Northern soul
Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged in Northern England and the Midlands in the early 1970s. It developed from the British mod scene, based on a particular style of Black American soul music with a heavy beat and fast tempo.
The Northern soul movement generally eschews Motown or Motown-influenced music that has had significant mainstream commercial success. The recordings most prized by enthusiasts are by lesser-known artists, "rare grooves" released in limited numbers on labels such as VeeJay, Chess, Brunswick, Ric-Tic, Gordy Records, Golden World Records, Mirwood Records, Shout Records and Okeh.
Northern soul is associated with dance styles and fashions that grew out of the underground rhythm and soul scene of the late 1960s at venues such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. This scene and the associated dances and fashions quickly spread to other dancehalls and nightclubs like the Wigan Casino, Blackpool Mecca, and Golden Torch.
As the favoured beat became more uptempo and frantic in the early 1970s, Northern soul dancing became more athletic, resembling the later dance styles of disco and break dancing. Featuring spins, flips, karate kicks and backdrops, club dancing styles were often inspired by the stage performances of touring American soul acts such as Little Anthony and the Imperials and Jackie Wilson.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, popular Northern soul records generally dated from the mid-1960s. This meant that the movement was sustained by prominent DJs discovering rare and previously overlooked records. Later on, certain clubs and DJs began to move away from the 1960s sound and began to play newer releases with a more contemporary sound.
History
1960s
The term "Northern soul" emanated from the record shop Soul City in Covent Garden, London, which was run by the soul music collector Dave Godin. It was first publicly used in Godin's weekly column in Blues & Soul magazine in June 1970. In a 2002 interview with Chris Hunt of Mojo magazine, Godin said he had first come up with the term in 1968, to help employees at Soul City differentiate the more modern funkier sounds from the smoother. Godin referred to the latter's requests as "Northern soul":
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'".
The music style most associated with Northern soul is the heavy syncopated beat and fast tempo of the mid-1960s Motown Records, usually combined with soulful vocals. These types of records, which suited the athletic dancing that was prevalent, became known on the scene as "stompers". Notable examples include Tony Clarke's "Landslide" and Gloria Jones’ "Tainted Love". According to Northern soul DJ Ady Croadsell, viewed retrospectively, the earliest recording to possess this style was the 1965 single "I Can't Help Myself " by the Four Tops, although that record was never popular in the Northern soul scene because it was too mainstream. The venue most commonly associated with the early development of the Northern soul scene was the Twisted Wheel in Manchester. The club began 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 and turned into a music venue. Initially, the Twisted Wheel mainly hosted live music on the weekends and Disc Only nights during the week. 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. Pubs such as the Eagle in Birmingham were frequented by young blue-eyed soul singers such as Steve Winwood, who released songs similar to the early U.S. soul music.
By 1968 the reputation of the Twisted Wheel and the type of music being played there had grown nationwide, and soul fans were travelling from all over the United Kingdom to attend the Saturday all-nighters. Until his departure in 1968, resident 'All Niter' DJ Bob Dee compiled and supervised the playlist, utilising the newly developed slip-cueing technique to spin the vinyl. Rarer, more up-tempo imported records were added to the playlist in 1969 by the new younger DJs like Brian "45" Phillips up until the club's eventual closure in 1971. After attending one of the venue's all-nighters in November 1970, Godin wrote: "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 venue's owners had successfully filled the vacancy left by Eagle with a growing roster of specialist soul DJs including Brian Rae, Paul Davies and Alan 'Ollie' Ollerton.
From 1961 to 1971, Motown had 110 top-10 hits. Top artists on the Motown label during that period included the Supremes featuring Diana Ross, the Four Tops, and the Jackson 5, while Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, and the Miracles had hits on the Tamla label. The company had several labels in addition to the Tamla and Motown. A third label, which Gordy named after himself, featured the Temptations, the Contours, Edwin Starr, and Martha and the Vandellas. A fourth label, V.I.P., released recordings by the Spinners, and the Monitors. A fifth label, Soul, featured Jr. Walker & the All Stars, Jimmy Ruffin, Shorty Long, the Originals, and Gladys Knight & the Pips.
The Sapphires, especially their songs "Slow Fizz", "Gotta Have Your Love", "Evil One", and "Gonna Be a Big Thing", became popular in the Northern soul scene, including during the early days at the Twisted Wheel Club.
