Northern Soul: The Film Soundtrack

Product Information

You Didn’t Say a Word was originally only released as the b-side to Yvonne Baker‘s 1967 single To Prove My Love is True, on Cameo-Parkway Records, yet it soon became one of the former Sensations singer’s best loved songs. Iggy Pop’s riotous icons weren’t the only influence. As with A Storm In Heaven, The Verve brought a seemingly conflicting bunch of inspirational figures to bear on their new work. Having looked to Dr. John for their predecessor, Peter Salisbury now immersed himself in Tiki Fulwood’s drumming on the early Funkadelic albums, along with the sonic assault of NWA drum loops. McCabe felt that his guitar reverb tapped into a “dribbling, wibbly” Barry White thing. Experimental Japanese music and Miles Davis’ post- Bitches Brew explorations filtered into the likes of “Brainstorm Interlude”’s psychedelic swamp and the heavy fuzz of “This Is Music.” Searling, author of a northern soul history called Setting The Record Straight, says: “The copies of the record that were in the Motown vaults were … borrowed. Then Soussan sent one to the Casino in about 1975. He’d already put a new label on it, saying it was Eddie Foster. Nobody had any idea it was Frank Wilson until a long time later. It was Soussan who discovered the song.” And where is he now? “Out there somewhere,” says Searling. “Probably.” Northern soul is a culture based on chance finds, crate-digging and word-of-mouth recommendations. That’s why it would be redundant to fill this list with the titles everyone knows, although it would be churlish not to include some obvious selections, like Out on the Floor, for starters.

If you're looking for something to dance the night away to, you've come to the right place. Our Northern Soul collection on the musicMagpie Store includes some of the best Northern Soul compilations and artists around. To get you started, here are 10 of our personal favourites. Searling says only six were produced. Other sources claim 250 were made. Whatever the truth, only a tiny handful of copies were put into the Motown vaults in Detroit, and forgotten about, until almost a decade later when someone – either Soussan or Winstanley’s unnamed soul artist – liberated one or more.

Move on Up is perhaps one of the best known Northern Soul songs, with none other than Kanye West sampling the song's horn riff for Touch The Sky. Record collecting DJs began to unearth lost 45’s and bring them to the sprung dance floor’s of Northern England’s dance halls, and a new scene was born. If we’ve missed off your favourite, let us know. Spread the love, but most importantly, keep the faith. Dobie Gray's Drift Away was one of the biggest hits of 1973, selling over 1 million copies and becoming a staple of dancefloors across the North. Originally intended to be recorded by Gloria Jones and the Tiaras, Jones‘ vocal was eventually replaced by new Dore Records signing Rita Graham following a disagreement with management.

After digging through hundreds of floor fillers and rare records, Getintothis’ Adam Lowerson has finally managed to settle on ten of the best Northern Soul classics. The single enjoyed a third life in the early 80s, when the Soul Supply label reissued it at a crucial moment. The Wigan Casino had closed in 1981, and despite regular meets in Rotherham and Stafford for the staunchest keepers of the faith, there was a sense that the original movement had entered a decade-long slump. However, a new generation, too young to have frequented the Casino themselves, were curious to find out about the scene that had inspired 80s pop heroes like Soft Cell, Dexys Midnight Runners and the Style Council. Under My Thumb, along with a sudden spate of Kent/Modern various artist compilations, ensured that every youth club disco in Britain had some authentic northern soul for little mod kids to shake a tapered, not flared, trouser leg. Whittling down the thousands of singles which have become cult classics amongst Northern Soul fans is an almost near impossible task. Everyone has their favourites they’d argue for days upon end for its inclusion, but there’s some that simply cannot be ignored when discussing the scene. Given that a lot of Northern Soul classics are by obscure artists who only released a couple of singles, compilations are often the best way to hear all the classics.

On The Go

This double album includes Drift Away and Gray's follow up album Loving Arms, named after his popular cover of the soul standard. Northern Soul is one of the most important youth movements in British history, even though it doesn't get as much attention as the punk or mod movements. Although the Northern Soul movement was more focused on singles and songs than particular artists, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas were responsible for more than a few dancehall favourites. This compilation is a great place to start your Northern Soul dance extravaganza, with classics like Tainted Love by Gloria Jones (AKA the Northern Soul song everyone knows), Nothing But a Heartache by The Flirtations and Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) by Frank Wilson the perfect introduction to the high tempo soul played in The Twisted Wheel and Wigan Casino! Described by some as the greatest ever soul group, The Dells have enjoyed a hugely successful career selling millions of records and performing for decades.

Yet the Jersey Boys hitmakers showed off their differing colours with their all but forgotten 1972 LP Chameleon, released on Mowest, the West Coast division of the legendary Motown label. The album flopped initially, but Northern Soul enthusiasts unearthed it later on, with The Night finally charting at number seven in the UK, three years later in 1975.

For Sale on Discogs

Playing live became our forte,” Jones says, recalling how A Northern Soul was largely written in six weeks on the road, the group firing on all cylinders, treating audiences to new songs the day they were written. “We’d read about The Stooges going in and recording an album in six days and that was what we wanted to do.” It felt like I’d been through an emotional storm,” Ashcroft would later tell the NME. “But I got something out of it. Out of all the torment, I had a diamond. And that’s what great groups survive on.” As it happened, the band, in this incarnation, would barely survive the year. A Northern Soul, however, would go on to become of the defining albums of the mid-90s: soul music, palpably real, torn from the core of something intangible.

Dwarfs were a Pennsylvania garage band fronted by singer-keyboardist Robert Zimmerman (not that one), and the piledriving Stop Girl, based on a filthy fuzz guitar riff shamelessly indebted to the Stones’ Satisfaction, would nowadays just as likely be deemed freakbeat as northern soul. It’s a bold claim to make about the man responsible for some of the greatest soul records ever made, but This Love Starved Heart of Mine (It’s Killing Me) might just be the best song Marvin Gaye ever released, and almost certainly one of his most under appreciated. The record was deleted from Motown’s catalogue because at the last minute they decided not to release it. Wilson, who died in 2012 aged 71 from prostate cancer, gave an interview to Searling in 2001 and said that just before the record’s scheduled release on 23 December 1965, Motown founder Berry Gordy took him to one side to tell him he had a choice: did he want to be an artist, or did he want to be a writer/producer? According to Wilson, it was a “no-brainer”, and he went on to work with artists including Marvin Gaye, the Supremes and the Four Tops. It’s hard to imagine now that the song was almost lost as it feels as instantly familiar as all great pop songs should and is well and truly cemented as a dance floor classic. It’s the ultimate stomper, and impossible not to move to.

Credits

The northern soul DJs were very competitive and protective about their finds, and to stop rivals knowing what he was playing, Winstanley says he covered up the label with a fake one, proclaiming the record to be by “Eddie Foster”. But the intensity took its toll on the band. Somehow, they came to the belief that 10pm at night was the only time they could capture the sounds in their collective heads. Recording until four or five in the morning, they’d sleep for 12 hours, get up and do it again. “It was all about waiting for the inspiration… And if it wasn’t there, we’d get really, really depressed,” Ashcroft would recall. “After six weeks of going up and crashing down, everything you’ve been doing takes its toll. You start losing it.”