NOVEL ATTEMPTS by ashraya gupta

Perhaps one of the less-forgotten of all things forgotten, seeing as Frank Wilson was (a) one of Motown’s most successful producers and songwriters, and (b) the man behind possibly the most valuable 45 in existence.

The guy wrote “Love Child” and “Nathan Jones” for the Supremes—the two singles that largely brought them their second wave of success during the early 70s. And he wrote and recorded the unreleased single, “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” [Soul 35019], a copy of which sold for £15,000 back in 1998. There are only two copies known to exist.

Why pounds not dollars? While these days, Jay-Z prefers to flash euros instead of Benjamins, back in 1998, we weren’t doing quite as badly for ourselves (about $1.60 to every pound, compared to $2 now). The simple fact is Britishers really, really dig soul. And not only in Nick Hornby novels.

While American audiences followed the trajectory of early R&B to the smoother soul of the 70s, to disco, and finally, to today’s urban soul and hip-hop, British soul fans focused almost exclusively on one era of the genre: the mid-60s.

Their tunnel vision is understandable. Almost every studio was at its strongest—Stax had Isaac Hayes and David Porter (pictured at left) penning their hits and Booker T. & the MG’s backing the recording sessions, Hi Records had producer Willie Mitchell giving Al Green his signature sound, Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn had just started Sea-Saint Studios, with the Meters (pictured below) providing gritty New Orleans funk on all the productions, and Motown had become the well-oiled pop machine Berry Gordon always dreamed it would be.

On Across 110th Street, I refer to this music as simply “classic soul and R&B,” but the genre-designation of such music has always been a little cloudy. Back in the 1920s, Ralph S. Peer (who managed both Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family) made a distinction in country music between “race” and “hillbilly.” Essentially, black and white. Following World War II, Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records (at the time he was working for Billboard magazine) popularized the term “rhythm and blues” as an alternative. The notion of “soul music” came about a little later—secular R&B infused with the sincerity of gospel. Consider Ray Charles’s “I Got a Woman”, largely a reworking of “Let’s Talk About Jesus,” recorded by the gospel group the Bells of Joy.

As for Motown, often used to signify a genre itself, it transformed this kind of music into pop. Wexler said of Motown, “[It was] something that you would have to say on paper was impossible. They took black music and beamed it directly to the white American teenager.”

If you’re at all interested in this history, check out Sweet Soul Music, a really great book by Peter Guralnick. I borrowed it from Glover Wright and have yet to give it back.

In England, however, they don’t bother with figuring out the difference between soul and R&B (if there even is such a difference—John Lee Hooker said, “‘The blues is the roots of all music…Every other song has got some blues in it ’cause blues is the roots of everything. Blues has been here since the world was born.”) In England, if it’s uptempo with a searing vocal and a sweet beat, it’s “Northern Soul.”

The term refers not to the movement of R&B up along the Mississippi, not even to North America. It has little to do with the music itself and can’t strictly be considered a genre. Instead, it relates to the listeners—football fans from Northern England following their teams to London. When they would drop by Dave Godin’s Soul City record shop in Covent Garden, they routinely asked for only the early to mid-60s recordings.

Godin recalls, “I devised the name as a shorthand sales term. It was just to say ‘if you’ve got customers from the north, don’t waste time playing them records currently in the US black chart, just play them what they like – ‘Northern Soul’.”

The Northern Soul movement wasn’t limited to record collectors—it thrived on a lively club scene, especially in the Northern city of Manchester. During the 1960s, the Twisted Wheel, a mod club, was instrumental in popularizing the music. In 1971, however, it closed, supposedly due to a bylaw prohibiting clubs from operating more than two hours into the following day.

It was succeeded by the Wigan Casino (pictured above), which in 1978 was named “The Best Disco in the World” by Billboard magazine. That same year, the club was featured in the documentary This England. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube.

With such a demand for Northern Soul records, DJs and collectors turned to the recordings that had been ignored by the American charts. They imported whatever they could get their hands on—test presses, unissued recordings, anything from the backlog of American R&B studios. And that’s why “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” now belongs to a British DJ, Kenny Burrell.

Here he is talking (kind of) about his purchase:

Prior to Burrell, the 45 had already gone through a convoluted succession of owners. But its key moment came when DJ Russ Winstanley played it at Wigan in 1978. An immediate hit at the club, the single was copied and popularized all over England.

Listening to the recording now, it’s hard to comprehend how Motown neglected it back in 1965. Perhaps Wilson decided he couldn’t focus on producing and songwriting as he would have liked with a hit single on the charts. Maybe Motown had its hands full in 1965—it was a pretty big year for them. Still, Motown didn’t entirely trash the track—they gave it to one of their few white artists, Chris Clark. But her version, too, remained unreleased until it was issued on a U.K. (of course) compilation entitled “Tamla-Motown Connoisseurs (Vol. 2)”

So while Motown no longer possesses a copy of Wilson’s original recording, Kenny Burrell occasionally treats U.K. fans to the classic. But then, the British have always been notoriously good at co-opting American music.

Last year, my parents took a road trip down the Blues Highway, Route 61. Along the way, they stopped at a tiny place for brunch and met a guy named Bubba (seriously). They told him they were going to the Crossroads, he told them that when he was a kid, he used to listen to the Rolling Stones. Once, he noticed that one of the songs was written by someone who shared the name of a guy who worked at the gas station in town. The song was “You Gotta Move”, the gas station attendant was Mississippi Fred McDowell.

All of this is to say, last Saturday, I had Nydia Ines Davila of Daptone Records visit the station, and she said, “It kind of bugs me, though. They keep stealing our records, so I have to pay double to get them back.”

But while their love of soul results in this:

We get this:

I’d say we’re still beating them at our own game.

EDIT: I should correct myself on one point—Hi Records was a bit of an exception to the others. Willie Mitchell began producing for them in the late 60s and became president of the label in 1970. So they didn’t really have their hey-day until the 70s. The best era for Hi was probably 1970 to 1977, when it was bought by Liberty Records and moved to Los Angeles. Mitchell left in 1979.

Tags:   America · Appropriation · Daptone · England · Forgotten · Frank Wilson · Funk · Motown · Northern Soul · Soul2 Comments