Ways of Hearing – Kyla Brox

Kyla Brox, Pain & Glory

www.kylabrox.com

  

Shall we take it as read that Kyla Brox is sassy, open, alternatively tough and vulnerable, possesses a towering voice and meets all the tests for greatness in the separate spheres of soul and blues, that her songs are honest and true, and the band cook, and that big words like Pain and Glory can be bandied about with impunity. Put simply, Pain and Glory is Kyla’s best album yet, and this follows too, because each album is the culmination of all her previous efforts and her life experience.  

Let’s do, and then we can move onto some interesting questions raised by the music, and ask about the relevance of soul and blues to our culture at this moment in history, and wonder if soul and blues are synonymous or even compatible terms, and ponder the difficulty of adapting the unreconstructed ‘sugar mamma’ to the ethical standards of the modern world. It’s enough to give anybody the blues! 

The first thing to say is that Kyla couldn’t really escape her destiny, as the daughter of a blues singing father and a soul singing mother. This is the subject of the autobiographical ‘Bluesman’s Child’: 

Too many hours in the back of a van 

Twelve years old already in his band

If I ever want to see him the only way 

Is to get on the stage and play, play, play 

It can be a little wild 

The life of a bluesman’s child 

This exercise in debunking, coming at some personal risk, is typical of Kyla’s honesty. It is interesting to compare that self mythologist, Victor Brox, with his daughter. Victor, like many another bluesman, is concerned with what he can do to you or for you. His potency derives from the power he exercises over others. A certain amount of role-play and fabrication is involved, but this only adds to the gaiety. He continually promises more than he can deliver, but makes up for the shortfall by hamming it up outrageously, to the mutual enjoyment of all. 

The thing is, Kyla never hams it up. Where Victor acts, Kyla is. This is not just a nicety of style: it is a fundamental difference between men and women. 

Not that Kyla is averse to a bit of role-play herself. One of the great archetypes of the blues is the sassy, infinitely accommodating sugar mamma, a heartbreaker and object of male fantasy. And though Kyla is adept at this role, the nearest she gets here is reluctantly foregoing a fling because “in the morning in the cold light of day / I remember I already have a husband and a family” (note that idiosyncratic pronunciation, ‘familay,’ to rhyme with ‘day’). This tale of virtue in peril was co-written with husband Danny Blomeley. 

To be a woman is to be divided into two. And, to simplify a bit, the objectified woman has its musical counterpart in the blues. That is, the sugar mamma appraises everything she is and does in the light of how she appears to others, and especially how she appears to men. To acquire some control over this process, a woman contains and interiorises it. This, in musical terms, is soul. The process is hard and calls for a large reserve of inner strength. In expression, it always comes tinged with sadness, and is so hard-won you find yourself asking, was it worth it? Soul, of the femme variety, is also the sound of a woman luxuriating in her strength, and is a sign of empowerment. So blues and soul are, in fact, symbiotic forms; the yin and yang of Afro-American music (Kyla proffers the Lancashire version). She continually treads this line. She struts her stuff and is thrilling, until it is time for her to reveal how she really feels, and show how vulnerable she is to pain and hope. This is where Kyla is most herself.

So ‘Sensitive Soul’, hitched to a Memphis beat, is a very, very assertive paean to sensitivity, and of such vivacity and energy that you really wouldn’t want to mess with this shrinking violet. ‘Pain & Glory’ itself is a medium paced affirmation of unconditional love and unbridled emotion. It has a stirringly good melody, the proper attribute of classic soul. ‘Manchester Milan’ like many another interior monologue, soon slips into transcendent rapture. By contrast, ‘Let You Go’ is a blistering put-down – brusque rejection being the prerogative of the blues mamma, who reappears with a jolt just when you’ve been lulled into security by the soul belle. 

And then, just when the listener has ticked off all the tracks listed on the CD sleeve, something extraordinary happens. 

‘Hallelujah’, Leonard Cohen’s greatest song, came late in his career. It is a man’s song about the mystery of women, couched in quasi-spiritual, masochistic imagery. What does it mean when a woman sings it? Well, when a woman such as Kyla Brox sings it, it means she claims all its power and passion for her own sex. We lose one mystery and find ourselves in an even greater mystery. This is a performance so passionate and wounded that exhilaration and agony become as one, the ultimate aim of soul. 

      

And Kyla throws it away as a secret track. Is this some meaning of the word ‘integrity’? 

