Roll out the lino and shake out the talc as we spin and slide through ten Torch tunes and Casino classics from Britain’s rare soul underground

1. Dobie Gray – Out on the Floor



One of the many beauties of northern soul is its sheer unknowability. It’s a scene that has always thrived on the rare, the obscure and the undiscovered. Since it first emerged in the dancehalls of northern England in the late 60s, it has existed in direct opposition to the very concept of greatest hits.

It’s a genre that inherently defies definitive list-making. Despite the sterling work of legendary DJ Kev Roberts in producing an “official” Northern Soul Top 500, or the many charts in books like Wigan Casino DJ Russ Winstanley’s Soul Survivors and David Nowell’s Too Darn Soulful, or efforts by admirable amateurs like Terry Christian (whose personal Top 100 is packed with treasures), there is no carved-in-stone canon – everyone’s journey through it is unique.

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.

In 1966 Dobie Gray, a versatile old pro who was equally as comfortable singing country as cabaret, recorded a celebration of nocturnal kicks whose lyrics seemed to uncannily anticipate the northern soul scene. Even the fairy-dust twinkle of its piano topline evokes the heart-racing amphetamine thrills of the all-nighter. The perfect anthem for the movement.

2. Yvonne Baker – You Didn’t Say a Word

Many of the feather-cut kids in their three-star tops, flare-flapping Oxford bags and slippery Solatio shoes would have known this as the James Bond song. One of the ironies of northern soul is that the modern dilettante has access to more information about the artists and records than even the most obsessive fan at the time, when the identities of highly localised dancefloor hits, sometimes associated with just one venue, were jealously guarded by DJs who stuck plain white paper over the labels in order to prevent rivals from stealing their set.

The James Bond song was so nicknamed because its underlying melody bore a pronounced resemblance to the 007 gun-barrel theme. It was fronted by Philadelphia singer Yvonne Baker (nee Mills), previously a member of doo-wop band the Sensations, but the distinctive arrangement was down to prolific composer and guitarist Joe Renzetti, whose CV includes dozens of hits from Chubby Checker’s Let’s Twist Again to Barry Manilow’s Mandy to Bobby Hebb’s Sunny. Tellingly, Renzetti was a film buff (who would later pick up an Oscar for his work on The Buddy Holly Story). Indeed, a funkier recording by co-writer Jean Wells would later end up on an actual film soundtrack (for 2014 YSL biopic Saint Laurent).

You Didn’t Say a Word is a classic flipped disc: at first, merely the B-side to Baker’s 1967 torch ballad To Prove My Love Is True, until DJs discovered its club-friendly potential. It quickly became one of the most sought-after singles on the scene (at one point, even a bootleg would set you back £50), and is sufficiently iconic that a T-shirt bearing only its title and a mock-up of the Bond gun barrel is available, no further explanation needed.

3. The Tomangoes – I Really Love You

It’s reductive, of course, to describe northern soul as “failed Motown”, but there’s a grain of truth in that. In the wake of the Detroit label’s success, scores of tiny start-ups across the States attempted to replicate the Hitsville sound on a budget, often with small-batch, one-off local releases by artists who would never record again (providing a rich seam of rare vinyl for northern soul DJs to mine in future years). On which reckoning, Michigan band the Tomangoes were basically the Faux Tops, right down to having their sole single engineered by one Dr Edward Wolfrum, who frequently worked for Motown (as well as making every sound tech’s life immeasurably easier by inventing the DI box).

Originally on Washpan, the label run by Gino (not to be confused with Geno) Washington, I Really Love You is the Tomangoes’ only known release. For years, mystery surrounded the identity of the band, thought to be named after 1958 slave rebellion drama Tamango. Persistent rumours had it that the vocalist was prolific Detroit singer Dusty Wilson, and the musicians Bob Seger’s backing band the Last Heard. In fact, the Levi Stubbs-esque lungbuster was Dusty Williams, whose impassioned performance has you worrying he’ll give himself a pulmonary hernia. The record’s charm lies in the way that Williams’ angst is set against cheerfully out-of-tune Mariachi carnival horns. A standout track on the Wigan Casino Story compilation, itself as good a northern soul primer as any.

