Chris L

Thanks Mark I have to be honest and say that i heard it for the very first time about 2 weeks ago (don't ask) I fell in love with instantly Chris L

I'd be interested in the Motown CD's Pete, got a list of them ? Chris L

It's not that important any more Ian, what people should know that an awful lot of stuff came from the London area in about 72/73, including things like Duke Browner, Fuller Bros, Sweet Things, Cooperettes, there were some decent places to find stuff, all dead cheap, the Cooperetees cost me about 35 pence !!! People like Dave Burton, Dave Rivers, Nigel Martin plus the Record Corner gang were giving DJ's like Keith M, Jebby & Ian L stuff to play and I have to say they were really tops in givin these records a chance, not sure how'd that work today !! I'm in a great mood today, the Stoke afterglow still working........... Chris L

Graham Warr did NOT discover the Soul Twins, I did !!! In summer 1972, I called Ian Levine, played him over the telephone and brought down the Torch, there he played it for the first time. The following weeks both Tony Jebb & Keith Minshul tried to buy off me. I pulled it out of Record Corners basement. This is well documented, listen to the Richard Searling shows August 1999 or ask Ian Levine. I didn't set the Northern Soul world on fire but did bring a few unknowns up from London in 1972/73. Chris Lalor

Could some lovely person mail me thru some label scans, I understand that there are 2 types of labels (one blue the green ?) also some prices would be handy too. Was it ever booted ? Many thanks Chris L

I suspect that was because CHESS had such a reputation for deep soul, whereas Motown appealed constantly to white pop fans too. Had CHESS perhaps had a subsidary label that would have replicated Motown who knows, they certainly had the clout to take Motown on, the Chess brothers were canny businessmen too. However they followed up with a few similar "Rescue Me" type tunes for Fontella that didn't do her cred any good. Having said that, what a sound "Rescue Me" is, that intro, that beat, the singign, it's got it all, that black UK Chess copy in it's original sleeve is a treasured item in my house, I only ever DJ'd once in my life, that was my intro record. Chris L

Some of the greatest Northern Soul records of all time are out and out Motown soundalikes. The 2 really go hand in hand, although when I 1st started in NS in 71/72 there were very few Motown records played. I do find that the production quality on Motown to be on the highest strata, just listen to Velvelettes - Lonely, lonely girl, the arrangements and production are wonderful. On a personal view I just Motown, always did and always will, when I'm in me room bashing out stuff on my PC I tend to put on Motown stuff quite frequently, never a duffer........... Chris L

Jimmy Soul Clark - I'll be your champion - VG+ - £50.00 Not for one minute suggesting anything untoward, just an observation the label seems a very light red ? Mine is a deep red & also a demo so maybe a different colour for that reason? Obviously I know there's white demos. great record anyway & a great price

Let's hope so Naked women can ask for a discount Chris L

Jimmy Soul Clark - I'll be your champion - VG+ - £50.00 SOLD The Dells - Run for cover - EX - £28.00 Madeline Bell - Picture me gone - MOD - EX+ - £18.00 thanks for looking Chris L

I once though I'd "discovered" a source (pardon the pun) in St Louis, MO, in Hampton, The Record Exchange, went thru all his singles, pulled about 50 or so cheapes, few good one in there, nothing more than £50 though. Anyway I told afriend about it he sent some mates over to go thru the 500.000 singles he had in his basement and after about an hour into the searching Nancy Yahiro arrrives at the place . Well they didn't find much apart from about 500 Chi-Lite and 600 Royalettes I want to do "one last go" at record huntin' before I go, been saving up me air miles, once you get started ploughing thru all those boxes something weird takes over my body and I seem to go into a trance "I'll be Baark" Chris L

Ians big story is the Goodwill secondhand store in Miami in 71 (I think) he spent 3 weeks if I'm not mistaken, going thru rows and rows of demos, a whole herd of stuff came back, La Rues, etc. He bought some 3000 singles at 5 cents each................he's such a generous chap One wonderrs if some barn, shed, old warehouse may still be full of old singles that no-one's yet touched. Contrary to popular myth, get outside of the big cities in the US and it becomes extremely parochial with communication with the outside world pretty thin to say the least. Once driving between the 2 freeways that criss-cross Penn state I drove thru many a hicksville and stopped at a junk shop I saw in the main street, popped in asked if he had any records for sale he brought out a small box of about 100 singles and I bought a copy of the Ambers - Potion of love, back in the Pontiac, all in about 10 minutes. Chris L

