Northern soul

Martyn made me a CD up last year with what I thought was 50 or maybe 100 classic Northern Souls songs. To be honest I think I played it one day for a few tunes but wasn't in the right frame of mind. Yesterday, on a trip down to the East Midlands I got round to a proper listen at last

Now I'm not a soul music afficinado. I love Tamla and "rare-groovey soul-jazz" and funk but have never really got into Northern. The first thing that struck me was maybe only a third or even a quarter of the songs were "obviously Northern Soul". There were actually quite a few different types of sounds: early 60's black sounding R&B, very white sounding 60's "pop-soul", what I think of proper Northern Soul (stomping back beat, piano, brass, harmonies, and great songs about love). The surprise was the Philly sounds, the early disco and the late 80's modern R&B

I'll be posting few favorite tunes through the week. Many thanks Martyn and hey, it seemed appropriate to listen to the tunes in and around the Midlands. It's just a shame I don't have customers in Stoke, Blackpool or Wigan!