Northern soul

For the album by The Verve, see A Northern Soul.

For the album by M People, see Northern Soul (album).

Northern soul is a type of mid-tempo and uptempo heavy-beat soul music (of mainly African American origin) that was popularized in Northern England from the mid 1960s onwards. Northern soul mainly consists of American soul recordings of a particular style and tempo that were recorded in the mid 1960s and later. These recordings were based on the Tamla Motown sound and released only in limited numbers within the United States. They include lesser known songs and artists from record labels such as Motown Stax, Okeh, Cameo-Parkway and Roulette.

The term northern soul also refers to the associated dance styles and fashions that emanated from the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester and spread to other dancehalls and nightclubs, such as the Golden Torch (in Stoke-upon-Trent), the Highland Rooms at the Blackpool Mecca and the Wigan Casino. Northern soul dancing was usually athletic, resembling the later dance styles of disco and break dancing. Featuring spins, flips, and backdrops, the northern soul dancing style was inspired by the stage performances of visiting American soul acts such as Little Anthony & The Imperials and Jackie Wilson.

History

Origins

The phrase northern soul was coined by journalist Dave Godin and first publicly used in his weekly column in Blues and Soul magazine in June 1970. However, in a 2002 interview with Chris Hunt of Mojo magazine, Godin explained that he had first come up with the term in 1968, to help employees at his record shop, Soul City, in Covent Garden, London to differentiate the more modern funkier sounds from the smoother, Motown-influenced soul of a few years earlier:

I had started to notice that northern football fans who were in London to follow their team were coming into the store to buy records, but they weren't interested in the latest developments in the black American chart. I devised the name as a shorthand sales term. It was just to say 'if you've got customers from the north, don't waste time playing them records currently in the U.S. black chart, just play them what they like - 'Northern Soul'.

Viewed retrospectively, the earliest recording that can be considered northern soul is the 1965 single "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" by The Four Tops.

A large proportion of northern soul's original audience came from within the 1960s mod subculture. In the late 1960s, some mods started to embrace freakbeat and psychedelic rock, but other mods - especially those in northern England - stuck to the original mod soundtrack of soul and blue beat. From the latter category, two strands emerged. Some mods transformed into what eventually became the skinheads, and others formed the basis of the northern soul scene. Early northern soul fashion included strong elements of the classic mod style, such as button-down Ben Sherman shirts, blazers with centre vents and unusual numbers of buttons, Trickers and brogue shoes and shrink-to-fit Levi's jeans. Some non-mod items, such as bowling shirts, were also popular. Later on, northern soul dancers started to wear light and loose-fitting clothing for reasons of practicality. This included high-waisted, baggy Oxford trousers and sports vests. These were often covered with badges representing soul club memberships.

The venue most commonly associated with the early development of the northern soul scene in the north of England was the Twisted Wheel nightclub in Manchester. The club began life in the early 1950s as a beatnik coffee bar called the Left Wing, but in early 1963, the run-down premises were leased by two Manchester businessmen (Ivor and Phil Abadi) and turned into a music venue. Initially, the Twisted Wheel hosted mainly live music on the weekends, but advertised Disc Only nights during the week. Starting in September 1963, the Abadi brothers promoted all-night parties at the venue on Saturday nights, with a mixture of live and recorded music. DJ Roger Eagle, a collector of imported American soul, jazz and rhythm and blues, was booked around this time, and the club's reputation as a place to hear and dance to the latest American R&B music began to grow.

Throughout the mid-1960s, the Twisted Wheel became the focus of Manchester’s emerging mod scene, with a music policy that reflected Eagle’s eclectic tastes in soul and jazz, and featuring live performances by British beat musicians and American R&B stars. Gradually, the music policy became less eclectic and shifted heavily towards fast-paced soul, in response to the demands of the growing crowds of amphetamine-fuelled dancers who flocked to the all-nighters. Dismayed at the change in music policy and the frequent drug raids by the police, Eagle quit the club in early 1967. Eagle said of the regular attendees, "All they wanted was fast-tempo black dance music... [but they were] too blocked on amphetamines to articulate exactly which Jackie Wilson record they wanted me to play."

By then, the reputation of the Twisted Wheel and the type of music being played there had grown nationwide. By the late 1960s, youngsters were travelling from all over the United Kingdom to attend the Saturday all-nighters. The venue’s owners were able to fill the vacancy left by Eagle with a growing roster of specialist soul DJs, including Bobby Derbyshire, Paul Davis, Brian Rae, Phil Saxe and Les Cockell. The growing popularity of the club was described by journalist Godin in Blues & Soul magazine in his article "Land of a Thousand Dances" after a visit to one of the all-nighters. Godin said about the dancing: "...it is without doubt the highest and finest I have seen outside of the USA... never thought I'd live to see the day where people could so relate the rhythmic content of Soul music to bodily movement to such a skilled degree!"