4. The Fascinations – Girls Are Out to Get You

By the early 70s, northern soul had the power to turn little-known oldies into hit singles. The Fascinations were a girl group whose original lineup included a pre-Motown Martha Reeves; Girls Are Out to Get You featured Donny Hathaway on piano, and was written by Curtis Mayfield, who released it on his own Mayfield label in 1971. Despite that impressive pedigree, it made little impact at the time. However, its euphoric woo-oos and concise gone-in-120-seconds punch made it a floor-filler on the scene. It was opportunistically re-released by Polydor subsidiary Mojo in 1971, propelling it into the UK Top 40 and prompting the Fascinations, who had disbanded two years earlier, to briefly reform for live performances.

The song’s seemingly feminist title has made it a perennial favourite of hipster mixtapes and all-girl theme nights, but on closer inspection, its message is actually the opposite: a dire warning to slavishly dote on your man, lest one of your treacherous fellow females should snatch him away. “Be sure to treat him like a king, sitting on his throne … ”

5. Mike Post Coalition – Afternoon of the Rhino

Mike Post is the composer of countless American TV themes, including The A-Team, The Rockford Files, Magnum PI and Hill Street Blues. The enigmatically titled Afternoon of the Rhino was an obscure track on Post’s 1975 album Fused, until DJ Ian Levine (of whom, more later) began playing it at the Blackpool Mecca, prodding WEA into putting it out as a single.

Northern soul was christened by London-based Blues and Soul writer Dave Godin after a visit to the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, but many of its most popular tunes were not soul at all. The scene was spectacularly omnivorous and utility-focused: as long as you could dance to it, nobody cared where a track came from. Afternoon of the Rhino is a classic example of novelty northern, a category which also included the similarly silly Pepper Box by the Peppers, and mega-selling harmonica workout Groovin’ With Mr Bloe by Mr Bloe. At revival nights in the 90s, you’d even hear Keith Mansfield’s Grandstand theme get the odd play.

A daft instrumental tune, featuring piano by Mike Melvoin (father of Prince and the Revolution member Wendy), Rhino consists of two minutes 17 seconds of brassy orchestral urgency and pounding beats, lending itself perfectly to the karate high-kicks, figure-skating pirouettes and proto-breakdancing backspins of the scene’s most exhibitionist dancers. A vocal version of Afternoon of the Rhino later emerged, renamed Dreaming Up a World Of Fantasy and credited to the Charades, but the lyrics contained no mention of megafauna, leaving the title’s secret meaning between Mike and his bedpost.

6. Terry Callier – Ordinary Joe

It’s a story as old as time: England ignominiously whimper their way out of yet another football tournament, and pundits are left picking over the bones. After one of these biennial humiliations, however, something extraordinary happened. As Gary Lineker bade us his disconsolate farewell, someone in the BBC sports department with uncommonly refined taste reached for a tune to soothe the nation’s broken spirit, and gave a northern soul classic its widest-ever audience.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Inspirational ... Terry Callier. Photograph: Echoes/Redferns

The late Terry Callier is the connoisseur’s soul man (and jazz man, and folk man), whose lyrics have a philosophical quality which transcend genre. The inspirational, life-affirming message of his 1972 single Ordinary Joe was a perfect choice for the occasion. Its exquisitely gentle, sophisticated arrangement also makes it perfect for the first – or last – section of any soul all-nighter. Its stature has steadily grown over the years, and its place on the Express Your Soul compilation, curated by Bristolian dancer Levanna McLean (who leapt to fame when her unofficial video to Pharrell Williams “Happy” went viral), is more than justified.

7. Tobi Legend – Time Will Pass You By

Northern soul was Britain’s first great musical underground, a secret nation within a nation. In many senses, the subculture anticipated the rave movement by two decades. Every weekend, as detailed beautifully in Pete McKenna’s soul boy memoir Night Shift, thousands of devotees abandoned their humdrum lives, travelling great distances by any means available in order to lose themselves in music and experience rapturous communion with friends and strangers. The typical all-nighter was fuelled by popping pills rather than swigging pints, facilitating hour upon hour of non-stop dancing.

As dawn broke over the Wigan Casino, and the time approached for dancers to grab their bowling bags, change out of their perspiration-drenched gear into fresh clothes, and think about bunking onto the milk train back to normality, the same three songs would herald the end of the all-nighter. The famous Three Before Eight, which charted when released together as a commemorative EP, shared a common theme of the ebbing sands of time. They were Long After Tonight Is All Over by Jimmy Radcliffe, I’m On My Way by Dean Parrish, and the pick of the trio, Time Will Pass You By by Alabama-born Tobi Legend (nee Lark).

