Northern Soul- Episode 30

Welcome back to the big beat online radio show with your host DJ Kingblind. This is Episode 30. Can you believe it our 30th episode of The Big beat. You can visit us online at DJ Kingblind calm. There you can donate to our show to help keep things going. You can write us and say hello, or you can listen to any of our episodes from the past or the present. This week we're going to talk about northern soul. What is northern soul you ask? northern soul refers to a music and dance style popular in the dance halls of Northern England. Starting in the late 60s. In the beginning the dancing with athletic It featured some flips and spins and drops the music consisted of obscure American soul recordings with a fast beat. With some consider the punk rock of soul music. A large proportion of Northern chose original crowd came from the modern movement with their passion for soul music. Before we call from Episode 22 these are the mods we discussed this very thing. This can be a little refresher course. Some mods turned away from these sounds to embrace the psychedelic movement of the late 60s. Many mods, especially those from Northern England, chose to stick to the original soundtrack of Solon scar. Some became what would eventually be known as skinheads and others went on to form the core of the Northern soul scene. earthern early northern soul fashion included American bowling shirts, buttoned down Ben Sherman shirts and blazers. A sinner cut vest with many badges and buttons on them. poly belt shoes baggy trousers, or shrink to fit Levi's. The first avenue that effectively define northern soul and its sound was the twist at Rio club in Manchester, either clubs included the golden torch in Stoke, the Wigan Casino in Wigan, Blackpool, Mecca, the catacombs and whether Wolverhampton North Park and Kettering. The Mojo and KGB clubs in Sheffield, in the winter garden in Cleethorpes would still host northern Sullivan's to this day. Northern soul is possibly the most expensive of musical genres to collect. Hundreds of seven inch vinyl records have broken the $2,000 barrier. Frank Wilson's do I love you sold recently for over $30,000 the cost of those records really has risen due to the rarity and quality of beat and melody. And those lyrics often expressing heartache, pain or joy related to romance, and love. If you recall our heartbreak episode that's Episode 25. We really dive into that as well. In recent years, many northern soul fans went on to add their collections and except the richer more complex, modern soul sounds of the early 70s and beyond, sustain in in growing the catalog of music that those DJs were able to play. Northern soul emerge from Northern England, the English Midlands, like we said, in the late 60s, coming out of that British mob scene that music with its heavy beat and fast tempo. Normally 100 beats per minute or above came from American soul music that normally came from Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other places, then northern soul movement generally, a skews the Motown or Motown influence that had significant mainstream success. Let me repeat that. The northern soul music music scene for the most part, actively avoids Motown that Motown influence, and especially mainstream charting commercially successful songs. They actively dug deeper to find that gold. The recordings most prized by enthusiasts of genre are usually by lesser known artist, or at least only unlimited numbers, often by American labels such as VGA records, Chess Records, runes, work records, regtech, Gordy records, Golden Rule records had to Detroit near would record settle is Angeles chat records and okay. This made it vital for the dancers to co to those northern soul all nighters. These were all night dance parties in fetta mean and alcohol fueled parties. So they would hear these latest cuts of songs that they've never heard before. That really almost anyone that ever heard before. But it kept those DJs digging and digging for that gold, oftentimes making very extremely expensive trips to America to go find these nuggets. Northern soul is often associated with a particular dance style and fashion that grew out of that and underground were the midsole scene of the late 60s.

Unknown Speaker  4:54  
As the favorite beat became more up tempo and frantic in the early 70s, Northern sold, dancing became more athletic And resembled the later styles of disco and breakdancing. In fact, when you see northern soul dancing happen, you can really see the birth of breakdancing and disco dancing taking place right there. It featured the spins and flips and karate kicks and backdrops. Club dancing styles were often inspired by stage performances of Korean American soul acts, such as little Anthony and the Imperials and Jackie Wilson. Where's that term northern soul from? Does it just mean music from the north of England and those people? Well, no,

Unknown Speaker  5:34  
actually,

Unknown Speaker  5:35  
the term came out of London from a solid small record store, or Seoul city in Covent Garden London, which is run by a famous folk music collector named Dave golden. It was first publicly used in Golden's weekly column in blues and soul magazine in June 1970. In 2002 interview with Chris hunt of Mojo magazine, golden said he had first come up with the term in 1968. To help employees at Seoul City differentiate the more modern funkier sounds from the smoother, good and refer to as the latter request as northern soul. He said, I'd started to see that northern football fans who in London to follow their team were coming in the store to buy records, but they weren't interested in the latest developments in the black American charts. So 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. The current records in the US blacks charts, just play them that northern soul, fantastic. These types of records really suited that athletic dancing that was prevalent, and that scene in dancing became known as Stompers. And a lot of times you'll hear DJs, or compilations talk about a record being full of Northern stole Stompers, or this single being a real stump. Well, my friends, I've got some stumpers for you. of this is going to knock your socks off because this is northern soul.

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You need some

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time You

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call from the wall man

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tell me

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she was all alone

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the last match

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Good luck

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she'd have

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coming home

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coming home in the mountains

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I never met a guy

Transcribed by https://otter.ai