The Twisted Wheel gained a reputation as a drug haven, and under pressure from the police and other authorities, the club closed in January 1971. However, the popularity of the music and lifestyle associated with the club had spread further across the north and midlands of England, and a number of new venues had begun to host soul all-nighters from the late 1960s onwards. These include the King Mojo in Sheffield, The Catacombs in Wolverhampton, Room at the Top in Wigan and and Va Va's in Bolton.

1970s

Northern soul reached the peak of its popularity in the mid to late 1970s. At this time, there were soul clubs in virtually every major town in the midlands and the north of England. However, the three venues regarded as the most important in this decade were the Golden Torch in Stoke (1970 to 1971), the Blackpool Mecca (1971 to 1979) and the Wigan Casino (1973 to 1981).

Although the Wigan Casino is now the most famous, the best attended northern soul venue at the beginning of the decade was the Golden Torch, where regular soul ‘all-nighters’ began in 1970. However, the club closed down due to licensing problems in 1971. Attention then switched to soul nights at the Blackpool Mecca’s Highland Room on Central Drive in Blackpool.

The Wigan Casino began its weekly soul ‘all-nighters’ in 1973. The venue had a much larger capacity than competing venues and ran its events from 2am until 8am. Such was its reputation, in 1978, the club was voted the world's number one discotheque by the American magazine Billboard. This was during the heyday of the Studio 54 nightclub in New York City.

However, by the late 1970s, Wigan Casino was coming under heavy criticism from many soul fans. Contemporary black American soul music was changing with the advent of funk, disco and jazz-funk and the supply of recordings that would fit the fast-paced northern soul musical template began to dwindle. As a result, Casino DJs resorted to playing any kind of record that matched the correct tempo. “The Theme From Joe 90” by The Ron Grainer Orchestra is an often cited example of this. Also, the club was subjected to heavy media and television coverage and began to attract many people who the soul ‘purists’ did not approve of. The Blackpool Mecca was popular throughout the 1970s, although the venue never hosted ‘all-nighters’. The regular Saturday night events began at 8pm and finished at 2am and, initially, many soul fans would begin the eveningsat the Mecca and transfer to the Casino in the early hours. However, later on the music policy at the Highland Room sharply diverged from the Casino’s, with regular DJs Ian Levine and Colin Curtis’s attempts to progress the scene by including newly released US soul music in their playlist. Whilst the tempo was similar to the earlier Motown-style recordings, this shift in emphasis heralded a slightly different style of northern soul dancing at Blackpool and created a schism in the northern soul movement between the Casino’s ‘traditionalists’ and the Mecca’s ‘progressives’ who accepted the more contemporary sounds of Philly soul and early disco.

1980s and later

When Wigan Casino closed in 1981, many believed the northern soul scene was on the verge of disintegrating. However, the 1970s mod revival, the thriving scooterboy subculture and the later Acid Jazz movement produced a new wave of fans. The popularity of the music was further bolstered in the 1980s by a wave of reissues and compilation albums from small British independent record labels. Many of these labels were set up by DJs and collectors who had been part of the original scene. The 1980s — often dismissed as a low period for the northern soul scene by those who had left in the 1970s — featured almost 100 new venues in places as diverse as Bradford, London, Peterborough, Leighton Buzzard, Whitchurch, Coventry and Leicester. Pre-eminent among the 1980s venues were Stafford's Top of the World and London's 100 Club.

Today there are regular northern soul events in various parts of the United Kingdom, such as The Nightshift Club all-nighters at the Bisley Pavillion in Surry (which celebrated its eleventh anniversary in March 2009) and the Prestatyn Weekender in North Wales.. Many of those who ceased their involvement in the late 1970s have now returned to the scene and regularly participate in such events.

DJ culture

The northern soul movement is cited by many as being a significant step towards the creation of contemporary club culture and the development of the superstar DJ culture of the 2000s. Amongst the most popular and well known DJs from the original northern soul era are: Roger Eagle and Les Cokell (Twisted Wheel), Russ Winstanley and Richard Searling (Wigan Casino), Ian Levine and Colin Curtis (Blackpool Mecca) and Chris Burton (The Golden Torch, Stoke On Trent). As in modern club culture, northern soul DJs built up a following based on satisfying the crowd's desires for music that they could not hear anywhere else. The competitiveness between DJs to unearth 'in-demand' sounds led them to cover up the labels on their records, giving rise to the modern white label pressing.

