Rick Cooper

Ian In a previous thread about Bostocks it says that they got the records from Soul Bowl as the shipment was so big John Anderson just sold the lot to them. I think Bostocks advertised packs of records in a trade paper, The World's Fair which was read by market traders and the like. In Manchester and Lancashire there were quit a few branches of NRS (Northern Record Sales?) who all had loads of singles especially the Chess group. I think Arthur Robinson of Robinson's Records was behind this. He also sold records to markets and fairs through adverts in World's Fair. All this was only possible when the US companies dumped millions of unsold stock for peanuts in the late sixties so long after the alleged Merseyside record spree. Rick

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Global Records in Manchester and the US warehouse in Philadelphia had thousands of If This Is Love and Instant Heartbreak and I'm sure all had plain sleeves. Does the "usual sources" you mention include that web site (not sure what it's called) that has loads of sleeves pictured. Also Richard (Premium Stuff) is the one to ask, and will probably let you know soon. Rick

There seems to be some evidence for the theory that US records circulated in Liverpool, but this has grown to the point that I heard someone on TV claim that you could walk down Liverpool streets and hear RnB and soul blasting out ,Harlem style, from houses all over the place. Gerry Marsden was interviewed on a TV show and mentioned the records he heard as a youngster via seamen ,but all the records he listed were UK releases . Record labels like London, Pye Top Rank and Stateside were all fighting to issue US records so why risk bringing back records from New York to find they were easily available in record shops. The fact that Merseyside groups played and recorded US soul songs is nothing special as everyone was doing it. My elder brother was guitarist in a "beat combo", Pete and the Mohawks, around 1965 to 67. I was too young to go to their shows but they would practice every Sunday at home so I would watch them learn new songs. They would have sheet music or a record and just keep going over the song until it sounded like the record. Songs that stick in my mind are Knock on Wood, In the Midnight Hour and Hang on Sloopy, all common at the time. They played around Stockport and S Manchester with a regular booking at The Fingerpost pub in Stockport which carries on this tradition with appearances from Paul Kidd's Wigan All-Stars. The groups and singers that played and recorded obscure soul songs, such as Jimmy James, Geno Washington, Chris Farlowe, Alan Bown were mainly from the south and London,but maybe this was down to publishers and producers. I don't recall any Mersey groups covering songs that hadn't had a UK issue. Could it be that from a few instances of US records coming to Liverpool the story has grown out of all proportion due to the scouse trait of praising Liverpool at any opportunity. On the other hand,I went to an exhibition in Liverpool some years ago, I think it was the one being promoted by the Cunard Yanks in post 14 and spoke to one of the men in the film. He had a stand at the exhibition with some LP sleeves on display. One of these was an Epic LP by Roy Hamilton, so I asked him about it and the others on display. He said he was a Jazz and Swing fan and went to clubs in New York to see live shows, including Roy H. The records he bought back were for himself not to sell. My brother went to sea in the early seventies, sailing to the mid and far east but all he ever bought back were tacky souvenir type "tribal" art objects. Rick

Dave The Cream release was done from the tape supplied by Partytime/Irvin Weinroth .He got the instrumental done at Grand Prix studios in Philly so must have used the session tape to do this. I should think he took the vocal of this tape rather than the tape used in the sixties which has the distortion on the intro. My Cream copy sounds fine but as you say the Partytime copies have a bit of hiss at the start. Rick

Dave I met Irving Weinroth in Philly once when he gave me the tapes for Four Perfections and he told me that the "Kip Gainsboro" credited as producer was a made up name,Kip was the family dog and Gainsboro was their street address at the time. The production is top rate so who was the real producer, perhaps all will be revealed in your book. The sax is quite Mike Terryish ,was he on it ? Irving also said he had never heard of, or done a deal with Simon Sousson for the Soul Galore boot. Rick

About a year ago I put quite a few of these LPs on ebay as I had never played them for over twenty years. Starting bids on them was £5.00 . Northern Soul Stories 6,7,8 went for £5 , NSS 2 and 4 reached £5.50, Soul of Detroit, Modern Soul Story and Modern Times reached the dizzy heights of £6.03. One person bought six titles so got a good deal on postage. I used to buy each one as they came out when I was working at Ames/Virgin records in Stockport. They all sold fairly well on release but not much after the first month. Kent releases sold a lot better and for a longer period. If I remember right, they were distributed by Charly and the rep once let me have a white label test pressing of the instrumental only release, After the Session, probably because he didn't want it. If they didn't have the master tapes they managed to get good sound quality ,no clicks and pops or needle hitting the record. They released a CD as well, which at the time I thought was a waste of time, who would want NS on CD?. Also not many people had CD players them. This must be quite a rare release now. Rick

