Sharon Cooper

um your'e right Going to places you don't want to go to to get people you don't really want to come, to come? lol but i guess they are the ones who help you buy that next must have record.

Love N/S have donre since the early 7ts but like some up to date artists especially Akon and have bought his latest album. Does this stuff get played at so called modern venues or is it to modern? Just wondered. Chris

ok maybe Out on the floor Do I Love You My weakness is You 9 Times Out Of Ten Sking In The Snow The Night It Takes Two A Little Misunderstanding Reaching For The BEst

I haven`t posted anything of any substance on here for quite a while now: Used to do a regular blog and enter into debate but to be honest after some time the events surrounding the Northern scene became stale or me. I would never ever stop listening to the music or being interested in anything new to my ears (After 36 years that would be very hard to do because the music is part of who I am) but the `political` (for want of a better word), childish, moronic,pathetic activities of some around here has made me very very choosy where I go and also who I want to associate with. I have scanned through these posts and see the same arguments and viewpoints posted again: Never the twain shall meet, I think and good luck to the dying brigade who think they are `above` the handbaggers but who will dance night after night to the same sounds that the `handbaggers` are dancing to in a different venue! There is definately elitism in this scene but from my way of thinking the elitism comes from those who think they are the `in crowd` by virtue of the uniforms they wear and the people they associate with. As the years roll by (51 tomorrow!) the sadder I think it has all become. The reality about events closing down is partly due to the `fly by nights` starting up and soon going down the pan due to lack of support, venues closing etc. but more I think (and remember I am only talking about from my own exerience) from events being started on the same night as others. Human nature will always dictate that people like to try something different and if given the choice will do so. The succesful event(In terms of numbers of people through the door) seems to be now the nights which give a cross section of music which the majority of the population (Not afficienados of the genre) can have a jig to. The smaller local events are more to do with promoters notions of 'showcasing' themselves as the `In Crowd `who are proponents of something the rest of us are outside of. To my mind this is elitist (The very thing they would accuse the chinstrokers of being) These nights are for the punters an oasis, where they meet with likeminded people and who stick together (Herd mentality springs to mind). This sector operates as a self-referential 'closed shop' that, in practice, is only expected to engage with itself. A monopolistic or closed shop mentality is one that excludes anything new or different is what is being offered. Well thats for them not for me. There is no doubt the scene as it stands locally today will die and there are those around who have the needle prepared to inject the final medication to end its life. These are the ones that would then quite happily move onto the next up and coming genre (If they aren`t too old by then!) 80`s/90`s nostalgia perhaps?

An attempt to keep it in Scotland/uk erhhh isn't it from the USA?

would like a copy of this, if anybody would be so kind. Chris

Exactly my thoughts! I would have classed myself a `true soulie` from 1974 onwards but bought my clothes from Birdcage and Image in Nottm at that time which was a shop with class and stuff cost a bit more there because they were not of the Chelsea Girl genre. So the clothes I wore were modern for the time but not full circle skirts with miles of yardage and 12 inch waistbands with hundreds of buttons on. BecauseI wore these clothes at Cleethorpes, Wigan, Palais/Bali Hai, Brit etc.etc. does this mean I was any less a `soulie` than someone who has picked up the scene from a few old films they`ve seen and copied what others wear because they are construed to be the new `in crowd` Each to their own but I`ll stick with living in 2009 and not a distorted image of what is believed to be 1979! Sharon

Uummmm my names Chris

My Missus has a BSC in Health & Social Care. is a qualified RGN. is a qualified RMN and currently teaches 2 courses on Pre reg mental Health with the O.U. and is a specialist nurse/network lead nurse for West Derbyshire Continuing Care. Now when she tells Me i'm mental I can't argue with her Now having said that things like this, maybe not as extreme, happen all the time and I would think those involved shouldn't worry about it too much they know they have a good regular night going and a chat with the committe themselves should sort it.

When I do go out, I do it with an open mind and the desire for it to be good. That means people who want to dance, a wide variety of music and a good venue. But, usually and maybe the problem is most nighters play the same stuff, its disappointing! I often drive the 400 mile round trip up North to attend a nighter.....its a long way believe me. Especially when a nighter advertises itself as something, but fails to deliver. The same guests seem to be doing the rounds, playing the same stuff! So you can attend three different, big nighters in a short space of time and hear the same stuff hammered! I want to hear some NEW people playing out, then I have a chance of being excited and dancing a bit more (and I love dancing!). Its almost like a circuit of the same old same old...So, YES, its probably about going out less, which my recent experiences have certainly inspired.

