Ian Dewhirst

Nice one Keith. Some guy called Frank was on LOL. What year was the 4th year Easter Monday All-Dayer then? '74 or '75? Ian D

The first time I met Soul Sam was at a Whitchurch All-Dayer. I thought he was the caretaker for the hall at first until someone clued me in. I also remember seeing the first copy of "I Can't Help Loving You" with Paul Anka's name scratched out the same day. Happy times... Ian D

I bet there's a huge amount of collectors who won't want the 12" under any any circumstances and vice versa. Also, as I think I've said before, some 7" mixes are almost totally different songs to the 12"'s. The 12" of Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis's "Shine On Silver Moon" is a brilliant 12" Disco mix which sounds sensational over a big system whereas the 7" is a beautiful piece of Modern Soul IMO... I've had Disco collectors turn their noses up @ 7"'s and Northern/Modern collectors do likewise for 12"'s....... Ian D

A lot of it depends on the context of where you were hearing the song though. There was a world of difference hearing the full version of "Mainline" at say, Paradise Garage in New York in the 70's then hearing it in the context of a small UK club with a so-so system in the 80's. DJ's in the 70's would often do "running mixes" which would often run for 2 minutes as one song blended into the other and which could sound sensational at the right clubs, so there was a fashion for many songs to be over-extended in the 70's purely for that reason. For the most part I agree with you though. I never need to hear the full versions of "My Baby's Got E.S.P." or "Barely Breaking Even" again in my life! Ian D

Eddie Holman was a relatively short 12" coming in @ circa 5.50 so it fitted better than most. "Janice" clocked in @ just under 7 minutes but both are brilliant records which had definable hooks and were uptempo enough for the times. I bet some people still complained that they were too long though........ Ian D

I think it always has been on this scene Barry....7"'ers rule for most I believe. You could never get decent fidelity on album cuts in the 70's on regularly crap equipment and 12"'ers were often too long for an audience that was used to getting their fix inside 3 minutes........ Ian D

LOL, instant death indeed. I was never a fan of extended 12" Jazz instrumentals at the best of times but least of all @ Northern venues. The ones that worked for me, were the 12"'s which had a singable song attached - "This Will Be A Night To Remember", "Praying", "Nine Times", "Spead Love" etc, etc. Weirdly, these days, I seem to be selling a lot of the shorter 7" mixes of popular 12"'s because they tend to be a lot rarer than the 12"'s! Some are ridiculously hard to find these days........ Ian D

That record's like a 'who's who' of Northern Soul....... Chester and Gary Pipkin and Brice Coefield (misspelt on the labe) wrote the song and Mike Post produced it........ Ian D

That record's like a 'who's who' of Northern Soul....... Chester and Gary Pipkin and Brice Coefield (misspelt on the labe) wrote the song and Mike Post produced it........ Ian D

Promos also royalty-free! Ian D

Yeah, I hear you George, but compared to the non-stop barrage of numerous million-sellers that Columbia and Warners were scoring it was small potatoes at the time. I realised this loud and clear when I was running Simply Vinyl - a heavyweight vinyl album re-issue company in the late 90's. We did "Surrealistic Pillow" - Jefferson Airplane, a couple of Lou Reed's, a slew of Elvis releases and some other bits and bobs, but RCA was kinda sparse compared to Warners and Columbia where there was almost an embarassment of riches for that market. The whole C&W market is another that I don't know much about. Over the years I've maybe suggested that EMI and RCA were lacking in terms of mega-sellers in Pop and Rock, only to have someone come back at me and say stuff like, "oh but they were HUGE in C&W" etc, etc. But I've never really known exactly how huge the C&W market is. The only way that I could ever gauge it, was by the sheer amount of Merle Haggard and Ferlin Husky releases I had to plough through when I was looking for Soul. When I went to House Of Sounds in Philadelphia, I didn't stick around long as the numerous amount of huge crates which seemed to be filled with C&W releases meant that I would have wasted hours going through C&W crap just to get to anything decent. I remember thinking at the time, how many f*ckin' C&W records could they possibly make? The sheer amount was staggering. If they got a C&W hit could they sell half a million in Tennessee alone I wondered........ Ian D

Not to my knowledge. Cottillion only. Did this record ever get a following anywhere? Like crossover status or something....? Ian D

Similarly, the Cherry People's "And Suddenly", Keith's "Daylight Saving Time" and Gary Lewis & The Playboy's "My Heart's Symphony". Some people just can't hear records brimming with soul ay.....? However, I won't hear a bad word about Wombat's "I'm Gettin' On Life" for some bizarre reason........ Ian D