Written by Englishman John Rhys Eddins of Saxmundham, Suffolk and later covered by Kylie Minogue, this 1968 single was an elegant and poetic memento mori to live fully in the moment and be cognisant of the fleeting nature of existence. “Passing seasons always fade away, into misty clouds of autumn grey / As I sit here looking at the street, little figures, quickly moving feet … ”

How to dance to northern soul Read more

8. Wayne Gibson – Under My Thumb

The dancers who dipped and span and slid to Wayne Gibson’s Under My Thumb at the Casino, Torch and Twisted Wheel would in most cases have been gobsmacked to learn that they weren’t hearing the voice of a black soul singer from Tennessee or Georgia, but a white south Londoner with a Peter Wyngarde moustache. It’s a peculiar detail of northern soul that while the majority of the scene’s all-time classics may have been black American soul singles unearthed by DJs taking transatlantic trips, as Richard Searling did when he discovered Gloria Jones’ Tainted Love on a buying jaunt to Philadelphia in 1973, anything up to 20% of its most famous songs actually came from white vocalists like Judy Street, Frankie Valli, Tony Clarke, R Dean Taylor and the aforementioned Dean Parrish. Anything with a suitably emotional vocal or a suitably driving backbeat was ripe for plundering, no matter who the singer was.

Under My Thumb is a perfect instance of accidental soul. In 1966, Wayne Gibson, a former contemporary of the Beatles on the revolving roster at the Top Ten Club in Hamburg, chanced his luck with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ misogynist classic, augmenting the original’s xylophone top line with a cheap and cheerful Farfisa organ. It got lost in the noise of the 60s beat boom, and flopped. Almost a decade later, it finally hit the charts when northern soul DJs discovered that its heartfelt delivery and insistent drum beat were perfect for the floor, and an opportunistic re-release from Pye Disco Demand pushed it into the Top 20 in 1974.

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.

9. Eloise Laws – Love Factory

Ian Levine is a controversial, divisive figure in northern soul culture, chiefly due to his questionable curatorship of the genre’s legacy in more recent years. He coaxed long-retired soul singers into re-recording their biggest tunes over cheap backing tracks for compilations on his Motor City label, then lip-synched even cheaper videos, shot in a hotel lobby, for a DVD. However, there can be no disputing his importance to the development of northern soul.

Levine later went on to pioneer Hi-NRG with his Record Shack label and produced the first three Take That singles, but in the 1970s, he was a DJ in the Highland Room of the Blackpool Mecca, whose main innovation was to break with the tradition of excavating dusty old discs, and dare to play brand new tracks whose sound, termed “modern soul”, was a throw-forward to disco rather than a throwback to the 60s.

One of his finest finds was Love Factory by Eloise Laws. Written by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier, and released in 1973 on Music Merchant (one of the labels launched by the Holland Dozier Holland team after their break with Motown), it’s an extended assembly line metaphor, bursting with flamboyant melodrama and belted out with gusto by Laws, whose ad-libs and interjections border on camp: “I ain’t nobody’s machine – touch me! – I’m a human being.” More than almost any other northern soul track, its failure to become a world-conquering smash hit single is staggering.

10. 7 Dwarfs – Stop Girl

The most exciting northern soul tune is always the next one you discover. Stop Girl by 7 Dwarfs, picked up not long ago from the record stall at an all-dayer for just £6, mainly out of curiosity piqued by that ungrammatical pluralisation, just happens to occupy that place.

7 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.

Whether it was a stone-cold floor-filler across the entire north, or merely got a couple of cursory plays at Va-Va’s in Bolton, is of no consequence. That’s not how it works. The present-day dabbler, with no memories of sweat-soaked 70s Saturday nights, is freed from the shackles of nostalgia or historical accuracy, with no obligation other than taking a wild punt and seeing where it leads. The knowledgeability of hardcore devotees can be daunting, but northern soul is too glorious to leave to trainspotters. The fun lies in following your own path, and finding your own Stop Girl. So jump in. It’ll never be over for me, to quote the Timi Yuro tune. Or for you.