Our last post re the Problems Of Motown Unreleased brought a brief response from Motown's in house personnel suggesting that I'm not a real person!!!! and that my analysis was unfounded 'misinformation'. That analysis however was based on commentary from renowned collectors some with access to Motown Universal vaults. This... Continue reading

The release of this CD was nothing short of sensational with it's initial pressing selling out after it had entered the UK album chart. More on the status of CD sales models later in this article but primarily this is a review of it sonically and musically and what it... Continue reading

I've resurrected this blog because as I collect soul music and Motown archive material in particular I have been researching and gathering information re the recent release activities of independent companies like Ace Records, Cherry Red and related music collection retailers as well as Universal Music Group[UMG] who own the... Continue reading

The Skyliners are a legendary group. Stalwarts of the doo-wop era they have a big list of hits easily found on You Tube. The story of the group and female vocalist Janet Vogel is told here but this is not the entire story which finished so tragically with Janet’s suicide... Continue reading

If you look back over the CD era at the particularly exciting releases of previously hard (or impossible) to get recordings of 'That 'Northern Soul' Sound' there are a handful of compilations that 'stand-out'. 'Big Hits and Hard-ToFind Classics' was a good 3 CD set and 'This Is Northern Soul... Continue reading

Few attempts have been made to academically analyse the Northern Soul scene but one academic paper(see below) sought to capture the sociological, geographical and musical elements of it. It focused on it's roots, how it developed and the club scene. At the core of any analysis, however, is the music... Continue reading

With the 2017 Collectors Agenda we are moving the format to discussion of new collections of Soul music that examines if new collections of rare and previously unreleased compilations are meeting the needs of soul fans and if they are changing the profile of Northern Soul today It is no... Continue reading

“It's easy for the casual observer to think that Northern Soul is the Motown Sound: and to a certain extent that's true”. So comments Tim Brown in Kingsley Abbott's book 'Calling Out Around The World – A Motown Reader'. And to those of us that grew up with the emerging... Continue reading

It has been coming for a long time and was promised for Spring/Summer 2013. Hopefully before the summer is over the Northern Soul scene will get a major boost with the planned release of a major movie based in North West England. It should completely energise a genre that seems... Continue reading

Northern Soul has been described as “the longest running fad in the history of British music culture”. What began as an underground 60s Mod scene in licensed and unlicensed, no-frills clubs in the north west of England became the youth craze of the mid-70s. Northern Soul has confounded its critics... Continue reading

It is around 50 years since the roots of Northern Soul music were being created in the studios of USA cities like New York, Chicago and Detroit and there are many misconceptions and somewhat diverse claims as to what constitutes 'That 'Northern Soul' Sound'. Each decade since the 60s has... Continue reading