I've had the record on a white promo and all the copies on Popsike are the same so regular stock copies must be scarce. I think that the if the record didn't sell well on release, distributors sent back the stock for credit and off loaded the worthless demos. A company like Tangerine wouldn't want their reputation tarnished by having loads of records in the bargain bins so destroyed the returns. Other records were thought to exist on demo only but have turned up on stock copies so maybe there are copies out there somewhere. Great record in my opinion , but not one for the dance floor. Rick

When I was involved in issuing singles in the mid 1970s the pressing plant would always send at least three white label test copies of a record before going ahead with the pressing run. I don't think they would do more than five white label test copies as they didn't charge for doing them.Of the ones I've still got some I wrote the numbers on but most I didn't bother. It looks like Dave preferred to always put the details on his test copies. I suppose the white label ones are rare but the black and white demos just look so good that they must be more desirable and valuable. Rick

Neil Balbier would usually avoid dealing with most of his customers, especially us youngsters , who he referred to as "kids". A lowly employee would be sent out to deal with them and the hapless customer was told not to cross a white line across the floor. But you made the biggest mistake by ordering large quantities, which makes any dealer panic as they think the price must be too low. Usually the titles would be "out of stock" until the next list , by which time the price had shot up. Your release of the Four Perfections probably riled him as some years before the Cream release of Johnny Jones -Purple Haze had to be pulled as Decca claimed ownership even though William Bell had licensed it to Global. Agree about Anthony Lewis, thoroughly decent chap!! but massage parlours? surely not. Rick

Hi Simon Great clip, watched it loads of time. Some really cool characters, especially the wide awake girls. I think it's a BBC clip, so would be interesting to know what the rest of the program was about. Rick

Could it be the clip of the Plebeians club in Halifax on You Tube with Can't Satisfy playing. I usually find it by a search for Impressions Cant Satisfy and click on the girl with wide eyes. Rick

Dave Well at least I predicted prices would go up, just out by a factor of about x100. Rick

Found one of my old lists from either 1977 or 78 Prices look cheap but in those days records in the US were around 10 to 25 cents , occasionally up to 1 dollar, and the pound was worth about 2 dollars 40 . Also no one was earning a lot so prices stayed low. Anyone who follows current prices say which title is now worth the most , and any guess as to what the lot might fetch? I did some auction lists around the same time, has anyone kept any of these as I'd like to see them again. Rick

Flaming Arrow 37, Gloria Walker- Walking With My New Love, was a big record in the Suriname clubs in the Netherlands and was booted. There is a sound clip of this and info of some other Flaming Arrow artists on the Sir Shambling site. www.sirshambling.com I thought the label was southern USA but could be wrong. Rick

I remember the tape for Tony Galla was there but not Sammy Sevens. I had a copy of Tony Galla but I don't think it was played in the 70s, more of a Stafford play . To sell enough records in the 70s to make it worthwhile a record had to played everywhere and really popular, anything less didn't sell much. Over the years other Swan titles may have sold as oldies like Our Love Will Grow or new discoveries but I had long left Global by then. Going back to Heartbroken Memories , I had it listed on a demo at £1.50 when I sold off a load of stuff in 1978. (insert sad looking yellow face here). Rick

Theirs a quite interesting story about the instrumental of Heartbroken Memories, but apologies to avid Soul Source readers if they've heard this before. Some of the tapes of the Swan label were bought at the closing auction by Ed Balbier who moved to Manchester in 1971 and set up Global Records. The tapes were stored in Philadelphia for many years but were sent over in 1974 by which time I was working at Global. Two tracks were done as Swan look a likes before the Cream label was set up. Most of the tapes were quarter inch mono mixes but some were the half inch four track studio tape. These could be re-mixed and instrumental versions made. However the main problem was that no studios had a machine that could play the 4 track tapes, I think studios were up to 32 track recording by then so asking for a 4 track player was met with much derision. Eventually I found a semi retired sound engineer (ex BBC I think) who had a 4 track player. So I took some of the tape boxes round to his studio in the front room of a semi in a quiet street in Altrincham. The machines looked ancient but were probably state of the art once. One of the tapes was the Sheila Ferguson session. This had the studio chat and count in from the producer, Richie Barrett I think. The vocals were on one track so I asked for a mix of the backing tracks. The studio owner was a bit surprised as to why I wanted this doing but of course instrumentals were all the rage at the time. The tracks done were Heartbroken Memories, Are You Satisfied and Eddie Carlton- It Will Be Done.He had a cutting lathe so I had an acetate done of each track.The instrumentals weren't too bad but not up with something like Bari Track so they would be OK for B sides. Are You Satisfied was never used so it only exists as an acetate and the mono mixed tape. I've got the acetates of Heartbroken Memories and It Will Be Done but not Are You Satisfied. This probably went to Rollercoaster when they got Global's stock but as it wasn't labeled it may have got lost. It's no great loss but would be a nice addition for those who like quirky one-offs. Rick

