Seano

I hope people are able to pass on everyone's respects to his family, and to Tommy himself if he's still holding on (not clear on the thread?), and for me, stand out track is this one:

There was also a terrific 2 CD plus 1 DVD small box released in 2007 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stax, produced and compiled by Cheryl Pawelski and Rob Bowman. The DVD is 'Respect Yourself, The Stax Records Story' - really good, runtime 1 hour and 54 minutes. Favourite track on the 2 CDs for me is The Emotions, 'So I can love you.'

Looks interesting thanks for this. I remember Eddie Hubbard talking about a person (or perhaps couple of people) doing an academic piece about Northern Soul and asking people to contribute. Maybe it was this? Anyway, got it bookmarked now.

Yes as others have replied, pre-ordered it via Amazon. Thanks to the good people here on Soul Source alerting us to it being announced for release.

Yes I agree, can't imagine it's due to disappointment!

Exactly the same for me. The packaging, info booklet and the vinyl 45s themselves all seem vey good quality; absolute bargain at £24.99!

Got this a few weeks ago at Head in Leamington. Very pleasantly surprised and a very good booklet with it too, very similar to the ones Kent do - colour images, good layout, covering each track/artist, written by Dean Rudland. Good price too, which was part of my thinking I'd give it a go.

Bill Harris, Uptown Saturday Night. 2-1.

Strange indeed, and just listing the records for 3/4 of the review doesn't make for a very interesting read. Nothing wrong with enjoying the classics, don't get me wrong, just that it would be of more interest to me to hear a bit about the club, how well attended, sense of where punters travel from, I don't know, just a bit less of the lists!

Still love pulling records off the shelves and playing them. Sadly it's quite sporadic, but record fairs help and give me a fresh burst of discs to check out. Fridays do tend to be a favourite. I've got all of them all over the floor at the moment planning to sort out better shelving (Ikea is great but Ivar doesn't fit the alcoves fully and I want more space!). The physicality of handling the records just feels special, and I love the visual treat of label designs, especially where the quality of the artistic skills can feel a bit like the rough and ready brilliance of the track itself which isn't polished but has something just right about it that we all appreciate. What I struggle with is letting go of the often scrappy paper sleeves and moving onto good quality card ones, and in many cases I've kept the paper one slipped inside the card one.

I did get a pack of bootlegs in the '70s (not knowing they would be at the time) from somewhere down in Surrey I think (Gwen Owens, Porgy and the Monarchs etc), but the Soul Bowl packs were definitely the most interesting. As I didn't have many records at the time, I was thankfully fairly liberal about what to keep, plus I was happy enough if I just liked it, irrespective of whether it struck me as 'Northern' or not. I must have got rid of quite a few still, but I think I'd typically keep maybe 80 or even 90 from a 100 pack. I enjoyed flicking through and playing a few first ones that I thought I knew, and while doing so, going through the rest checking both sides and deciding a series to next play through. As you say, tastes change over time and I still find flip sides to the ones I thought were the 'good' ones that catch my interest. Tape swopping was the key for me, needing to dig into what I had to try and keep on top of returning the favour of great tapes of music that dropped through the letterbox! A bit off topic, but I got some really good general soul 45's from Black Knight back in 1998, stuff like Pat Cooley 'I'm giving it all I got', Shirley Brown 'I don't play that' and Frederick Knight 'When it ain't right with my baby.'

Many thanks for posting, got my order in too.

I missed this when it was posted, so just to add best wishes to his family and friends, even if he had only ever taken those first steps with Stax we all have a huge debt to the man.

Fascinating thanks Chalky (and David Welding).

I went with my wife and a friend last night to the final performance in Northampton. We all thought it was excellent, and one area where I'd agree with the pretty poor review in the Guardian is that Abiona Omonua sang superbly in the role of Tammi Terrell. We had brilliant seats in what turned out to be the 2nd row bang centre (should have been 3rd row), with the 1st row removed so that they could have steps up to the stage allowing Marvin's two sisters to occasionally step out of the frame for their narration of the story. I think the Guardian review by Lyn Gardner misses the point in criticising the play for the focus on Mavin's immediate family and that we hear very little of his music. There are so many compilation CDs, reissues and downloads and all sorts of ways you can hear his music; the whole point of this was to shine a light on a possible interpretation of his relationship with siblings and parents. Whether it does so correctly or not may be up for debate, but giving it a bad review for not being an end to end rehash of his songs is plain dumb.

Finished it just half an hour ago. Excellent book, lots of great detail without losing the page-turner feel of a well written piece of literature. It brings people and the music to life; despite the sad personal note at the end of the book, it is an uplifting account of the past 50 years and points towards decades to come. Although I recognised aspects of myself in the various references to the obsessive nature of our craft, I did manage to resist reading the glossary and index! I was also very pleased to see that it had been very well edited - although I found Detroit '67 interesting to read, it was littered with typos. Look forward to the next book!

The book arrived on Friday and after a very quick flick through I'm looking forward to reading it - and your review makes it sound like I won't be disappointed!

Certainly like this one, not sure about the white vinyl though.

Always used to put this on tape swops, great track and who'd have passed by on seeing a 45 on Motown by Major Lance? Had to be good news and good to see it getting a bit of a spotlight here.

My wife spotted this in the 'What's On' guide for the Royal & Derngate theatre in Northampton. From Friday 20th May to Saturday 11th June, tickets between £10 and £29. The play is written by Roy Williams, and the blurb says it was in close collaboration with members of the family of Marvin Gaye. "A dramatic thriller about one of the most influential musicians of our time." Of course quite a lot of us will know how it ends, but it sounds worth a punt! Soul - new play

I don't care if her eyes are redI don't care if her nose is longI don't care if she's underfedI don't care if her clothes are wornFirst I look at the purse! Lyrics (link)

Tremendous work here Chalky, great detail and it more than makes the point that you set out to document about life in the scene post-Wigan.