Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Four)

 

I’ve got to be honest: I do like a bit of incidental whistling in a song. In fact, I used to have this line about the holy trinity of incidental whistling being the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Daydream’, Subway Sect’s ‘A Different Story’, and Otis’ ‘Dock of the Bay’, and how, in some way, symbolically these tied into Alan Horne’s Postcard Records Brochure, from way back in 1981, and how this really mattered. I would argue that it still does. Anyway, nowadays, I have a new whistling favourite, this being The Cheques’ ‘Deeper’, a song I heard first by way of Northern Soul Fever: Volume Two, a vintage 2CD set from the Goldmine/Soul Supply set-up which I found nice and cheap not too long ago.

‘Deeper’ by The Cheques is gorgeous. At one point, and please forgive my cloth ears if I have it wrong, the singer describes himself as “a lonely man in an angry world.” Or is it an angry whirl? I am not sure. Both work, I guess. I adore the song’s jazzy, finger-snapping, cool air, which could almost be the swing-era Subway Sect morphing into JoBoxers, if you let your imagination float free. In the absence of other information, initially I assumed The Cheques were doo wop survivors moving with the times, rather like, say, The Tams, whose 1964 recording of Goffin & King’s ‘Go Away Little Girl’, coincidentally or not, starts with a lovely bit of whistling. I was wrong. For a start, the Cheques’ track was released in 1968, so it’s sort of atypical for its time. Yet, as is often the way, the out-of-time eventually becomes timeless.

I finally found out more about The Cheques in a book by E. Mark Windle called Rhythm Message, a collection of mini-biographies of lesser-known Southern soul artists. It’s a lovely little publication, and an incredible amount of research, time, money and energy must have gone into its production. You can get it digitally from his store at A Nickel and a Dime, and it costs less than a coffee and cake. Mark is, I think, a Yorkshire-based freelance writer, who has written plenty of soul-related words, though his next book seems to be about “Gaza’s history of food insecurity, malnutrition, and the question of man-made famine.”

The Rhythm Message approach reminds me of Egon and Dante Carfagna’s regular ‘Funk 45 Files’ features in Big Daddy magazine, from back when the millennium was still young, and the book has a great cover photo of The Passions. Among those featured are The Astors of ‘Candy’ fame, The Showmen, TSU Toronadoes, and Mike Williams whose immortal ‘Lonely Soldier’ is a highlight of the Kent compilation A Soldier’s Sad Story: Vietnam Through The Eyes of Black America 1966-1973.

The Cheques were, in fact, mainly formed of military personnel from the England Air Force Base in Louisiana. I guess they were essentially a garage soul band. We have grown so accustomed to thinking of garage bands as being from the psychedelic-punk end of things, but there were plenty of American beat groups who were more influenced by Motown than by the Stones, and it’s a sound I love. The Idle Few of ‘People That’s Why’ fame is one that springs to mind. Incidentally, are there any garage soul compilations?

The Cheques’ ‘Deeper’ was one side of a single put out on the Heatwave label, run by the group’s keyboards player Tony Nardi. There’s no sense of that, though, on Northern Soul Fever: Volume Two, but then this four-volume Northern Soul Fever series is not the most appealing aesthetically or even particularly satisfying audiophile-wise, but that’s fine. Each volume has two CDs, and there are over 230 tracks in all, with only one that I would be happy never to hear again. Importantly, the selections avoid the bleedin’ obvious, reinforcing that sense of 1960s soul music being a bottomless well of inspiration and information.

Ironically, around the time the first titles in the series came out in 1993, I interviewed an affable Kev Roberts of Goldmine for an article on reissues commissioned by the short-lived trade publication The Independent Catalogue, which was in its way quite a cool magazine under the editorship of Jenny Lewis. The design was by Malcolm Garrett (or Assorted Images), and he wrote for it, too. Richard Boon was also involved, on the editorial board, as was Dave Haslam. So, yes, that interview: a former Wigan Casino DJ, Kev, pre-Goldmine, ran the prolific Soul Supply label which put out a whole host of Northern Soul compilations in the 1980s, but by 1993 he was a quite an evangelist for CD collections, back when salvage operations were really taking off. OK, there was an element of vested interest, but even so.