A Maharaja at the 100 Club: James Booker in London, 1977, recalled

I was eighteen years old, new in London, and eager for blues and related art forms, when I was lucky to wander into the 100 Club on Oxford Street, in, I think, October 1977, to see the New Orleans pianist James Booker. ‘Lucky’ is an understatement. I had the night pegged as the gig of my life at the time, and nothing I’ve seen since has knocked it off its pedestal. I knew Dr John - In the Right Place was already a firm favourite - and I dug ‘I Want to Walk You Home’ and ‘Walkin' to New Orleans’ like everyone else, but these didn't quite prepare for James Carroll Booker III. Introspection, vulnerability, self-examination and soul-baring emotion are not what you associate with Fats, Little Richard, Lee Dorsey and the rest. What Booker offered was outside my experience of New Orleans music. Sure, he took the piano style of Professor Longhair to new heights of virtuosity, but he offered something else: ‘gumbo’ as a secret source of healing power, perhaps. 

Support came from Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts (two sets from the Thunderbolts; two sets from Booker) but I only had eyes for Booker. He certainly cut a dash, with a star on his eye-patch (he lost an eye through shooting bad heroin, it was said), and a diamond on his front tooth that flashed in the spotlight every time he smiled, or, just as often, grimaced (it was hard to tell which was which). The mystery was how anyone could acquire such musical skill and be so comprehensively, mortally wrecked when either would be a lifetime's accomplishment for lesser mortals. The concert coincided with a sustained acid flashback on the part of the performer, of which we were treated to a running commentary as he played. Innocuous songs took on a new harrowing force. ‘Lonely Avenue’, the Ray Charles tune, was not a boy-loses-girl song, as previously supposed, but was transformed into a graphic trip through cold turkey.

The entire performance was driven by freakish, fantastic anxiety. It was impossible to foretell what the maestro would play or say next. Fats Domino and Dr John tunes were strung together. Or should I say, ‘strung out’ together: addiction was a running theme. ‘Right Place, Wrong Time’ itself became a boogie-woogie rollercoaster ride that communicated elation, danger and panic in lightning succession, with the extreme mood swings that typify junkiedom: “I was in the right place, it must have been the wrong time / I said the right thing / Must have used the wrong lines…" And, in keeping with his confessional tone: “It was the right arm / I must have used the wrong vein.” ‘Junco Partner’, the ultimate doper anthem, was given a hell-bent, demonically gleeful delivery. Dark secrets emerged. It seems he sold  ‘So Swell’ to Aretha. The disclosure made perfect sense. ‘So Swell’ has the pay-off line: “You're so swell when you're well / You've just been sick so long.” Vengeful self-loathing was never Aretha's thing, whereas Booker made it his own. 

The piano-playing was incomparable. Imagine Professor Longhair raised to the level of Liszt, larded with unlikely motifs and quotations. The Woody Woodpecker theme and Flight of the Bumble Bee surfaced with obsessive regularity. And whole tunes, not just licks, were repeated. ‘Please Send Me Someone To Love’, which equates personal loneliness with nuclear holocaust, received two airings. It was as if Booker had been forewarned that this was his last night on earth. In fact, he finally shuffled off to boogie-woogie heaven six years later, in 1983, at the age of 43.

The spirit of that night is most faithfully captured on The Piano Prince From New Orleans and Blues & Ragtime From New Orleans, two live LPs recorded in Germany on a tour the preceding year. He's sporting an Afro on their respective covers, whereas I remember him as he appeared on the cover of Boogie Woogie & Ragtime Piano Contest, recorded in Zurich on the 27 November 1977, and in the picture that heads this blog, with the distinctive star eye patch, which he's also sporting on the cover of Junco Partner, Island Records, 1976: the definitive studio album, not that I would pass on anything by Booker. James Booker: Manchester 1977, was recorded at Belle Vue Manchester the same week as the 100 Club appearance. The backing musicians, including Norman Beaker and Dave Lunt, contrive to iron out Booker's idiosyncrasies, but it’s a worthy document (on Document Records actually). However, Booker had evidently come down from the acid. And now comes a documentary film, Bayou Maharaja – of which I’ve heard glowing reports. 'Bayou Maharaja' looks set to join all those other titles, like ‘The Piano Prince of New Orleans’, ‘Little Chopin in Living Colour’ and ‘Black Liberace’, which so signally failed to attract attention in his lifetime. 

Revenant Records from a Recovered Time Capsule

"revenant, rav-na, rev'a-nant, n. one who returns after a long absence, esp. from the dead..." –

                                                                                                 Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary

A vinyl time capsule has returned to haunt me. It happened that I squirrelled away a bunch of records in Dad’s loft in an attempt to free up some space in my cluttered flat. This was long enough ago for me to forget all about it. But when Dad cleared his loft, it pleased him to return my LPs. He entrusted delivery to brother Ant, who drives a car. The lapse between commission and execution lasted a year, until finally, just before Christmas, I took receipt of eight cardboard boxes containing around two dozen LPs apiece. I had mixed feelings about this. What might I find? My record collection is anyway a refuge for the unloved and unwanted. Rejects from the Mike Butler Home for Vinyl Waifs and Strays must be very, very bad indeed. Or so you might think.  

