Jerry Naylor "City Lights" (Kent)

One of the down sides of labels such as Kent using generic sleeves for their releases (or, more accurately, their various series of releases) is that middle-aged dumplings such as Not Unloved can forget which ones they already have when rifling through the 7"s at their local record shop. Thankfully, the lovely staff at Monorail Music ensured that Jerry Naylor's effervescent "City Lights" reissue didn't pass me by as would have been the case had I been left to my own devices. It's irresistibly upbeat with a great production (trumpets!, strings! etc.). If anything can lift the gloom of spring, 2018, "City Lights" can. It came as something of a surprise to learn that Naylor was one of Buddy Holly's backing group, The Crickets.

Kent have paired "City Lights" with Johnny Praye's strident"Can't Get Too Much Love". Another winner, it  had Not Unloved (unwisely) dusting off the old falsetto to sing along with the backing vocals - not pretty!

Music for dancing to

Nestling in the 7" racks of Monorail Music yesterday was the new single from Sally Shapiro.  I made a mental note to listen to it online when I got home and promised myself that if I liked it I'd go back for it.  Of course, I promptly forgot it even existed thanks to tape dubbing fun at Good Press followed by yet another late night spent in The Old Hairdressers being pummelled by LOUD music (the ferocious Kasper Hauser who were launching their Soft Power tape).  Luckily, Unpopular had the good sense to include the A-side of Sally's 45 on their latest mix so I was reminded to give it a whirl. What an adorable slice of gently euphoric Euro-pop! Soft voices are the best voices. 

Get it from the Fika Recordings shop if you're not lucky enough to have a shop as astute as  Monorail Music nearby.

The fifth volume in Kent Records' excellent Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities CD series is one of its strongest and opens with the dramatic group soul of The Avons' "When The Boy That You Love Is Loving You":

Sensibly, Kent have also released it on 7" vinyl, the label of which says: "A previously unissued Bob Holmes production." . It's a wild thought that such a fabulous record remained unreleased for five decades.

Two Ghosts

Famously, Doris Duke was soul music evangelist and scholar Dave Godin's favourite singer.  One of the finest and most moving songs on her "I'm A Loser" lp was "Ghost Of Myself":

Its lyrics recount a tale of pure heartache:

You laugh
I cry
You live
I die
I made you happy
You made me hurt
I gave you honey
You gave me dirt
Now, I look at myself
And there ain’t nothing left
But a ghost of myself

Don’t want to live
But I’m scared to die
My tears are all gone
When I’m sad I can’t cry
Met some other people
That weren’t good enough
Cos what you left me to work with
Sure made it rough
Now, I look at myself
And there ain’t nothing left
But a ghost of myself

If another man were to come along
I couldn’t even give him a sincere smile
You took away my womanhood
Stripped me of all my pride
When you left you didn’t give a damn
Whether I lived or died
Now, I’ll just wander from pillar to post
Don’t nobody want to love a ghost
You’re the winner
I’m hanging up my gloves
Cos I’m through fighting
Trying to win your love
Now, I look at myself
And there ain’t nothing left
But a ghost of myself

Woah…
There ain’t nothing left
But a ghost of myself

Since receiving Kent's Doris Duke cd for Christmas 6 or 7 years ago, I was fairly certain that I'd never hear it performed better.  That was before I heard Sandra Phillips' softer, richer, even more sobering interpretation:

Like Duke's it was produced by the song's writer, the legendary Swamp Dogg,  Admittedly, there's not a lot in it, but I'd say Phillips delivers the key lines - listen to, say, "You took away my womanhood / Stripped me of all my pride" - with just a touch more emotion and overall her version flows a little better.  Dogg's production is more lush on Phillips' take on it, too.  Each guitar note in the intro unfolds like a rose petal and the swell of the strings moistens the eyes.  As if to underscore just what a monopoly they have on top quality soul music, it's available once again through Kent, this time on their impressive  "Swamp Dogg's Southern Soul Girls: Sandra Phillips & Bette Williams".  Incredible music from an amazing time and place.

Thee Bettye Swann

Over time, Betty Jean Champion, better known to her fans as Bettye Swann, has become my favourite female soul singer.  My love for her music started when I first heard Honest Jon's flawless compilation and increased to wild levels when my dad unexpectedly bought me a copy of Kent's compilation of the majestic sides she cut for Money Recordings.  Then came the 7"s.  I've bought a bunch of them.  The one I play most?  Probably this outstanding girl group soul clapper (track 17 on the aforementioned Money Recordings cd):

I never, even in my most wishful daydeams, expected to be able to see her sing live.  Amazingly, thanks to the saints at Kent Records, it could actually happen as she's scheduled to appear at Ady Croasdell's Cleethorpes 6Ts Weekender:

It will be her first performance in Europe.  It's almost too dizzy-making to contemplate that in the space of a week I could see the most significant group in my life, The Pastels (they play Glasgow's CCA with The Wake on June 1st), and the soul singer whose voice I cherish the most.  Goosebumps!  Adrenalin!  That her best known work was released four decades ago doesn't dissuade me from wanting to see her sing in 2013.  After all, I saw Roger McGuinn 30 years after The Byrds cut "Mr. Tambourine Man" and that was unforgettable.  Also, Bettye's vocal performances were never about chandelier shattering or insecurely running up and down the scales to prove her chops like a lot of those less interesting performers who came after her.  They were so much more nuanced and expressive than that so if age has slightly altered her voice, it won't diminish her ability to deliver the songs; it may, if anything, give them even more poignancy.

