Northern Soul

I'm sure aficionados will know more than me about Northern Soul but I don't think it had anything to do with the fabled North South divide just that it became popular in the North first.

The real driving force behind it was being Working Class in a 'dark period' and were Punk fought back Northern Soul gave you an escape.

 

It simply means 60's soul music (that mostly didn't chart), popular in clubs in NORTHERN England. Hence the term. Why would anyone find that offensive? Certainly not the many artists rescued from obscurity because of it.

 

I came in excited to discuss the fantastically underrated album by The Verve... darn.

 

If there were a poll on favourite versions of Tainted Love, I would vote for the Gloria Jones record. Easily.

 

Reported/blocked! USA! USA!

I saw three pages and was expecting maybe some soul gems I didn't know, but I've gotten so much more.

 

"Northern Soul" and "Beach Music" are two terms that confused me when I first heard of them back in the '80s.

I assumed that Northern Soul was a British take on American Soul music, and created by British people from the north. I also figured that Beach Music was somehow related to Surf music.

And I don't understand why some of you are giving @Grant so much grief...

 

For those who are curious, this is what Wigan Casino looked like:

 

We didn't know each other at the time but my wife would have been 'dancing' to this, her favourite Darrel Banks - Open The Door To Your Heart.

 

Lots of people are confused by the term, Beach Music. Unless you’ve lived in the Southeasten US you most likely haven’t had occasion to be exposed to it. It’s a genre that centers around music played at a 110-135 bpm that allows dancers to do the “shag”. It has its origins at the beer joints along the North and South Carolina coast. In the early post war (WWII) era at a time when segregation was still the norm “race” records weren’t played in ‘polite” white society (at least not openly) but young people were sneaking a listen and liking what they heard. When they traveled to the beach away from their parent’s watchful eyes they went to the clubs and juke joints that had juke boxes filled with R&B. The dance developed from that and so did a whole sub-culture. Clubs opened throughout the Southeast and a circuit developed that kept a lot of artists working long after their national celebrity faded. Regional hits emerged and lots of local bands sprang up to back up, open for and book dates at the clubs when no major act was on the bill. This was passed down from one generation to the next. By the time I was a teenager in the 70s we viewed it as something for the “Prepies”, “Frat Boys” and “Country Club” crowd and avoided it. As i’ve Grown older i’ve come to appreciate the original gritty R&B of it’s early days, but not the watered down “Showband” elements often found today.

 

It would need to be the ones that are in 4/4 time. If you think of Happy by Pharrel Williams - it is a modern Northern Soul record.

 

4/4 meter, 27-33 measures per minute for Beach Music, same for Northern Soul I would assume.

 

That's to miss the point as widely as those who dismissed punk as nothing but three chord amateurism. These things are primarily scenes, not debates among music critics. Records were popular because they were good to dance and take uppers to. Just like decades later with Acid House.

 

The Beach Music crowd would be on the floor for this one!

 

They can't take our Northern Soul and call it Beach Music, that doesn't sound Working Class to me, 'Outraged from the North', Blackpool beach maybe, after the come down.

 

Oddly enough what was largely perceived as "Northern Soul" in the 70's was revived in some London clubs in the 80's as "Rare Groove". I thought it was a Dave Godin who invented the term Northern Soul btw.

 

I always assumed that "Northern Soul" was distinguishing it from Southern Soul, which was a real thing, in the US, for Americans, in the 60s. (Stax had a certain relationship to Motown that reflected this) They were different streams.

The records they (The english) focus on seem to come from northern cities, and not southern ones. There is no fetish for southern soul music among them. It was about the Motown and Veejay wannabe indies, and the lost vault stuff from larger labels. The sound of Northern Soul is big and Motown obsessed, (suitable for casinos) not intimate, gritty or southern soul reminiscent.

No?

 

any excuse to post this.

 

What makes you emphasize the word "clearly"? Just curious, not trying to be disrespectful. I thought that the 'official' story was that it was based on Gloria Jones' 1976 re-recording of her own original version (which is also mentioned on wikipedia, using a book as its source which I do not own, so I can't do a double-check).

 

This would probably cause uproar on a Northern Soul site but this is settled by my wife "Gloria Jones".

 

yeah, the term originated from a London record shop. Not sure if the northerners who were into this scene actually called it "northern soul" themselves. Probably not.

 

I shouldn't have clicked on this thread, my wife's dancing around the kitchen, to this, her second choice, R Dean Taylor - There'a A Ghost In My House.

 

Grant, I understand why you take issue with the term, as the music didn't come from the UK at all (apart from some that was made in the 1970s once it became a thing). I have always said that it is not up to people here to decide what is and what is not 'Northern Soul'. A lot of the purists were very narrow minded.

However, I disagree with your notion that the records were obscure because they weren't any good. A lot of them, that would have otherwise wallowed in obscurity, were fantastic.

Someone was asking for an example of a rare one: see below

THE WORLD’S RAREST RECORD - Record Collector Magazine

 

Hi,

Well, if you play the Ruth Swann version, there are so many bits and embellishments that are on both hers and soft cell's version, but not on Gloria's.

 

Here's an exception to the rule that records came from the USA. One of my favourite 'Northern Soul' records was made by an American vocal group who had transplanted to the UK.

Come on, admit it. It's as good as anything the Supremes or the Vandellas did.

 

In a way Northern Soul was or is little different to the famous US soul areas, be it Detroit, Memphis, Philadelphia, or Chicago. But whereas they were cities where the music originated from, as exemplified by artists on labels like Motown, Stax, or Philly International (or Volt, Hot Wax, Hi, whatever if you want to get more obscure), this was simply a kind of soul music played by DJ’s in Clubs across towns in the North of England, with a few hotspots like the Torch or Wigan Casino, Mecca, often with All-nighters and a focus on dancing to quick, fast beat records. A lot of the music was “rare” (or obscure) and imported from the US, but arguably it brought more popularity to artists like Edwin Starr or JJ Barnes on lesser known labels Motown labels like Ric Tic than they had in the US. Or success for artists like Gladys Knight with quicker cuts that simply weren’t well known or mainstream. I also think that some cuts by groups like the Four Tops came to prominence through Northern Soul before becoming national hits. It was a totally different scene to, say, discos in London. Funnily enough, Northern Soul is probably more accessible and cheaper now than in its heyday (for me the 70s) with a recent movie, loads of compilation CDs, and literature. Stuart Cosgrove’s Young Soul Rebel’s book is an example. Before you say “who”, he’s written acclaimed soul/history books about Detroit 67, Memphis 68, and most recently Harlem 69. We Brits like these “cult” names like Northern Soul. We’ve had Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers, Skinheads, Suedeheads, Blue Beat, Ska, Metal, Punk, New Wave, New Romantic etc. As others have said if you want an example of the music, compare Gloria Jones’s version of Tainted Love with Soft Cell’s later, massive hit of the same. For some people Northern Soul was a religion, some a bit of fun, a night out, some didn’t get it or couldn’t stand it. Could say the same about lots of other things too, music or otherwise.