This is a flavour of what he said: “If you’re a younger person and you like older soul, it makes sense to buy CDs. The originals are so obscure you’re going to be saving up forever to buy them. Northern Soul is the most collectable music in the world, and hardcore collectors have the market sewn up. All the collectors are over 35 now. We get letters from the under-25s saying they weren’t at the Wigan Casino, but they love the music. They’ve had a couple of mail order lists, and the records are two or three hundred pounds each. So, 28 tracks for £10.99, thank you very much, this is great. That’s the only way to keep music alive.”

Ironically, I didn’t get a CD player until later in 1993, and for some reason recall my first compact disc purchase was The Definitive Impressions, an early Kent CD compilation. If I remember rightly, Kent was slow off the blocks when it came to the CD market, and initially mainly used the format for single-artist collections, but around 1993 they really got going, and saw the potential, and (once again) gradually changed the game in terms of presentation and sound quality. I have very fond memories of their early CD collections, like For Dancers Forever, Slow ’n’ Moody Black & Bluesy, Livin’ The Nightlife, Do The Crossover Baby, Dancing Till Dawn, Sweet Sound of Success, Serious Shades of Soul, and so on.  

So, admittedly I was very late in getting to Northern Soul Fever: Volume Two, but belatedly I would argue it has one of the best starts to a compilation. It’s individual taste, I know, but for me the first six tracks are exceptional, and set out themes that are explored across the series, consciously or not: old favourites, insanely brilliant discoveries, cool connections, irresistible instrumentals, and acts with rather charmingly clunky names.

Among the old faves across the series are the all-out punk attack of The Jades’ ‘I’m Where It’s At’, Doni Burdock’s version of ‘Open The Doors To Your Heart’ (a Jasmine Minks favourite!), and The Ellingtons’ ‘I’m Not Destined To Become A Loser’. And, right at the start of Volume 2, there is The Agents’ ‘Trouble’, with its frantically strummed acoustic guitars providing that driving beat, unusually so. It’s a track, for me, that will be forever associated with This is Northern Soul, a 1980 collection on the Grapevine label, which was run by John ‘Soul Bowl’ Anderson with the DJ Richard Searling. It was the first Northern Soul compilation I bought, and perhaps the best pound I have ever spent.

I may have said this a hundred times before, but I think it’s one of the best collections ever, with so many classics on, including the aforementioned Idle Few’s ‘People That’s Why’, Tony Middleton’s ‘To The Ends of the Earth’, Luther Ingram’s ‘Exus Trek’, and indeed ‘Trouble’ by The Agents. Coincidentally or not, Disc 1 of Northern Soul Fever: Volume Two includes a couple of other connections to acts on the Grapevine LP, namely Sam & Kitty’s ‘Your Money My Love’ and the New Wanderers’ superb ‘Ain’t Gonna Do You No Harm’, which is a cover of a classic garage soul cut, by The Unluv’d, written and arranged by Bob Stone of ‘Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves’ fame which recently I read Bob Dylan being philosophical about, though we didn’t learn anything about the composer.

One of the enduring joys of Grapevine’s This is Northern Soul is that one never stops learning or making connections. Just take, for instance, the De-Lites ‘Lover’ (which also appears in Kev Roberts’ book The Northern Soul Top 500), a single which was released on the Cuppy label, named for and possibly owned by Bill Haley’s wife. One of the people behind the label, and producer of that De-Lites single, was Sonny Cassella who was a little later the man behind the Deirdre Wilson Tabac whose glorious ‘I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes’ forms part of another holy trinity with Pentangle’s Light Flight and Hurrah!’s ‘Flowers’. I suspect many of us would have heard it first via the magnificent Jazzman collection That’s What Friends Are For where it was described as a mysterious rarity.

Talking of which, I only recently realised The Cheques’ ‘Deeper’ also appears on Volume 4 of Kent’s Northern Soul’s Classiest Rarities series, which I am kind of kicking myself about, as ages ago I bought and loved the first three titles in the series, but that’s life. The same CD also features ‘A Man of My Word’ by Bread & Butter which is the outfit The Cheques’ Tony Nardi formed while on active service in Thailand, and this single was again on Tony’s Heatwave label. It seems another Kent compilation, Ian Levine’s Solid Stax Sensations CD, has another Cheques track on it, ‘Cool My Desire’, which was recorded for the Stax subsidiary Hip, though it only features singer Mike Ventimiglia, shortly before he was posted to Vietnam, which marked the end of The Cheques.

