Soul At The Trades
Review
Boxing Day 2004 & Valentines Day 2005.
Boxing Day's evening sessions are always something of an unknown. Will people have had enough of turkey & stuffing (or nut roast!), has granddad nodded off once too often and have the in-laws devoured your best malt, if so what better than a bop at the Trades? Or, is everyone so knackered from Christmas Day (how often can you force a smile and say 'just what I wanted'?) that they flop in front of the telly and sleep through Pierce Brosnan, or Sean Connery or Roger Moore? Sock it to 'em JB!
Well, 2004 Boxing Night's Soul at the Trades turned out to be a Christmas cracker. Ginger Taylor and Roy Williamson played to a packed audience with their usual offering of Soul, Motown and Northern sounds. Ginger played an early set on route to DJing at an all-nighter at the Ritz Ballroom in Manchester, whilst Roy spun the sounds late into the night. What a great time was had by all of the revellers - be sure not to miss more of the same on Boxing Night 2005!!
Valentines Night saw a different Soul offering. Roy was joined by John Newton and the mix included more funk, ably supplied by John himself. Several alternative events in the area had suggested that the numbers might be lower than normal but that turned out to be false doom. Many new faces joined some of the regulars to again pack out the venue. The dancing went on into the early hours (doesn't it always!) and another 'Soul at the Trades' event was a roaring success.

Be sure to note down the dates of forthcoming Soul Nights at the Trades!

What is Northern Soul?
Most Trades Club members are aficionados of many varied types of music. Ask someone to name their preferred type and most might struggle; an open minded approach to musical styles is common amongst Trades regulars. For the last couple of years the Soul Nights have added another genre to the already eclectic musical styles on offer, styles that ranges from World Music to Jazz to Drum n Bass to Folk and beyond. Northern Soul draws upon many other musical genres. Following World War Two, Black American servicemen introduced Black American music to the youth of Britain through their attendance at clubs in many major cities including London, Manchester and Liverpool.
Starved of anything other than bland middle of the road music presented by the BBC, the advent of the 'Pirate' radio stations in the early sixties gave young people a chance to listen to a whole new vibrant sound that included Blues, Jazz, Rock 'n Roll and Soul. Artists such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee earned cult status amongst Britain's youth. Later, many British artists would copy the Black American sound including Trad Jazz exponents Chris Barber and Lonnie Donegan and, of course, major bands such as the Beatles and the Stones.
Many clubs were opened where this music could be heard. In Manchester, the famous Twisted Wheel Club opened in 1963 on Brazenose Street, formerly the Left Wing Coffee Bar. Mainly a Blues club, The Wheel transferred its operation to Whitworth Street a couple of years later and, driven by the Mod culture of the time, the play list evolved from being Blues orientated to being predominantly Soul. This evolution was being experienced in clubs up and down the country.
Stax, Atlantic and Motown became the staple diet of mid to late 1960's club-goers, The Wheel becoming the foremost all-nighter in the country, attended by young people from all points of the compass. Record Collectors and DJ's began to 'discover' rare American Soul records. Often, these records had been heard only in the city where they had been recorded and sometimes only in one district of that city. Thousands of records were produced in the USA by small independent record companies, some trying to emulate the Detroit sound of Berry Gordy's Tamla Motown label. It is these tracks that have become the staple diet of Northern Soul devotees, some of whom would travel to the States and sift through warehouses full of such records. Many of the records, flops at the time of their original release, exchange hands for enormous amounts of money.
The term 'Northern Soul' was penned by Dave Godin, music journalist, soul devotee and founder of the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society in 1964. He visited The Wheel in 1970 and produced an article in 'Blues & Soul' magazine based on that experience. In the article he states 'I was travelling at great speed to the heart of the North's Soul Lands: to Manchester city; home of the famed Wheel club, and meeting ground of this country's most ardent and dedicated soul fans'. He later suggested that the term Northern Soul was used 'because of the differing musical tastes that developed with regard to the style of Black American music that was finding favour in the North of Britain and the South.
The Wheel closed in 1971 and was succeeded by a number of other clubs including The Torch, Hanley: Blackpool Mecca: Catacombs at Wolverhampton and eventually, of course, Wigan Casino. From 1973 to 1981, the Casino took Northern Soul from being an underground phenomenon to being in the national spotlight. In some ways, the commercialisation of the music led to its downfall, temporarily at least. At the end of 1981, Northern Soul continued to be preserved by some devotees, but in the main, it became a 'dying' scene. Fortunately, within 10 years or so, the trend was reversed. A plethora of Soul events began to blossom, attended by the forty or fifty something's who, as is often the case, were ready to 'relive' their youth. It has been suggested that the number of people attending Northern Soul events now is greater than ever.
Television, Radio and Cinema have 'come on board' and helped extend the music's popularity further. Who could forget the British publics' premier showing of the film 'Standing in the Shadows of Motown', in 2003 in Hebden Bridge, a co-ordinated day of Motown that led to the Trades Club being used as a venue for one of the accompanying events. Since then, Soul has remained at the Trades and, hopefully, will remain well supported for a long time yet.

So, that's a brief summary of where Northern Soul came from.
For more information have a read of these two books, both published by 'beecool publishing':
The In Crowd, Mike Ritson & Stuart Russell, 1999 (ISBN 0 9536626 1 6)
and CENtral 1170, The Story of Manchester's Twisted Wheel, Keith Rylatt & Phil Scott, 2001 (ISBN 0 9536626 3 2).

See you later for 'Soul at the Trades'!!

Roy Williamson.