That's a good point Pete, as you know your self something's worth what someone will pay for it. In the Northern Soul world that gets magnified 10 ten times, so when something's worth £300 there'll be a nutter out there (or maybe more thn 1) who'll pay the doubel, treble or even quadruple so he can go down his local club and show if off. This particulur example is already bid over £500. Chris L

As a young lad of 14 or 15 (in 1967, yes I'm that old ) it was the Tamla Motown and their soundalikes tunes that seemed to stay swirling around in my head when I should have been studying for some sort of school work or career. At 17 I was hanging out at those concrete monuments The Mecca & Lacarnos in London and a lot of soul music got played. Thing is end 69 that all seemed to change to funk shyte, reggae and a loada pop. We still wanted things like "You've been cheatin', etc" luckily I had a mate who was a DJ and he'd buy his records from Record Corner. After getting to know the people who worked there and they knew our tastes it was Tony Rounce who suggested to us "Go North Young man". After our 1st trip to the Cats & the Mecca in 72 we were hooked. In those days there very very few "different walks of life" soulies, very much a working class thing. I think we shocked each other by our differences, the clothes, money cars, etc but by 'eck lad we didn't arf like them norverners. Our fellow Londoners thought us quite mad, they would ask us "what ja doin' diss weekend" "We're going to Stoke On Trent" it really did sound quite bizarre at the time. Getting there in a bashed Cortina Mk I was even more weird, but as they say is a another story. Chris L

Got it thanks

Wasn't he a sort of "test driver" for Bacrach & David, if a song worked with him they'd shove it out to someone like Dionne Warwick. I always felt that he's the sort of bloke you'd like to have living next door to, by all accounts a top type guy and a wonderful singer to boot. If it's a white pop singer then my fav is Elaine McFarlane, it's a sort of a puberty thing as for a soul one then probably Chris Bartley, although it may well be that Van McCoy could make you even sound good Ady Chris L

Well received, thanks.

As a young lad in the early 70T's I was desperately jealous of those people who could afford to get the US and buy records, I really was. However I got older and Northern Soul became just a distant memory. In 1991 I joined a large US company and from 1993 onwards I started to regulary visit the US. At that time it never interested me to go a huntin' for vinyl but after being tracked down for SWONS I decided to give it a go. I wrote an article for This Old Soul fanzine about my first trip : https://www.thisoldsoul.com/chrl1.html However the real gem find came curiously enough via an Ebay seller. I'd just won a demo of the Younghearts (it was the year 2000 BTW) and the seller said "If there's anything else you're looking for I've got 85.000 old records in new condition and I might just have it"....................well.....................I replied that I was going to be in the US a month later could I come along and take a look at what he had. I wasn't really but decided this had be about the best chance of getting me hands on anything. Anyway the wife and I took a holiday in New York, after a week I dropped her off at Newark airport for the flight back to Brussels, I hired a car and drove to New Kensington in the grimy state of Pennsylvania. I found the place....oh oh oh talk about white trash, yikes. The blokes house was a filthy tip, he didn't work, he lived on a phoney union organsied disability allowance, his wife had left him some 5 years earlier, why was I not surprised! Anyway the deal was that his best mate had just died, he had been a juke-box repair man he changed all the records on the juke boxes in the area. This bloke had lived thru the Great Despression and had learned never to throw anything away, including all the 45 records that had passed thru his hands. All the records were stewn around this mans house (I referred to him as Dirty Eddie :-). I spent 2 days there and went thru about 75% of what he had. Arriving at 8.30 in the morning and leaving at 10.30pm at night. It really was quite a dodgy area, on the 2nd night I heard a gun fire, 5 shots, I clung to my hard found vinyl no badboy was gonna take 'em away without a fight..................... What did I leave with, 3 copies of the Trends, 2 Willie Kendricks, 2 Art Freeman, 1 Major Lance, 2 Jerry Cooks, 3 Emanuel Laskys - Peace loving, plus loads of other oldies worth about £25 - £75 a go. I paid the guy 470 dollars for 480 records, I didn't sell them all but the ones I did sell I got nearly £5000 for. Whilst I was there Dirty Eddie kept telling me that he'd made contact with someone I knew (it turned out to be Pete Smith). I do remember walking from Eddies house on the 2nd day heading back to Newark and counting the steps from his front door to the car thinking 2 things - will I have time to duck when I hear the gun shot and things like this don't happen to me I don't normally get this lucky. Well I understand that Mick Smith went there abut 2 weeks after I'd been and in Northern Soul record terms I had only left a Lee Roye. I still smile a small smile when I think about it, wonder how many other Dirty Edies are out there ? Chris L

Received and AOK it's on it's way........................