Steady on now I was born there and spent my formative first 14 years there: Must say it has gone down the pan a lot since then! people are people wherever they are and the low lifes who did this could be replicated throughout the country: sign of the times and all that. Sharon

Cause I'm 54. have 3 grown kids i like to spend time with , a busy life, a busy week, want to play golf, have only 2 days in a week to relax, can't afford the travelling, often the music sends me to sleep, shift system not compatible ,the dog wants walking, am often djing at soul nights and am basically to knackered to be up all night at the weekend. Apart from that can't think of anything really. chris

the rest of the question was, 'what makes a soul record A SOUL RECORD, or should I say a soul song Cause Mick Hucknell, Tom Jones are now considered 'soul Singers' when once upon a time only black singers were thought of that way, but checking out our own genre N/S it's littered with white guys singing 'soul' so the question is what makes soul music soul music whatever the ethnic background.

huh huh huh

Heard it on the radio last week and thought it sounded good. Since then I must have heard it 50 times! One of lads is constantly playing it: Obviously has the right sound for 19 year olds and old stages like myself!! Sharon

https://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h1May52b1RQ Totally in pieces here! So sad and so brave. A truly truly great man. Sharon

Penny Valentine guardian.co.uk, Friday October 17 2008 23.07 BSTArticle historyThere are few singers who could evoke the kind of divine desperation that Levi Stubbs brought to the work of the Four Tops during the 1960s and 70s, be it the frantic pacing his voice implied as he searched through Seven Rooms of Gloom or the moment after the musical hiatus in Bernadette when he vocally clawed back the title object of his desire. For Stubbs, who has died aged 72, had the most dramatic voice of all the Tamla Motown artists during that label's golden era. Yet despite a catalogue of hit singles, it was probably for one song alone that the singer, and the group he fronted, carved a historic niche for themselves. Reach Out, I'll Be There, a tumultuous example of romantic devotion, was released in 1966. The high woodwind motif and incessantly demanding rhythm section that marked the record was to become a trademark for the group's sound. Reach Out provided Motown with an early number one hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Four Tops with a musical recipe for success that lasted them for a decade. Levi Stubbs was born Levi Stubbles and brought up in Detroit, a cousin of the singer Jackie Wilson. Like many black American teenagers in the early 1950s, he and three of his schoolfriends - Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Lawrence Payton and Renaldo "Obie" Benson - formed a vocal group, The Four Aims, mainly playing school graduation dances and church functions. With harmonies redolent of The Inkspots, they quickly moved on to the jazz and R&B circuit, working with Billy Eckstine and Count Basie, as well as Betty Carter, Della Reese, Brook Benton and with Wilson himself. By 1956 Stubbs had shortened his surname and the group had signed to Chess records, released Kiss Me Baby and changed their name, apparently to avoid confusion with the close harmony group The Ames Brothers. Two further undistinguished singles - Ain't That Love, for Columbia, and Where Are You, for Riverside - followed without success. In 1959, the young Detroit-based car worker Berry Gordy started Tamla Motown, and the Four Tops signed to the company four years later. Although the group were keen to record jazz and were going to go onto the Workshop label subsidiary, Gordy had already employed a brilliant young in-house writing and production trio for Motown - brothers Eddie and Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier - and it was to be the Four Tops and the Supremes who would benefit most from their talent. The Four Tops spent some months providing back-up vocals to other Motown groups, including the Supremes on When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, but in 1964 released their first single on the label. Holland, Dozier and Holland's Baby I Need Your Loving went straight into the American chart. Although it started pleasantly enough, with the group in close harmony, it was marked by finger clicks, sinuous bass and strings, which became key ingredients of the Four Tops sound, on later records joined by hard tambourine and searing sax breaks. But it was after the initial chorus and on the line "empty nights echo your name" that the song lifted off, bringing Stubbs startlingly broken-edged vocals to the fore, his voice imbuing the song with a drama beyond its paper worth. The success of the track was swiftly followed by a string of hits which repeated the formulae, including I Can't Help Myself, It's The Same Old Song and, in May 1966, the Stevie Wonder/Ivy Hunter song Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, produced by Hunter herself. It was three months after that hit that Motown released Reach Out, I'll Be There. Despite its complexity and its use of minor chords, the record instantly became a number one in both America and Britain. Its success and its place as one of the great Motown tracks might well have overwhelmed the singers themselves, but it was the combination of their harmonies and the