Mr. Creator

Kent time again! Their Apollas compilation had been winking at me from the cd racks for a while and when I finally took the time to do my homework and heard "Mr. Creator" I knew I'd be cheerfully parting with cash for it (see, some folks still spend money on physical releases!).  Occupying similar musical ground to The Flirtations' "Nothing But A Heartache", it benefits from one of the best (re?)mastering jobs I can recall hearing; so powerful, so bright.  Lead singer Leola Jiles glides effortlessly through the gears from girl group sweetness to gospel wailing without overdoing it in either direction.  How I'd love an original 45!  Hopefully a fair proportion of the cd's other 24 tracks are similarly immense.  Kent wins again!

Ortheia Barnes "Never Ever Leave Me"

Kent Records releases so many 45s that it's easy to fall behind.  That and the fact that the price of their singles has gone up in the last year or two to the point where you don't get much (if any!) change out of a tenner mean that, unless a chap's pockets are as deep as Daddy Warbucks', it's best to do a bit or research before disbursing any cash.  The conclusion of tonight's bout of online rummaging is that Ortheia Barnes' "Never Ever Leave Me" is an essential purchase.  It may not be a Detroit stomper but what it lacks in tempo it makes up for in atmosphere and class.  That it's classy is no surprise given that it's a Dave Hamilton co-write/production.  Hamilton's productions often feature something a little a different and in this case it's a deliciously restrained flute solo which ends with a cheery flutter. It'd be an ideal early evening number for an All-nighter in a once glorious ballroom. In that context it would probably have me wiping a convenient speck of dust from my eye.

The Demures

Somehow, more than 40 years after Northern Soul became a phenomenon in the UK, incredible unreleased songs are still being unearthed in record company vaults and played at soul clubs.  For example, Ady Croasdell - legendary DJ and the man behind an absurd number of great Kent Records compilations - has recently started including a hitherto unreleased master of The Demures' "I Wanna Be Good To You" in his DJ sets.  Helpfully, for those of us not fortunate enough to be able to spend hours rifling through the vaults of defunct record companies, he's posted a clip from it on the 6T's site. From the excerpt it's a wonderful, bouncing tune with a strong melody and cracking vocal performances.  It really gets you wondering just how something so brilliant never saw a release in the mid-60s.  To Not Unloved, it's at least as good as their (assuming it's the same group!) smashing but better known "Raining Teardrops" single:

To fund the purchase of an original of "Raining Teardrops" (check the most recent sale price here) I would have to sell a kidney so it's impossible that I could ever afford an original demo/white label of "I Wanna Good Be To You" were one ever to show up for sale.  Let's just hope that Ady has shared the sample in order to whet the appetite before Kent issues it on 7"!

While I'm on the subject of Kent Records/6T's, the poster for William Bell's appearance at June's Cleethorpes Weekender is pretty nifty:

Oh, and 6T's is putting on the guy behind this and this at London's 100 Club in July.  Amazing!

Tower of Song

Last weekend's Blackpool Tower Soul Weekender was an unalloyed joy.  Of course the music was immense and invigorating and moving, that was to be expected, but the unseasonably wonderful weather and the sheer beauty of the spectacle of hundreds of people bobbing in unison in a grand old ballroom came as pleasant surprises.  There were some seriously brilliant dancers.  Dancers whose feet seemed to move as fast as hummingbirds' wings.  I could've watched Sam Evans - a former World Northern Soul Dancing champion - dancing for hours.  She put on quite a masterclass early on Sunday afternoon when a lot of folks were still out enjoying the tail end of the sunshine and would've given the much younger Steven Cootes (of Edinburgh...yessss!) who a little controversially took this year's crown, a right run for his money.  Never having been to a weekender before, I got a bit of a jolt when, just flipping through a box of records, I put my hand on an original Revilot issue of Rose Batiste's masterpiece "Hit and Run" with the £250.00 price tag written casually in marker pen on its greying card protector.  Part of me wanted to recklessly throw down a bunch of tenners then and there but sense and the fact that I own a perfectly good copy of the '90s Goldmine reissue prevailed.  The most expensive record I saw?  That was Don Varner's rolllicking "Tear Stained Face" which was priced at £800.00.  I stopped looking after that.  I'm well aware that rare Northern Soul records can fetch quite a sum on ebay or John Manship but to see such madly expensive 7"s just sitting in a box on a bar table and not behind toughened safety glass was wild.  Billy Butler's "The Right Track" became the anthem of the weekend with J and I stomping the deserted streets of Blackpool chanting its emphatic string part over and over after hearing it on Sunday afternoon in the main ballroom.  When played at ballroom wrecking volume it became a Delete button for all the other melodies onto which I'd been vainly clinging in the hope of identifying some day.  Why it wasn't on either volume of Kent's "Okeh: A Northern Soul Obsession"  I'll never know*.  So, a brilliant experience and one that I'd love to repeat next year.

* - Actually, that's not strictly true.  I'm sure that the reason why it wasn't included is because the smart folks at Kent would like you to buy their Billy Butler cd, too!