By Elliott West
“I had started to notice that northern football fans who were in London to follow their team were coming into the store to buy records, but they weren’t interested in the latest developments in the black American chart. 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 records currently in the U.S. black chart, just play them what they like – ‘Northern Soul’”.
Dave Godin
Introduction
Northern Soul is poetry in motion, it takes you to a place where your feet have to move to the groove of the beat and your body moves in time to the beat of the music. The swoosh of flared trousers across the dancefloor and hands carving out the notes in the ether. The music is fast and up-tempo, the predominantly black soul music of the 1960s and the 1970s that didn’t make the hit parade but got a second hearing in the clubs of Northern Britain. This is let-loose music, where you feel the music and just do the Northern Soul shuffle with the high kick and backdrop as the caviar on the plate.
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Lee David, Judy Street, The Vel-Vets, Little Anthony and The Imperials, Yvonne Baker, R.Dean Taylor Gloria Jones and Frank Wilson all graced the turntables. The three before 8 at the Wigan Casino were the speciality, the three last tracks played before 8 am approached and these working-class groovers had to return to the grind of the working week. It was a moment of sadness, a whole week before this dancing community could be reunited on the dancefloor. These tracks were “I’m On My Way” by Dean Parrish, “Long After Tonight Is All Over” by Jimmy Radcliffe and “Time Will Pass You By” by Tobi Legend. Fabulous ’60s soul songs that fill your heart with joy and pulsates in your bones.
Sounds of the Underground
Once you hear Northern Soul, you are addicted. These songs from primarily black singers from the 1960s and 70s believe it or not were flops when they were first released but the dust was blown off the black vinyl grooves in these northern temples, clubs such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, Blackpool Mecca and Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent. These clubs didn’t have any heirs or graces, they were places where working-class people came to spend some of their hard-earned brass. They came to live the music and leave their DNA on the dancefloor.
Clubs like the Twisted Wheel in Manchester had started life in the 1950s as a beatnik coffee bar, then called The Left Wing but by 1963, it was run down. Ivor and Phi Abdi leased it and turned it into a music venue. This venue just grew and grew when word out that this was a sanctuary of soul music. By 1968, people were flocking here from all over the UK for the Saturday all-nighters with DJ Bob Dee. A club that eventually closed its doors for good in 1971.
Similarly, The Golden Torch run by Chris Burton was also highly successful. A club that ran between 1964 and 1973. This venue in Tunstall originally opened as a mod venue but later converted to soul music. DJs such as Peter Stringfellow, Keith Minshull, Colin Curtis, Alan Day and Maretyn Ellis all came here. A venue that had been a church, rolling skating rink and the Regent Cinema. It was a club that unfortunately was a victim of its own success with regular police raids due to drug taking. Sadly the building burnt down shortly after it lost its licence in 1973 but a plaque marks the spot in Hose Street after a public campaign.
Wigan Casino opened its doors in 1973. A night where 673 people flooded in and danced to tracks like “Put Your Loving Arms Round Me” by The Sherrys. A club that would go on to have 100,000 members and the brainchild of Russ Winstanley. Originally called The Casino Club or the “Emp”, this building was first opened during the First World War and was a perfect venue for Northern Soul. It had a massive maple dancefloor, a large stage at one end and a balcony circulated the dancefloor on three sides. Ultraviolet tubes hung from the ceiling on chains. There was another room to the side that also used.
This venue wasn’t plush. The carpets were threadbare, it had basic furniture and the toilets were only used in an emergency. A club that could hold 2,000 people. Crushed and pushed through the doors, you would get your hand stamped by Hilda Woods. Then you would swing open the double doors to the main room and feel the heat and the condensation dripping from the roof. It was a truly amazing atmosphere, hot and frenzied. A place where you dance until 2 a.m. with the occasional all-dayer and a mid-week soul night on a Wednesday. It closed its doors in 1981.
Blackpool Mecca was first opened in 1965 and was particularly known for The Highland Room or the Commonwealth Sporting Club from 1977, a regular venue for Northern Soul events. Used as a soul venue from 1967 until 1979, it ran all-nighters on a Saturday night from 8 pm until 2 am and the two main DJs were Ian Levine and Colin Curtis. It played classic soul tracks like Tony Clarke’s “Landslide”, Morris Chesnut’s “Too Darn Soulful”, Frankie Beverly and the Butlers “If That’s What You Wanted” and R. Dean Taylor’s “ There’s A Ghost In My House”.
The theme changed in the 1970s with a less frenetic style of Northern Soul music. A change in tempo that led to a slightly different shuffling dance developed at the venue. This newer style caused some controversy and led to the creation of the Modern soul subgenre which still exists today and runs alongside the mainstream Northern Soul movement. The building was eventually demolished in 2009 to make way for new campus buildings for Blackpool and the Fylde College.
The Present
“I was too young to go to Wigan Casino but a couple of kids in my school who were a couple of years older, they used to get the bus from Smithdown Road every Friday night and used to beg me to come with them. My mum and dad wouldn’t let me go! So I was an outsider looking in on a Monday at these tired and weary faces and people explaining to me what the atmosphere at these places was like. You have to remember that youth culture at that time was very, very tribal. You had your punks, your rockers, your skinheads, suedeheads, guys into prog rock, your two-tone guys. There was an awful lot of pent-up aggression – loads of fighting. So, they told me about this place where everyone seemed to be happy. Everyone just danced. It was all just about dancing and music. That was my first introduction to it – as an outsider. There are two stand out records for me and they’re probably big ones in the Northern Soul cannon. Al Wilson’s The Snake and Frankie Valli’s The Night. They’re two records that on my show get requested more than any other record”.
Craig Charles
Northern Soul remains as popular as ever with regular events up and down the country. A type of music that lets you get lost for a night in the music and to express yourself through your dance moves. As Craig Charles says “Northern Soul will never go away” and still finds a captive audience in 2023. The circle skirts and wide-legged trousers are still worn with pride in dance halls, clubs and community centres. This music evokes community, it makes you feel special and part of a group. Exuberance and escapism. Clubs like The Deptford Northern Soul Club, Younghearts Soul Club, Sheffield. A genre of music that laid the ground for break dancing.
