Occasional Albums Thing 020 - Various Artists “The Wigan Casino Story”/“Out On The Floor”/“Leapers, Sleepers & Creepers”/“Soul Super Bowl”/“The Magic Touch”/“New Breed R&B”

Cheating again by lumping a bunch of themed compilations together in one post. I guess the first one in that list tells you what this is about…this is Northern Soul.

The little Mod from our previous post about Motown eventually flexed his Soul wings and started to look North. This didn’t happen until the late 90’s and almost entirely on CD. There were endless comps produced by Goldmine Soul Supply and Ace/Kent Records that charted the story of Northern Soul, from it’s beginnings as a continuation of the (waning) Mod scene in the late 60’s at clubs like the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, through its heyday in the 70’s at Wigan Casino, its time on life support supported by a hardened faithful in the 80’s at Stafford’s Top Of The World and its current seeming ubiquitousness in the 90’s and onward.

The question is often asked “what is Northern Soul ?”. Southern Soul, that’s easy, a style of Soul music produced in the United States, based around studios in Southern states and exemplified by artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Cissy Houston and Irma Thomas. Northern Soul does not have quite so obvious a definition. It is (in the main) Black American Soul music, in a style trying to emulate the great Motown hits but that (mostly) were never hits themselves. As Soul music moved on toward the end of the 60’s into new genres like Crossover, Psychedelic Soul and eventually Funk, Disco and Jazz-Funk, a hardcore of Soul fans still wanted to hear and dance to that earthier, early 60’s sound, and DJ’s in the North of England like Roger Eagle at the Twisted Wheel catered to that audience. Other venues began spinning these older style Soul records for kids who would travel to hear these records.

By the early 70’s venues across the North-West of England and the North Midlands, the Golden Torch in Stoke, the Highland Rooms at the Mecca Ballroom in Blackpool, Va-Va’s in Bolton, The Catacombs in Wolverhampton and of course the legendary Wigan Casino, were filled every weekend with kids wanting to dance all night to obscure soul records. This also saw the rise of what today would be known as “superstar” DJ’s. These records were hard to come by and if a particular DJ had a record that you wanted to hear you couldn’t just go to your local record shop, or YouTube, you had to travel to hear that DJ play it. So the likes of Ian Levine, Richard Searling, Kev Roberts, Soul Sam and others gathered followings.

These comps on Goldmine (Kev Roberts label) and Ace/Kent (where latter-day DJ Ady Croasdell is a consultant) gather together the best of tunes from those early days and many records which have been turned up at the longest running Northern Allnighter in the world, presented by Ady Croasdell, which is ironically resident at the 100 Club in London !

When you see film of dancers at a 70’s all-nighter it is usually footage shot at Wigan Casino for an ITV “This England” documentary in 1977. I don’t know what was playing but it could very easily have been Sam Ward’s pounding, gospel tinged “Sister Lee” or Jackie Lee’s gorgeous “Oh My Darlin’”, maybe it was Chuck Wood’s thundering “Seven Days Too Long” and quite possibly two of the better known Northern tunes, Al Wilson’s “The Snake” or Dobie Gray’s superb “Out On The Floor”. Or maybe it was “Superlove” by David & The Giants or “Nobody But Me” by the Human Beinz. Which presents one of those anomalous answers to the question “what is Northern Soul ?”.

Back in those 70’s days the Black American soul records the audience demanded were hard to come by and expensive even then, sometimes any record with the right “beat” would get played to fill up the 8 hours required at an All-nighter, which is how we end up with records by David & The Giants, a white rock band from Mississippi, and the Human Beinz, a Garage band from Ohio, or “Nine Times Out Of Ten” by Muriel Day, a former Eurovision entrant from County Down, Northern Ireland and, most ridiculously, “I’ll Do Anything” by Lenny Gamble (aka Tony Blackburn), all of which were played at the Casino. So that question “what is Northern Soul ?” could reasonably be answered with “anything the DJ can convince the audience to dance to !”.

Over at Ace/Kent it’s arguable that the output was of a higher quality. “Leapers, Sleepers & Creepers” presents us Patrice Holloway’s classy dancer “Ecstacy” and two of the great “end of the night” records in Bobby Paris’ “I Walked Away” and Gene McDaniels “Walk With A Winner”. Were you to try to acquire 7” copies of all 3 you ain’t getting much change, if any, out of £1000 which presents the argument that these comps are great value too. “Soul Super Bowl’s” undoubted highlight for me is The Trends wonderful “Thanks For A Little Lovin’” (circa £450). “The Magic Touch” is titled after Melba Moore’s track one, side one and later on features an instrumental version of Chuck Jackson’s stellar “Hand It Over” credited to the Wand Rhythm & Blues Ensemble, both of which were previously unreleased until Ace/Kent researchers found them in a dusty tape vault across the pond.

When it comes to Soul music my interests are definitely focussed at the nitty gritty, down and dirty end of the scale (see “Jeanette” by Wade Flemons or Jimmy Hughes “It Ain’t What You Got”) so when I came across R&B records like Mike Pedicin’s “Burnt Toast And Black Coffee” and The Charmaines “I Idolize You”, as featured on “New Breed R&B”, I was sold. There’s a reason they call all those dreadful things by Usher and Mary J Bilge (not a spelling mistake) R&B, because at source they are a modern strain of Soul music which at heart is poppier Rhythm and Blues which itself is an uptempo take on the Blues. As the Northern Soul crowd searched for new records to play, as the life of their scene far exceeded anything that had been imagined in the 70’s, these danceable R&B tunes fit the bill and helped breath some new life into many an all-nighter.

I got quite involved in the Northern scene locally for a good 15 years but eventually I saw its limitations. It is by very definition a backward looking movement, there’s not a lot of new blood hitching a ride and there is an element within its audience that I wasn’t comfortable with being around, far too many Union flags and archaic attitudes, not everyone but a significant enough percentage for me to walk away (see what I did there ?). I’ll always love the music (except Tony Blackburn) but these days the only floor you’ll find me out on is the living room carpet.

Sam Ward “Sister Lee” https://youtu.be/SI5LRsl0HxA?si=1Z3HGR-AbHM1YmHc

Chuck Wood “Seven Days Too Long” https://youtu.be/gZ-wDADFmG0?si=DDbFYswNVI9YpH31

Bobby Paris “I Walked Away” https://youtu.be/Av2QiZUi3NY?si=tv-sjBD7jUIhX5-M

The Trends “Thanks For A Little Lovin’” https://youtu.be/pM5j3fFfriI?si=iQwdI4dzmVoXAXer

Mike Pedicin “Burnt Toast And Black Coffee” https://youtu.be/bzIIW2uhDNU?si=4Dlybt28f7sjF8e7