What I found was… well, a surfeit of Duke Ellington and a glut of Mahalia Jackson. Both artists crossed from being top of their respective fields to mainstream popularity (they collaborated once), and both recorded prolifically. The crumbs off Duke’s table were eagerly pounced upon by the small Stardust label. Stardust #204 is called simply Volume Four, and documents a concert at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, on April 30th, 1947. It could be a bootleg, for the minimal, handmade packaging (pasted text on front; blank white on the back), which betokens genuine love and enthusiasm. The knowledgeable notes are prefaced by an unsourced quotation, presumably from Shakespeare: 

Who governs here? A noble 

Duke, in nature as in name. 

Where should this music be? 

i’ the air or the earth?

Resolutely lo-fi, in fact, but clearly a magical night. 

Mahalia Jackson fell into the clutches of small labels too, but majors abused her talents more grievously. Here, the Columbia (GB) and Columbia (USA) mix-up becomes a live issue, because Mahalia Jackson appears on both labels. Columbia (USA) – let’s call them CBS for the sake of clarity – were the worst for turning sanctimony into saccharine. My Faith, CBS 62944, burdens the great gospel singer with a choir and strings, plunders Chopin (‘Tristesse Etude Op. 10 No. 3’ appears as ‘My Faith’, credited to ‘G. Howe/A. Hansen’), wilfully ignores the scepticism  of ‘Lost in the Stars’ and is generally tailored to the tastes and pieties of Middle America. Garden of Prayer, CBS 62841, is heading that way – the choir on track one, the title song, sound impeccably clean-cut, starchy and white – but matters improve. Indeed, Garden of Prayer rivals Mahalia’s pre-CBS recordings on Apollo. These were licensed in the UK by Columbia, the EMI subsidiary. No Matter How You Pray (Columbia 33SX 1712) – dig the eerie organ! – and In The Upper Room (Columbia 33SX 1753) clearly derive from the same sessions. The World’s Greatest Gospel Singer (Philips B 07077 L) is best of the lot. Mahalia always excels with a small combo, and any record with the legend “accompanied by the Falls-Jones Ensemble” is a guarantee of excellence. As Sister Rosetta Tharpe is to guitar (i.e. a holy roller precursor of rock ’n’ roll), so is Mildred Falls to piano.   

I was clearly over-dosing on Mahalia at the time, with all the above, plus the double album compilation, This Is Mahalia Jackson, The World’s Greatest Gospel Singer (CBS S 66241) and Mahalia (CBS 62659) consigned to the time capsule, presumably because of musical value and/or condition. What did I choose to keep? What, in other words, is my choice as the defining statement of Mahalia Jackson’s art? Readers, Mahalia (so many Mahalias!) on Columbia EMI 33SX 1698 contains the essence of Mahalia.    

Those other Duke Ellingtons, by the way, are The Duke Steps Out (RCA, RD-7731), At the Cote D’Azur (Verve, SVLP 9170), and, with Johnny Hodges, Back to Back and Side by Side (VSP 11/12). It's slightly disconcerting to find Ellington sounding so silly on RD-7731. The collaborations with Hodges are pretty indispensable, but I have the two originals in better shape. 

If I undervalued Duke Ellington, I was also guilty of seriously undervaluing Muhal Richard Abrams. A bunch of mid-80s recordings on Black Saint sound wonderful. Namely View From Within (BSR 0081) and Spihumonesty (BSR 0032). I exclude Duet (BSR 0051), a collaboration with Amina Claudine Myers (piano duets often grate: it’s something to do with all that clashing, jangling activity in the same tonal register). Conclusion: it takes between 85 and 35 years for me to catch up with what the most advanced musicians are laying down.

Or as Swamp Dogg put it, Finally Caught Up With Myself. That’s here (Musicor, MUS-2504). It’s lightweight, low budget, but typically irrepressible Dogg. And here’s another production by Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg: Ruby Andrews’ Kiss This (Ichiban, ICH 1104). No disgrace, pretty nifty, albeit hampered by a cheesy 80s production sound. Kiss This was actually recorded in 1991. Not a great year for soul, but neither was 1980, on the evidence of Candi Staton’s self-titled LP (Warner Brothers WB 56 803), which finds the soul belle comprehensively steamrollered by Disco . But, hey, 1974 was a year of wonders. What’s Danger High Voltage by Betty Wright (RCA SF 8408) doing here?  The sleeve is worn, but the music! Good times, good lovin’ and good grooves are joyously affirmed. 