All are US originals unless otherwise specified, play great on my decks, I can scan thru photos of labels & vinyl upon request, postage £1.75 for a single 45, add 45P per record thereafter. sol = sticker on label srlL = sticker residue on label wol = writing on label ftl = felt pen writing on label dr = drill hole xl = X on label The Soul Twins - Quick change artist/Give the man a chance - Karen EX++ (near mint -) dr - old store stock. £95.00 SOLD Artistics - This heart of mine - Okeh - VG+ £38.00 - plays great SOLD Ike & Tine Turner - Dust my broom - Tangerine - MINT £25.00 Johnny Wyatt - This thing called love - President (original issue) MINT - £20.00 SOLD J J Barnes - Our love is in the pocket - Revilot -wol -VG+ £58.00 SOLD Sweet Things - I'm in a world of trouble - Date - EX++ (near mint -) £65.00 Tony Clarke - Landslide - Chess - EX - plays great - £30.00 SOLD Dells - Run for cover - Chess - EX - plays great - £30.00 The Marvelettes - I'll keep holding on - Tamla - small xol- EX - £20.00 Christine Cooper - Heartaches away my boy - Parkway (rare issue) DR - VG+ £175.00 SOLD Hank Jacobs - Rocking with Elijah - Call Me (demo) - ftl - EX - £48.00 SOLD Contours - Just a little misunderstanding - Gordy (rare white demo) EX - £15.00 SOLD Edwin Starr - My weakness is you - Soul - EX+++ - wol - £12.00 Barbara Banks - River of tears - Veep demo - EX - very small srl- £47.00 SOLD Tyrone Barkley - Man of value - Midsong - MINT - £20.00 Ad Libs - Nothing worse than being alone - SHARE - Mint £10.00 James Carr - That's what I want to know - Goldwax - VG+ - £10.00 Lou Johnson - Unsatisfied - Big Top - VG+ - £10.00 SOLD Denise La Salle - A love reputation - Tarpon - G+ (plays all the way thru no skips or jumps) £5.00 SOLD Sandy Winns - A touch of Venus - Champion - Ex - £30.00 - sol. The Spellbinders - Help me - UK CBS (the original 1966 issue) - EX - £15.00 SOLD the Spellbinders - Chain reaction - UK CBS (the orginal 1966 issue) - EX++ - £12.00 SOLD Shawn Robinson - My dear heart - Minit demo - VG+ - XL - £110 Darrell Banks - Somebody somewhere needs you - Revilot - EX+++ - £12.00 - plays mint SOLD Walter Jackson - Uphill climb to the bottom - Okeh - Mint minus £12.00 SOLD Major Lance - Investigate - Okeh - mint minus - £24.00 Gene McDaniels - It's a lonely town - Liberty - mint minus still in it's original Liberty sleeve - £12.00 Kim Weston - Helpless - Gordy - looks VG - plays EX - ftl - £8.00 SOLD The Velvelettes - Lonely, lonely girl am I - VIP - VG+ - £40.00 SOLD All my records are guaranteed - not happy - money back with a thanks for looking Chris L

Sort of reminds me a bit, well in fact not at all, but it's an Ian Levine thing so well worth posting. When he found her and brought her accross to the UK for her first gig, as a sign of gratitude she gave him her only copy of this.........................................signed all over the label "To Ian love Sandi".....................made it worth more or less ? BTW I wass her driver don't you know, honest to God I was, ask her.............. Chris L

Ja ventje, je hebt hier geen vrienden gemaakt. Stom om over de aankoop prijs te stuffen en dan nog zotter zeggen dat je geen soul music graag hoort, man gij zijt een crack, dertien honderd dollar, laat ons weten voor wat het verkoopt, mischien zijn er nog gekke Britten die dat sort geld betalen. Ikke niet in ider geval............................... Chris L

I've seen a red boot but not a multi-couled one............ Chris L

Remember one night when Levine, Neil Mason, Dave Lowe and a few others came over to Leeds looking for him ( 'cause he'd done them). He lived in a flat in Headingley,but we were unsuccessful in breaking in ( it was on the second floor) and we were law abiding citizens ( apart from the odd spliff, gear etc). Happy days Julian