussain and had been warned so not many grounds for complaint really.

John, kindly put me in touch with Lou and the Way Out geezers, I spent an odd day with them. I'll follow it up. Ady