Valances sleeve is from Leeds but I never went to the shop, anyone else know any thing about it. Shop sleeves seemed to be more common in the 50s as out of about 30 78s I've got 9 had a shop sleeve. The one in the photo is from Nottingham. Sydney Scarborough of Hull used to buy a lot of soul singles from Global Records in the mid and late 70s. Rick

A pair of blackbirds have built a nest in a bush just outside our kitchen window so I have tried to photo some of their comings and goings.The male always likes to land at the top of a small tree, look around and then land on the back of a chair before flying into the bush. The female prefers to wait on the shed roof before flying in. They are both very busy , coming back with another poor worm every 7 or 8 minutes. The nest and chicks are impossible to see and the local cats can't get to them. Whilst waiting to photo the blackbirds two sparrows landed on the ground by the bush. One of them was hopping about flicking its tail up and the other was following it and pecking at its behind. What's that all about? When it starts to get dark one or two bats fly up and down the back of the house, probably feeding on insects. I tried to photo this but all I got was a black screen. Rick

The Sam and Dave Norway show I've seen on a DVD before and is nothing like the shows they did in the UK . At a very tender age, my older brother and his mates took me to see Sam and Dave at the Manchester Odeon. It was a package tour with other Stax and Atlantic artists, possibly Joe Tex and Eddie Floyd but Sam and Dave blew the roof off. As soon as they came on the audience went wild , unlike the Norwegians who seemed very restrained or put off by the military looking security. Sam and Dave gave a brilliant performance with two or three encores , and really seemed to be enjoying themselves, no sign of any bad feelings between them. The band added to the show with great playing and moves, truly memorable and very impressionable to a young lad of thirteen. The Otis concert footage was awesome and shows what a tragedy his early death was. Next Friday (June 7th) 9 pm BBC 4 have a Bobby Womack documentary followed by a 1971 Ike and Tina Turner and Wilson Pickett concert. Rick

Anyone know why Eddie Parker - Love You Baby- was the only release on Ashford?The label did overseas deals, had a special designed logo and pressed demos so probably not a vanity project. Has Ms Chandler said anything about the label? Any explanation of the other one-off labels? Rick

Eddie Parker- Love You Baby - Ashford 1

Junior McCants- Try Me For Your New Love, and Darrell Banks- Open The Door To Your Heart on UK London are usually confirmed as no known issue. Assume this is still the case. Both have a good explanation for this,so must be a safe bet for non existing issue copies. Never seen Holly St James on issue, unfortunately seen demos and even worse, heard it. Rick

Not true, Paul Mooney (reply 46) is spot on. Imported records were supposed to have an MCPS sticker on them to show copyright was paid. At Global Records we used to put a couple of sheets of the stickers in the box when a new customer ordered some US records, but then "forgot" with their next order. Also any US Columbia record sold in the UK was supposed to have any mention of "Columbia" obliterated as EMI owned the Columbia name in the UK. Again this was done for a suspicious looking new customer but very rarely done unless EMI lawyers were getting twitchy. The holes in singles were done on a pillar drill with the singles in a twenty five count box ,the melted vinyl was just due to the heat caused by the drill bit. I've never heard of the heated needle theory, sounds a bit dangerous and impractical. Cut corners or a saw kerf on LP sleeves were done on woodwork type machines, again box and all. Little indie labels that didn't take returns or sell off returned stock didn't drill their singles. Rick

Roger The Cliff Nobles " Horse" demo looks as though it's one sided, so was there a demo of "Love is All Right" before this as I thought the Horse was the B side originally. The story was that radio DJs flipped "Love is All Right" for "The Horse" which would be tricky for a J/G single sided demo Rick