EPISODE 06: NORTHERN SOUL (UK) feat. ASHLEYANNE KRIGBAUM

Hello my friends, and welcome to another episode of Nightclubbing with your host Cherry Pie, broadcasting from Lower Grand Radio in Oakland, CA. Today’s episode is our final installment of a 3 part series we’ve spent in the UK, and I saved the best for last, or at least what I think is the most interesting and underrated. I’m also happy to be joined by a special guest, an expert on this topic, who we’ll hear from in a little bit. You’ve probably heard the term Northern Soul, but maybe don’t know exactly what it is, like myself about 5 years ago before my first trip to Scotland where I really got to dig into it. This story is really centered around Northern England, in Manchester, Wigan and Blackpool specifically, so if you remember Episode 4 about The Hacienda, which was in Manchester, this is really the predecessor of that, you could call it proto rave culture.

The story of Northern Soul begins with the Mods, or the Modernists, a subculture that developed in 1950s London focused on fashion and music. In the 1960s United States, the Motown sound and label is rising in popularity and would be widely imitated. Although massive across the pond amongst Americans, black soul music was niche in the UK, enjoyed mostly by crate digging mods, who danced to it all night long, on speed, at clubs in Soho. Towards the mid 60s the mod culture makes its way northward to Manchester, and you have a club spring up called the Twisted Wheel, that throws all night soul parties on the weekend for mostly young white working class mods of the north.

Down south in London, pop culture is changing at an increasingly dramatic pace during this time, and by 1967 psychedelic rock explodes, however not embraced by the North. Northern England at this time is very industrial, with most people working 5 or 6 days a week in a factory or shipyard, so the hippie message of “tune in, turn on, drop out” doesn’t really catch. The mods in the north want to keep taking amphetamines on the weekend at all night soul parties. As the world is changing around them, so is the music. Soul is transitioning to funk in the late 1960s, funk is becoming disco in the mid 1970s. These soul lovers become more deeply obsessed with a certain sound and type of song, and they need more records to fuel their all night dance parties.

Musically, Northern Soul’s favored tracks are referred to as “stompers” and have a 4/4 time signature, which if you’ll remember from The Hacienda episode is the same as house music, making it very danceable. I loved researching this episode because it confirmed that different genres and eras of music are so much more connected and related than one might think, and the same goes for all these movements via music – young people taking drugs and dancing as a form of social revolution, influencing music, art and culture. A song that we all know and love that epitomizes the Northern Soul sound is “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops.

As time goes on, Northern Soul DJs at clubs like Wigan’s Casino and Blackpool’s Mecca are looking for more new songs to introduce to their audiences, as they’re exhausting their collections. They begin taking trips to the United States, particularly to the South, to record hunt in the place their beloved music originates. As mentioned earlier, the Motown sound was widely imitated by plenty of artists who never reached commercial success. Northern Soul DJs begin unearthing these previously overlooked records, and are able to sustain the scene with this pool of music from a specific time period with a specific sound.

Early Northern soul fashion included strong elements of the classic mod style, such as button-down Ben Sherman shirts, blazers with centre vents and unusual numbers of buttons, trickers and brogue shoes and shrink-to-fit Levi's jeans. Some non-mod items, like as bowling shirts, were also popular. Later, northern soul dancers started to wear light and loose-fitting clothing for practicality. This included high-waisted, baggy Oxford bags and sports vests. These were often covered with sew-on badges representing soul club memberships. Dancers use to put talcum powder on the soles of their shoes for more slide on the floor.

Eventually, Northern Soul DJs exhausted their record collections as they were selecting songs with a similar sound from a short time period, for years on end, repeats were inevitable. Where could it go when there were no more old records to discover? They moved onto disco, it was controversial, embraced by some, rejected by traditionalists. Northern Soul began to parody itself with remakes of classic songs by bands put together by the clubs, or imitators that didn’t quite pull it off. It became more watered down, until its beloved club Wigan Casino closed in 1981. Northern Soul is cherished still by those who know, and enjoys micro scenes all over the world, even today.

TRACK LIST:

1. I Can’t Help Myself – Four Tops

2. Spinning Top – The Orlons

3. Ain’t No More Room – The Kittens

4. 7 Days Too Long – Chuck Wood

5. Uptight – Stevie Wonder

6. There’s A Ghost In My House – R. Dean Taylor

7. Looking For You – Garnet Mimms

8. Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um – Major Lance

9. Tainted Love – Gloria Jones

10. The Night – Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons

11. Soul Time – Soul Time