Another technique employed by northern soul DJs in common with their later counterparts was the sequencing of records to create euphoric highs and lows for the crowd. Many argue that northern soul was instrumental in creating a network of clubs, DJs, record collectors and dealers in the UK, and was the first music scene to provide the British charts with records that sold entirely on the strength of club play.

Many of the DJ personalities and their followers involved in the original northern soul movement went on to become important figures in the later UK house and dance music scenes. Notable among these are Mike Pickering, who subsequently introduced house music to the club goers at The Hacienda nightclub in Manchester in the early 1980s, and the dance record producers Pete Waterman and Ian Levine.

Artists and records

Many soul artists attempted stardom in the 1960s without all of the necessary ingredients in place, such as promotion and radio play. Many artists had to go back to their day jobs, with their records sinking into obscurity until they were revived in the northern soul circuit. Songs by Tami Lynn, The Fascinations and The Velvelettes that were originally released in the 1960s became top 40 UK hits in 1971. Lynn got to #4 with "I'm Gonna Run Away From You", The Fascinations made #30 with "Girls Are Out to Get you" and The Velvelettes got a #35 hit with "These Things Will Keep Me Loving You." The same year, The Tams reached #1 with their 1964 recording "Hey Girl Don't Bother Me", due in no small part to the song's popularity in the northern soul scene.Other songs that became surprise hits years after they were recorded include: "Loves Gone Bad" and "I Want to Go Back There Again" by Chris Clark, "Just Loving You" and "Helpless" by Kim Weston, "Every Little Bit Hurts" by Brenda Holloway and "Heartbeat" by Gloria Jones.

Original US first-issue northern soul records are among the most expensive of any vinyl recordings to collect. Their equivalent UK-released discs often sell for much lower prices.

Influence on popular music and culture

A number of pop musicians from the 1980s to the present day have cited the influence of the northern soul sound and culture on their work:

• British electronic group Soft Cell had chart success with covers of two popular northern soul songs "Tainted Love" (originally recorded by Gloria Jones) and "What?" (originally recorded by Judy Street). Band member Dave Ball lived in Blackpool and used to attend soul nights at the Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino
• DJ Fatboy Slim from Brighton, England has used a number of samples from northern soul recordings in his music e.g. the use of the guitar riff from "Sliced Tomatoes" by The Just Brothers for his "Rockefeller Skank" single
• The British pop and rock artist Paul Weller is an aficionado of black-American music and a keen collector of northern soul 45s. Many of his songs have been musically influenced by northern soul, such as "Beat Surrender", "Town Called Malice", "Trans-Global Express" and "The Gift" (by The Jam) and "Solid Bond In Your Heart" (by The Style Council).
• Sharleen Spiteri, singer/songwriter and member of the British act Texas is a fan of northern soul music. The Texas song "Black-Eyed Boy" uses a classic driving northern soul backbeat and brass sound.
• For the promotional video accompanying their single "Familiar Feeling", British band Moloko featured a highly authentic recreation of Wigan Casino complete with dancers in period fashion. Lead singer Roisin Murphy is also shown attempting northern soul dancing manouvres.
• Edwyn Collins ("A Girl Like You"), Simply Red and Scottish group Belle And Sebastian are amongst many other recording artists who have utilised elements of the northern soul sound in their recordings
• Duffy's single Mercy features dancers performing the spins and flips that are commonly associated with northern soul in the video. The song also has a very northern soul sounding feel to it.

Bibliography

• Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton (2000) [1999]. "Northern Soul: After Tonight Is All Over". Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. pp. 75–105. ISBN 0-8021-3688-5.
• Kev Roberts (2000). The Northern Soul Top 500. ISBN 0-9539291-0-8.
• Mike Ritson and Stuart Russell (1999). The In Crowd: The Story of the Northern & Rare Soul Scene, Volume 1. Bee Cool. ISBN 0-9536626-1-6.
• Russ Winstanley and David Nowell (1996). Soul Survivors: The Wigan Casino Story. Robson Books. ISBN 1-86105-126-3.
• Keith Rylatt and Phil Scott (2001). CENtral 1179: The Story of Manchester's Twisted Wheel Club. Bee Cool. ISBN 0-9536626-3-2.
• Reg Stickings (2008). Searching For Soul. SAF Publishing. ISBN 978-0-946719-87-7.
• Paolo Hewitt (2000). The Soul Stylists: Forty Years of Modernism. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 1-84018-228-8.
• Pete Kreisler (2006). A Bottle of Lucozade, A Marathon and all Nite Dancing. Bygone Novels. ISBN 1-88016-223-1. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)

External links

• Soul Or Nothing A paper given at Manchester University in 2006
• The Dave Godin Column - Land of a Thousand Dances published in Blues & Soul, issue 50
• For Dancers Only: The story of Wigan Casino by Chris Hunt, published in Mojo, Spring 2002