raw energy of Stubbs' voice that struck the popular imagination and made it a classic. Not as mellifluous as Smokey Robinson nor as street-tough as the Temptations, the sound of Stubbs' voice , and the songs it was used on, seemed like an early example of a masculinity in crisis. Reach Out relied for its impact on his extraordinary tussle with the lyrics, driving them foreward with that resonant "hup and holler" - the sudden "work shout" - rare for the white pop charts of the 60s, but familiar to black record buyers raised on churchgoing and gospel, and hence soul music's mix of the sacred and profane. Yet ironically, when Holland, Dozier and Holland had first played the song to the group, Stubbs had disliked it and initially pressed for one of the others to sing lead. That same year the group came to Britain, headlining at the showcase Sunday concerts promoted by the Beatles manager Brian Epstein at London's Saville Theatre, later selling out the Royal Albert Hall. The group would often enjoy more chart success in Britain than in America over the following years, and much of that was due to their live appearances - a fact further reflected in the high sales of their live albums. At a time when young white British groups were struggling to give a passable account of their records, the Four Tops - like all Motown's acts having gone through rigorous schooling in stage presentation - were led by Stubbs through seamless renditions of their hits; his voice at full throttle, their harmonies impeccable, the whole topped off by precise dance routines. In 1967 Holland, Dozier and Holland left Motown. The Four Tops fell back on recording non-original material. Although their choice of songs, by white writers outside the soul stream, struck critics as odd, in fact their treatment of Tim Hardin's If I Were A Carpenter (1967), The Left Banke's Walk Away Renee (1968) and Jimmy Webb's Macarthur Park (1971) were all instantly transformed by Stubbs' yearning and were all hits. A smooth version of an old Tommy Edwards song, It's All in the Game (1970), took them back into the American chart, as did their duet with the Supremes on a re-vamp of the Ike and Tina Turner hit River Deep, Mountain High (1971), but things at Motown had changed. By the early 70s the label had switched from being a family-run firm to a Los Angles based corporation. In 1972, along with other groups, like Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Four Tops left it. The Four Tops had been the most stable group in the history of Motown. A tight unit on stage and off, they never indulged in internal bickering or personnel changes, and, unlike many of his Motown contemporaries, Stubbs never contemplated going solo, staying close to Benson, Payton and Fakir and always living in Detroit. Although Stubbs and the group went on to enjoy the odd hit on other labels, returned at one point to Motown, and never stopped working the American cabaret circuit, the combination of changing tastes and a lack of material that suited Stubbs' vocal style meant they never really recaptured their original power. When Lawrence Payton died in 1997 they refused to replace him and worked for some time as a trio, re-named the Tops, until they finally conceeded to needing the extra voice and adding the Temptations Theo Peoples. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999, the group had represented a key moment in popular music and Stubbs' voice continued to enthrall a generation of younger musicians. Two decades after the release of Reach Out, in 1986, Billy Bragg wrote and recorded Levi Stubbs' Tears. In 2000 Stubbs suffered a stroke, and did not perform again. He is survived by his wife Clineice Townsend, five children and three sisters. Levi Stubbs (Stubbles), singer, born April 6 1936; died October 17 2008 This obituary has been updated since the death of its author in 2003

Whowww how do you replace that, you can't thanks for that post

Well what can you say, which superlatives do you choose to pay homage to one of the greatest soul voices ever, absolutely loved Levis voice and respect to the 4 Tops for staying togehter over the years RIP and hats of to Mr Levi Stubbs.

Malc and everybody else who doesn't know, the dancers you saw tonight are the 'northern' dancers on the Souled Out film

Should have known better after KEVH mentioned how bad the programme was last week, Back in the late 70s Sharon & I returned home from work and while having dinner watched a news magazine progamme, think it was Midlands Today. They had an item about the revival of the Teddy Boy scene. There they sat in their drapes with their brillcreamed hair and flowing skirts etc, I have never forgotten that article and still remember them talking about young people getting into it. Thought then how stupid they all looked and now it's our turn. Don't mind people sitting and taking about the scene with their baggies etc on because it relates to their youth have a real problem though with the thought that todays youth want to go round looking like it.

Got my stamped F/w of ebay for £40.00

You Give boots as presents, how cruel is that

how about a white bloke with a black backing group with a white backing band on a white mans label paid for by a black blokes money thread chris

Ambassadors. To Much Of A good Thing. Now perhaps we should have a thread about how many tunes were done by black singers cause it seems all our N/s favs were mainly white Chris