Northern Soul: The Film Soundtrack

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Winstanley won’t say who he thinks might have obtained the copy from the Motown files. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I mean, I know it was 50 years ago, but…” The opening riff sounds transported straight from a Bond film in which 007 ditches the casino for a sprung dance floor and dances with his enemies (someone should make that film… Wigan Casino Royale?). It has a cool and mysterious feel, yet is still a real stomper. It’s hard to imagine now that the song was almost lost as it feels as instantly familiar as all great pop songs should and is well and truly cemented as a dance floor classic. It’s the ultimate stomper, and impossible not to move to. Given that a lot of Northern Soul classics are by obscure artists who only released a couple of singles, compilations are often the best way to hear all the classics. But the intensity took its toll on the band. Somehow, they came to the belief that 10pm at night was the only time they could capture the sounds in their collective heads. Recording until four or five in the morning, they’d sleep for 12 hours, get up and do it again. “It was all about waiting for the inspiration… And if it wasn’t there, we’d get really, really depressed,” Ashcroft would recall. “After six weeks of going up and crashing down, everything you’ve been doing takes its toll. You start losing it.”

After digging through hundreds of floor fillers and rare records, Getintothis’ Adam Lowerson has finally managed to settle on ten of the best Northern Soul classics.Searling, author of a northern soul history called Setting The Record Straight, says: “The copies of the record that were in the Motown vaults were … borrowed. Then Soussan sent one to the Casino in about 1975. He’d already put a new label on it, saying it was Eddie Foster. Nobody had any idea it was Frank Wilson until a long time later. It was Soussan who discovered the song.” And where is he now? “Out there somewhere,” says Searling. “Probably.” 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.

Record label RCA Victor released many of Northern Soul's most popular records, representing the likes of The Dynamics, Garland Green and The Celestrals.

Move on Up is perhaps one of the best known Northern Soul songs, with none other than Kanye West sampling the song's horn riff for Touch The Sky.

Described by some as the greatest ever soul group, The Dells have enjoyed a hugely successful career selling millions of records and performing for decades. 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. Playing live became our forte,” Jones says, recalling how A Northern Soul was largely written in six weeks on the road, the group firing on all cylinders, treating audiences to new songs the day they were written. “We’d read about The Stooges going in and recording an album in six days and that was what we wanted to do.”When he returned, he had one final statement. As with A Storm In Heaven’s “Blue,” brought in at the last minute, “History” would point towards The Verve’s next record: a stately acoustic ballad drenched in strings and which would resonate further than anyone could have imagined. “We were like, ‘F__king hell! That’s an incredible song,’” Jones recalls. The band recorded it that night. McCabe, however, declined to add a lead guitar part, feeling the song was perfect without him; Ashcroft would misread this as McCabe’s refusal to be a part of a song he hadn’t written. Regardless, the end result stands as the perfect encapsulation of the “pained” emotion Ashcroft’s northern soul had experienced. The legacy

Although the Northern Soul movement was more focused on singles and songs than particular artists, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas were responsible for more than a few dancehall favourites. Do I Love You was the only single ever released by the Motown producer, who co-write hits such as the Supremes‘ Stoned Love and Marvin Gaye‘s Chained, and with only 250 copies of the single pressed at the time, it’s believed there are only three copies left in the world. It felt like I’d been through an emotional storm,” Ashcroft would later tell the NME. “But I got something out of it. Out of all the torment, I had a diamond. And that’s what great groups survive on.” As it happened, the band, in this incarnation, would barely survive the year. A Northern Soul, however, would go on to become of the defining albums of the mid-90s: soul music, palpably real, torn from the core of something intangible. The Marvelettes were one of the most popular girl groups in Northern Soul, with Please Mr Postman their biggest hit. Although they're still very much a soul group, The Marvelettes poppier sound makes them a good gateway to the more obscure stuff.If you're looking for something to dance the night away to, you've come to the right place. Our Northern Soul collection on the musicMagpie Store includes some of the best Northern Soul compilations and artists around. To get you started, here are 10 of our personal favourites.