It'd be worth researching to see what kind of promo runs were being done by the majors between 1965 to 1975. You know, try and find an ex promo guy from that period who knows his stuff. Generally, promo runs are decided by the key promotion personnel at the time and the majors knew they had a competitive advantage simply by dint of their size, clout in the market and national distribution capability. Plus, some companies were run more effectively then others in terms of controlling promotional expenses. As an example, the most successful U.S. majors from '65 to '75 were Columbia and Warners who were constantly breaking new million-selling acts, whilst the least successful US majors were probably RCA and EMI, who couldn't break new acts to save their lives, but had a safety net with heritage acts like Elvis, the Beatles and the Beach Boys from pre '65 but which still sold in their millions. Corporate strategy is another key factor. Warners and Columbia were scoring with rock and pop acts and had operations which were untouchable in those markets, EMI, I think, were strong in back catalogue and C&W, RCA were selling truckloads of Elvis but very little else and Motown and Stax were cleaning up with black music. So Dave's point about how many promos RCA pressed is a good one. RCA at the time could fling a lot of stuff out there and hope that some of 'em may stick. It's very possible that if RCA had decided to really commit to black music (and they had Sam Cooke in the 50's and 60's remember), then they'd probably be pretty liberal about 'looking after' the market they were trying to muscle in on. Plus, technically, they'd be competing with Motown and Stax, who never knowingly under-pressed LOL, so it's entirely possible that RCA could do anywhere between 1-5K promo runs if they wanted to compete with Motown and Stax. I've found incredible runs of RCA promos on different trips all the way from L.A., Texas, Denver, Terre Haute, Nashville, Madison, Augusta and South Carolina. RCA pumped those promos EVERYWHERE. I always knew that if I bumped into, say, a Lorraine Chandler, Metros or Naked Truth RCA promo somewhere, then there was a king-hell opportunity to find others. Plus, every dealer seemed to regularly have decent RCA goodies. So I'm really curious about what kind of promo numbers they pressed around that time. We all know that RCA black issues are like gold-dust compared to the white promos but exactly how many were there? Also, I think people under-estimate the rarity of some of the later RCA stuff from the 70's. All the european guys love that Jon Lucien RCA promo EP but I've also heard 2 different late 70's RCA promos by unknown acts which I've never seen in my life and which are both brilliant. And I can't find 'em anywhere grrr........... I think RCA promos started to get scarcer from Herb Ward onwards....... Great thread! Ian D

Looks like it was signed for the world by Jay Boy and used to launch both the UK and US imprints..... Weird how it came to Jay Boy although, as Pete said earlier they were already issuing stuff from Bronco, Mustang, Jerhart etc via President, so maybe it was a logical step to set up a seperate imprint for stuff that was licensed in. Went to shit, from Jay Boy 2 soulwise for a while ay? Ian D

Interesting. If that's correct (and I can't find it on any Wheel playlists) then I'm wondering if was ever big anywhere before the mid 70's in that case? I always assumed that it was already an oldie by the time I got on the scene 'cos everybody seemed to know it and most people had copies........ ...I compared it earlier with Bunny Sigler which was another record that everyone seemed to know plus there were tons of copies and that broke huge despite being known and common at the time. It should sounded like it should have been a massive oldie ay? Ian D

Actually whilst we're on the subject, what was the deal with Doris Willingham Jay Boy 1? Was it simply licensed to Jay Boy period? It never had a US label other than those strange U.S. Jay Boy pressings.......... Ian D

That's pretty much exactly what happened in my view. I think the nature of Ed Kassners operation at the time was that they'd pick up whatever halfway decent catalogues they could and throw 'em out there to see what happened. So they got Mirwood, Shout, DC etc and then eventually got lucky with TK and started having hits. If the label knew about northern demand, then surely they'd have issued "Number One" by the Exciters rather than "Soul Motion" surely.....? Ian D

So even less point in Jay Boy releasing it yet again when there was no real demand....... Ian D

