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Making a judgement is hard, making selections is
easy, but there are thousands that are difficult to
leave out!
Cutting down on
artists who certainly deserve to dominate is one
task, but multiples by certain artists inevitably
remain.
Trying to do
justice with a fair and variable spread of music
styles and artist to give a cross section has been
attempted; inevitably personal taste and choice
intervenes. And as a result the 500 is of course
subjective.
But we @ The
Manchester Soul website hope many selections will
resonate and strike a chord, a memory. Many will of
course be known to Soul enthusiasts and we hope
newcomers to soul music may find here a good play
list to seek out and listen too.
The 500 is ‘a’
selection and not ‘the’ selection as it is
without doubt subjective yet gives a very good idea
of what was the core sounds that became the genesis
of today’s Northern Soul.
This listing is
an attempt at defining the genre, the music that
upsurged in the North of England, centred in
Manchester, in the 1960’s at the cities soul music
clubs. It is also to some extent a response to ‘The
Northern Soul Top 500’ by Kev Roberts; a fantastic
and informative book representing the best in
Northern Soul recordings. We feel that an original
soul sounds list should be attempted for posterity
and for setting things in their correct perspective.
Some of the
recordings are obscure, many are known as pop songs
because they became chart hits, all contributed to a
movement and a style and a genre that lives and
breaths today, all these years later. Soul music was
born in the sixties and several streams of modern
music can be seen springing from it, with the
continuation of pop charts throughout all the
decades from the sixties to now including multiple
Soul releases by old and new artists. Northern Soul
of course is going strong, but happily Soul is alive
and well in modern pop music, with many artists and
remarkably many UK recordings sounding like they
came from across the Atlantic i.e. ‘Mercy’ from
Duffy.
Some tracks come
from the early days, and then became less popular as
time moved along and new releases increased, so a
few are included to represent earlier times.
Similarly late sixties release had less time to find
favour; some of course would be and indeed are
eternal.
The vast bulk of
songs fit into three years 65, 66, 67, and the
decade covered is the 1960’s So unfortunately
brilliant sounds from artists like Al Green are
omitted.
The major soul
artists where discoveries in the a1960’s which
became the era of a new genre of music, with roots
in Blues, RnB, Jazz but mainly from Do Wop.
The main labels
dominate; Chess, Stax, Motown, Atlantic and UK
Stateside. Most of the smaller USA labels
distributed their releases onto UK mainstream labels
with the original labels in small print. Quite a lot
of USA imports were obtained by Soul DJ’s in the
sixties especially so by Roger Eagle the Twisted
Wheel DJ.
Recently CD
compilations have been issued containing a small
itinery of the music of the Twisted Wheel, however
in reality these CD’s concentrate only upon the more
obscure rarer items. Of course it is a fact that
these sounds made the club what it was but the main
facts missing on such CD’s and collectors lists of
soul from the sixties is the fact that the musical
dominance were tracks from major artists and labels.
Maybe these recordings are not covered in
compilations because their rarity value as a
commodity is low due to their popularity and
availability. Dare we suggest that this rarity
aspect is the be all and end all of the Northern
Soul collector’s scene!
This list of a
top 500 inevitable has to include a fair
representation of these mainstream BRILLIANT
SOUNDS….
Inevitable
comparisons can be made with our Top 500 and The
Northern Soul 500, differences are quite obvious and
congratulations to those who discovered so many
great tracks that evaded us in the 60’s. Many songs
are included in both 500’s as these were part of our
original scene, many others, we were aware of have
to be excluded due to inclusion pressure from what
we believe to be better or more representative
tracks.
It has to be said
at the risk of repeating, that in the mid to end of
the 60’s we had huge amounts of what became
‘mainstream’ soul music coming from major labels and
artists and it was this core material that set the
genre. Although not entirely covered in our 500
being impossible to cover everything styles are
certainly represented.
Much had to be
omitted, leaving little room for many that are quite
good enough to be included, and this was a similar
problem at the time for soul DJ’s in the sixties due
to the rapid release and deletion of large amounts
of Soul music: what to include what to leave out.
In comparing both
500’s what would you put in or leave out from each
respective list if you were making choices?
One or two of the
Northern discoveries would most certainly get into
our 500 had we been aware of them at that time,
however most would not, due to what I believe are
the originating sounds and genre generating
mainstream titles that are included in list.
One track that
would easily have made it is the fantastic ‘Just
Loving You’ by Ruby Andrews and probably ‘I’m On My
Way’ from Dean Parish, The Carstairs ‘It really
Hurts Me Girl’ Tobi Legend’s ‘ Time Will Pass You
By’ ‘Stop And Take A Look At Yourself’ The Shalimars
and of course Frank Wilson’s ‘Do I Love You’
(although we had the Chris Clarke version).
(Helpless, Kim Weston example
page)
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