Chicago label Vee-Jay Records became a major soul label with Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler, Dee Clark, and Betty Everett hitting singles on both the pop and R&B charts. Vee-Jay was also the first label to nationally issue a record by Gladys Knight & the Pips.
Vee-Jay had significant success with pop/rock acts, such as the Four Seasons and the Beatles. Vee-Jay acquired the rights to some of the early recordings by the Beatles through a licensing deal with EMI, as the American affiliate Capitol Records was initially uninterested in the group. Calvin Carter later said, "There was a number one record over in England at the time. The group turned out to be the Beatles and we got a five-year contract on the Beatles as a pickup on the Frank Ifield contract".
1970s
In America, Holland-Dozier-Holland's successful acts on Invictus Records were Freda Payne and Chairmen of the Board. They also released Parliament's first album, Osmium. The label was distributed by Capitol Records from 1969 to 1972 and then by Columbia Records from 1973 onwards.In September 1970, the British music magazine NME reported that Invictus had the UK's top two singles. Freda Payne's "Band of Gold" was No. 1, while Chairmen of the Board's "Give Me Just a Little More Time" was No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart. Both records were million-sellers in the US, but neither topped the pop or R&B charts. Invictus had two other gold records: Freda Payne's "Bring the Boys Home" and 8th Day's "She's Not Just Another Woman", both in 1971. 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. Some nightclubs regarded as the most important in this decade were the Golden Torch, and Wigan Casino.
Although Wigan Casino is now the most well-known, the best-attended Northern soul all-night venue at the beginning of the decade was actually the Golden Torch, where regular Friday night soul "all-nighters" began during the latter months of 1970. Chris Burton, the owner, stated that by 1972, the club had a membership of 12,500 and had hosted 62,000 separate customer visits.
In 1972, white soul group the Four Seasons released the song "The Night" from their May 1972 album Chameleon, a disco song which appealed to the Northern soul scene, and as a result, it was successfully re-released in the UK in the spring of 1975.
Wigan Casino began its weekly soul all-nighters in September 1973. Wigan Casino had a much larger capacity than many competing venues and ran its events from 2am until 8am. There was a regular roster of DJs, including Russ Winstanley, Kev Roberts and Richard Searling. By 1976, the club had a membership of 100,000 people, and in 1978, it was voted the world's number-one discotheque by Billboard. This was during the heyday of the Studio 54 nightclub in New York City. By the late 1970s, the club had its own spin-off record label, Casino Classics.
By this time, Wigan Casino was coming under criticism from many soul fans about selling out the format and playing anything that came along. The contemporary black American soul was changing with the advent of funk, disco and jazz-funk, and the supply of recordings with the fast-paced Northern soul sound began to dwindle rapidly. As a result, Wigan Casino DJs resorted to playing any kind of record that matched the correct tempo. Also, the club was subjected to intense media coverage and began to attract many otherwise uninterested people of whom the soul purists did not approve.
The Northern soul movement between Wigan Casino's fans and Blackpool Mecca's wider approach accepted the more contemporary sounds of Philly soul, early disco and funk. Ian Levine broke from the Northern soul mould by playing a new release by the Carstairs in the early 1970s:
Back in England I found this dealer called John Anderson who'd moved from Scotland to King's Lynn. I told him I wanted this Carstairs record and he'd just had a shipment in from America of 100,000 demo records from radio stations. We went through this collection, me, Andy Hanley, and Bernie Golding, and we found three copies of the Carstairs record. Went back to Blackpool, played the record and changed the whole scene. Blackpool Mecca suddenly became the home of this new Northern soul sound. I would've heard this record in 1973, when it was supposedly released, but not obtained it until 1974.
Other major Northern soul venues in the 1970s include the Catacombs in Wolverhampton, Va Va's in Bolton, the Talk of the North all-nighters at the Pier and Winter Gardens in Cleethorpes, Tiffany's in Coalville, Samantha's in Sheffield, Neil Rushton's Heart of England soul club all-dayers at the Ritz in Manchester and the Nottingham Palais. As the 1970s progressed, the Northern soul scene expanded even further nationally. There was a notable scene in the east of England: Shades Northampton was one of the leading venues in this area of the country during the early 1970s until it closed in 1975. Later came the all-nighters at the St Ivo Centre in St Ives, the Phoenix Soul club at the Wirrina Stadium in Peterborough and the Howard Mallett in Cambridge. Other towns with notable Northern soul venues at this time included Kettering, Coventry, Bournemouth, Southampton and Bristol.