Not around my way they weren't. I've never heard "The Shotgun & The Duck" out anywhere in my life and "My Little Girl" was considered a cheapie and hardly ever got played in any clubs between '71-'75. I think all the Mirwood stuff got revitalised in the mid 70's when Soussan did those Soul Fox boots. I'm sure my "Temptation Walk"/"The Shotgun & The Duck" UK Jay Boy promo came out of Jumbo's 10p clearout box not long after it was issued, so whenever that was, there really wasn't much demand for it at the time......... Honestly most Mirwood stuff was fairly readily available following Jimmy Conwell and Richard Temple, so you'd be more likely to hear Mirwood records at a mid-week night rather than at any of the big venues, as unlikely as that seems. If you check any B&S club ads from that period, I very much doubt that you'll spot any Mirwood releases because they simply weren't rare enough by that point. Everyone had 'em. I mean, you couldn't give away "Baby Do The Philly Dog" by the Olympics on Mirwood in 1972 (Bradford Market was packed with 'em and they were in every £1 pack Soul Pack), yet Jay Boy still issued it anyway. Why? That's why I think they simply scheduled X amount of Mirwood releases to fulfil the contract.........could be wrong but that's what it looks like to me 'cos some of those releases really didn't make much sense at the time as they were all 60's recordings being released between 1970 to 1972 and many people had moved on fresher records by then. They weren't even old enough to be proper oldies by then! Ian D

Yeah, but since when were 'Shotgun & The Duck' and "My Little Girl" in-demand back then? I think these came out on Jay Boy as part of a long-term release schedule. As I said, my mate collected Jay Boy in the early 70's and we'd often ponder what was the point in many of their Mirwood releases. There wasn't any real demand to my knowledge apart from label completists and a handful of others....... Of course, regionally back then, different records broke in different areas. I don't remember "My Little Girl" getting hammered anywhere much before the mid 70's but it could have been big in the Midlands maybe. And, yes, "Oh My Darlin' was a Wheel spin originally I believe...... Ian D

I don't believe there was any demand when Jay Boy issued it. Same as Jackie's "The Shotgun and the Duck", Jackie Lee & Dolores Hall "Whether It's Right Or Wrong", the Shepperds "How Do You Like It", Bobby Garrett's "My Little Girl" etc, etc. Jay Boy was the UK outlet for Mirwood at the time so they may have been contractually obliged to issue a certain amount of singles. My mate, Syd from Heckmondwike collected Jay Boy and most of the Jay Boy soul releases were relatively easily available at the time. Plus Bradford Market was packed with Mirwood cut-outs as well, so all this stuff was pretty well-known throughout the north. In fact, I'd go as far to say that many of the Mirwood classics were overlooked because they were so easily available. These were the days when you could pick up Jackie Lee's "Darkest Days" on ABC for 60p on Global's wholesale list! Whenever I heard "Oh My Darlin" back then I just presumed it was a well-chosen cheap as chips play - in the same boat as Bunny Sigler's "Girl Don't Make Me Wait" in terms of being 'known' and fairly easily available. I can remember literally hundreds of copies of "Oh My Darlin'" unsold @ 25p each on Bradford market. It was always a brilliant record but maybe just too common for it's own good back then, if that makes sense. Still got the UK promo. I don't think I've ever heard a better 7" pressing in my life. The mastering is sensational....... Ian D

Philly Re-Grooved Vol 3 was going to come out at the end of October as another single CD but what happened was we suddenly got lucky with some long-lost master tapes. Only problem was that loads of the repertoire belonged to different companies -Buddah, Chelsea/Roxbury, Atlantic, Atco etc, so because the repertoire was so stunning - Melba Moore, The Spinners, The Ebony's, Bettye Swan, Blue Magic etc, etc we had to go through the laborious process of getting permission for Tom to remix and license the tracks etc, etc. So, in answer to your question, Philly Re-Grooved Volume 3 will be a double CD of some breath-takingly awesome Moulton mixes of some truly incredible records and will be out in mid January 2013. With Tom these projects are labours of love, so once we get going things get a momentum of their own. Plus he had to follow 'Philadelphia International: The Tom Moulton Remixes' (which is rapidly approaching 10K happy buyers) with something special right? It'll be a great start to the new year! Ian D

Philly Re-Grooved Vol 3 was going to come out at the end of October as another single CD but what happened was we suddenly got lucky with some long-lost master tapes. Only problem was that loads of the repertoire belonged to different companies -Buddah, Chelsea/Roxbury, Atlantic, Atco etc, so because the repertoire was so stunning - Melba Moore, The Spinners, The Ebony's, Bettye Swan, Blue Magic etc, etc we had to go through the laborious process of getting permission for Tom to remix and license the tracks etc, etc. So, in answer to your question, Philly Re-Grooved Volume 3 will be a double CD of some breath-takingly awesome Moulton mixes of some truly incredible records and will be out in mid January 2013. With Tom these projects are labours of love, so once we get going things get a momentum of their own. Plus he had to follow 'Philadelphia International: The Tom Moulton Remixes' (which is rapidly approaching 10K happy buyers) with something special right? It'll be a great start to the new year! Ian D

$1000 for a cracked copy? The world gets weirder every day...... Ian D