Along with ‘Deeper’, there have been so many, many great discoveries across the Fever series, and among that opening six on Volume 2 there’s Hot Cinnamon’s ‘No One Loves You’, featuring some great flute embellishments. Has anyone written a doctorate on the role of the flute in 1960s soul music? It would surely feature the various versions of ‘I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face’, the Brilliant Korners’ ‘Three Lonely Guys’, Soulful Strings’ ‘Burning Spear’, and Brother to Brother’s version of ‘In The Bottle’, first heard by me on one of the almighty All Platinum compilations released in the mid-1970s.

Another star of Northern Soul Fever: Volume Two is Timothy Wilson, whose ‘Wedding Ring’ (which I think only appeared on the immortal All Platinum Gold compilation) was co-written by Tommy Keith (of The Rimshots) who several years earlier wrote The De-Lites’ ‘Lover’. He also co-wrote and produced The Moments’ ‘Dolly My Love’, a favourite since pre-teen local Scout hall disco days.  

Among the other Fever-related discoveries that spring to mind are Ollie Jackson’s ‘Gotta Wipe Away The Teardrops’, a name that will make a few around here smile wryly and another song that features some lovely whistling. Then there’s The Daniels’ ‘(I Lost Love in the) Big City’, and Yvonne Carroll’s ‘Oh Yeah Yeah Yeah’, which turned out to be a rediscovery but there you go. A particular favourite, and I think the only ‘protest’ track included in the series, is Troy Keyes’ ‘If I Had My Way’ which is described in the liner notes as being “a left-field oddity”.

Another favourite is ‘How Can I Forget?’ by Joey Dee and the New Starlighters, which has an unlikely garage snarl. And Case of Tyme’s ‘Manifesto’ is wonderfully wild, with the horns veering into free jazz territory at times. Plus, it has a great message: “Before you quit, in the fight, do what you believe is right.” Right on! I also love The Volcanos’ ‘Take Me Back Again’, and, coincidentally or not, that group’s all-time classic ‘False Alarm’ appears denuded on Volume Four as an instrumental by the Body Motions.

Actually, instrumentals feature fairly strongly across the series, and among those six opening tracks of Vol. 2 is Melvin Carter’s ‘Midnight Brew’. There are all sorts of Northern Soul instrumentals, and this one can be categorised as a classic ‘Kevin Rowland marching on the spot while looking up at the big sky’ number. It is also the title track of another relatively early Goldmine CD compilation featuring “22 Stormin’ Northern Soul Instrumental Classics” which includes other gems from the Fever series, like the Renfro Orchestra’s ‘A Case of Love’, Detroit Land Apples’ ‘I Need Help’, and the Audio Arts Strings’ ‘Love Bound’.

Another classic instrumental I was particularly pleased to have finally on CD via the Fever sets was 5 of a Kind’s ‘The Other Side’, which I assume is another garage soul cut, and a track I have loved since hearing it on a cassette compiled by an old friend for an event at the Covent Garden Community Centre back in, I guess, 1989, a venue chosen partly because, in his I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, Glen Matlock mentioned the group would rehearse there very early on, which stuck in my mind, along with his description of how they adopted a very out-of-time mod look with short hair, straight jeans, and Hush Puppies. These things matter. That same friend who introduced me to the 5 of a Kind side used to say he had a bootleg EP of Northern Soul instrumentals which sounded like the Fire Engines, though I suspect that may be my memory playing tricks on me.

Among the opening tracks on Volume 2 of the Fever series are two numbers that have become special favourites, these being The Vondells’ ‘Hey Girl You’ve Changed’ and The Vondors’ ‘Look in the Mirror’. Personally, I don’t think The Vondells and The Vondors are the best band names ever, and across the four volumes there are some really clumsy, awkward appellations, like John & the Weirdest, Marion Sodd, Tootsie Rollers, Bee Gee Stans, and even Sherlock Holmes, which I rather hope was his real name.

The Vondells’ ‘Hey Girl’ is a classic garage soul track from a Union City, Indiana outfit, and which features a great Nuggets organ part. Actually, there was another Vondells around for a while in the 1960s, and this one was a Chicago soul act. Oddly, as far as I can tell, each of the Vondells only released one song, so there was hardly a wave of Vondellism.

The Vondors’ ‘Look in the Mirror’, meanwhile, can be cross-referenced to the Numero Group’s Capitol City Soul set in their excellent Eccentric Soul series. This is a CD that opens with The Chandlers’ ‘Your Love Keeps Drawing Me Closer’, which coincidentally or not is also on the first CD of Northern Soul Fever Volume Two. The wonderful Capitol City Soul collection continued the story of Bill Moss and his stable of labels in Ohio which began 10 years and 50 releases earlier with the Numero Group’s very first CD in 2004, the first instalment of its Eccentric Soul series which magnificently put the spotlight on Capsoul Records, and which proved to be a game-changer in terms of aesthetics and in liberating the 1960s soul music artform from the often unhelpful Northern and Southern tags.

I recall religiously buying the first 15 Numero releases, after a tip-off from the ‘Fire Engines-do- Northern Soul instrumentals’ friend, but something happened along the way, and I only dabbled on an occasional basis after that, at least until the label ceased to produce those beautiful CD editions, which was a sad day for me. The first title I missed out on was its Home Schooled: The ABCs Of Kid Soul collection. I guess Carl Carlton would seem too obvious a choice for such a collection, but he was just a kid when he recorded his ‘So What’, yet another highlight of Northern Soul Fever Volume Two, which is not a Miles Davis adaptation, sadly, but it is a glorious display of soulful petulance.

‘So What’ is followed by the excellent ‘If You Don’t Need Me’ by Tyrone Wonder Boy, who very much was not a child star, but would become the very great Tyrone Davis. I strongly believe Tyrone’s recording of ‘Can I Change My Mind?’ is one of the great artistic achievements of the Twentieth Century. I have a hazy memory of hearing it for the first time when Paul Weller played it when he was a guest on a Radio 1 show way back when The Jam were where it was at. Such signposts were (and remain) so important.

I have never been able to verify if my memory serves me well about that show, but maybe not coincidentally the song was mentioned memorably by X. Moore in his “TAKE INSPIRATION!” NME review of Dig The New Breed. Why does that stick in my mind? After all, Mr Moore was not a man I took note of too often. Anyway, a few years later ‘Can I Change My Mind?’ would be the opening track of The Tyrone Davis Story, a compilation on Kent, which, along with a contemporaneous Maxine Brown Kent collection, I considered to be the epitome of mid-1980s cool. I loved everything about that Tyrone Davis LP, including the immaculately elegant cover photo of the great man, with the spotlight behind him, and the backdrop matching his polo neck: very debonair.

It naturally all fits together. Kent’s heroic Harboro Horace, or rather Ady Croasdell, used to DJ for The Jam and introduced Paul Weller to many a great soul side. Now, over 40 years on, Paul’s compiled a set of his favourite soul sounds for Kent’s parent company Ace, and it is as wonderful as you could hope for, and I love the way every time I see the jewel case for Paul’s That Sweet Sweet Music I find Christopher Cerf whispering in my ear again.

Like all the best compilations, Paul’s collection features the dearly beloved, the new vital discoveries, some songs you can’t imagine living without, and the inevitable one or two not really for you. Among the new discoveries for me was The Exits’ superb ‘You Got to Have Money’. Somehow that one had eluded me until now. I, however, did know their earlier track, ‘I Don’t Want to Hear It’, which is yet another highlight of the Northern Soul Fever series.

Another incarnation of the band, featuring Jimmy Conwell, a man of many names, recording as The Trips, cut the classic ‘Love Can’t be Modernised’ (and, oh yes, it’s the third track on the first volume of Northern Soul Fever!) with the subtitle of ‘No Matter How Many New Things They Make’. It features a prophetic line about having a TV screen on your telephone, which often springs to mind nowadays.

Having started with whistling, we should celebrate another invaluable track that starts with whistling, by playing the sadly ever-relevant but easy to take-for-granted ‘Set The House Ablaze’, while raising a glass to Rick and lost youth. Speaking of The Jam, I was stopped in my tracks listening to an excellent edition of (eclectic Detroit DJ) Bill Spencer’s NTS show back in January when he played a demo version of ‘Shopping’ which I’d not heard before, and which features a rather wonderful whistling interlude.

I guess ordinarily Bill’s shows tend to be more dub and disco oriented, but this was one of his occasional ‘Stoner Loners’ specials, and among the other tracks he played were, rather wonderfully, Reggie King’s ‘Magenta’ and The World Column’s ‘Lantern Gospel’, each of which sounded gorgeous. And both Reggie and The World Column have tangential connections to Paul Weller and The Jam, coincidentally or not. Weirdly, this was, I think, the first time I’d heard anything by The World Column other than ‘So Is The Sun’, which is a bit of a mystery to me. So, there you go, it doesn’t matter who you are, you can always dig deeper, which puts another slant on that beautiful Cheques song, sort of.