Also in the ‘What Was I Thinking Of?’ category is Dr John, 16 Greatest Hits (Trip, TOP-16-1). Perhaps the unappealing picture of the Doctor on the cover put me off, or the budget label, or the ragbag nature of the collection. Whatever, no matter what the source (plainly someone else – Ronnie Barron? – is singing the wistful ‘Did She Mention My Name’), this is definitive Dr John. ‘Cat and Mouse Game’ prefigures ‘Such a Night’ (love the eccentrically prolonged coda), and Mac sounds as smashed on ‘Trader John’ as he does on Gris Gris; ‘Xmas in New Orleans’ is one of the great unsung Christmas songs and ‘Woman is the Root of All Evil’ has a winningly nonsensical pay-off line (“Money is worse, but it’s legal”). 

And a 12” single of 1979 vintage, ‘One More Chance’ by Linval Thompson, on Greensleeves, has it all: roots rocking groove, sweet harmonies, a Dub vanishing trick in the extended version: even an irresistible rude toast on the flip, ‘Long Time Me Na Rub You in a Dance’. I must have been mad to part with this! 

This becomes my refrain as superb LP follows superb LP. What can I say? To open your ears is the basic requirement of music appreciation, and my callow self clearly had hearing issues. It’s becomes particularly useful (opening your ears) when it comes to a spot of jazz. Irina by the Barry Altschul Quartet (Soul Note, SN 1065) is graced by sidemen of the order of Enrico Rava and John Surman. This, in 1983, so just before Surman’s hermit-like withdrawal to the ECM Ivory Tower, and a steady string of one-man albums. Yet Surman’s finest moments are group endeavours, like, oh, Extrapolation, How Many Clouds Can You See and Irina. Did I somehow get the notion that drummers couldn’t also be leaders or composers? If so, I blush at my stupidity, and beg the pardon of Paul Motian, Max Roach, Asaf Sirkis and Barry Altschul. 

More faulty logic is exposed in this further example of sloppy thinking: if you’ve got Bobby Bland, do you need Geater Davis as well? 

The short answer is, yes please. The urge to elevate one artist at the expense of another has to be resisted at all costs. So what if some of Geater’s vocal mannerisms recall Bobby Bland? Sad Shades of Blue (Charly, CRB 1132) is gritty, funk-tinged Deep Soul at it’s most assured. And let’s not fall into the Northern Soul trap of venerating the obscure and denigrating the popular. Let’s have James Carr and Otis Redding, Betty(e) Swann and Aretha Franklin, J.J. Barnes and Marvin Gaye. And for that matter, let’s have Bobby Neuwirth and Bob Dylan, Trees and Fairport Convention, Faust and Can. Some broad-minded listeners even find it possible to like both Jim Morrison and Van Morrison, though I remember falling out with a friend of my youth, Andy Shearer, on this point (I was a Van man; he was a Jim man). 

I banished a lot of smoochy soul to outer darkness. Some of it is rather good. William DeVaughn’s Figures Can’t Calculate the Love I Have For You (EMI, EMC 347) contains an unnecessary remake of his greatest hit, ‘Be Thankful For What You’ve Got’, and a piece of regrettable nonsense called ‘Boogie Dan’, but the ballads project the singer’s sincerity and what I can only describe as a sense of natural goodness, enhanced by an uncanny vocal resemblance to Curtis Mayfield. (So I dissed Geater Davis for sounding like Bobby Bland, and hailed William DeVaughn for sounding like Curtis Mayfield! That's inconsistency for you.) 

Feeling Good (United Artists, CH-LA656-G) by Walter Jackson is more penthouse than boudoir, but there’s no gainsaying that impeccable baritone voice. Misty Blue by Dorothy Moore (Malaco #6351) captures the moment when refinement replaced sweeping emotion in soul music. The album’s success established the fortunes of Malaco, a small label operating out of Jackson, Mississippi. By providing a home for veteran old-stagers like Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Bland, Little Milton and Shirley Brown, it could be argued that Malaco rescued Southern Soul Music from extinction. But at a cost. Soul was now a tamed force. Malaco may not have made a bad album, but they haven’t made any great ones either. Typically, Misty Blue slips down smoothly and leaves not a trace.   

What else? The Best of Gladys Knight & The Pips (Buddah, BDS 5663); essential, but it’s a spare copy. Call Me by Ann Peebles (Naylo, WAY 269509 1); a long way from her glory days. The Sweet Inspirations, Estelle, Myrna and Sylvia (Stax, STS-3017); marooned without Cissy. Talking of whom: Cissy Houston, Mama’s Cookin’ (Charly, CRB 1158). A preponderance of lovey-dovey ballads, a skip or two on one track and the inclusion of ‘I Believe’ consigned Mama’s Cookin’ to time capsule oblivion, when in fact the album approaches soul perfection in quite a few places, notably ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’, which predates Gladys’ version above, and is more down-home, a ‘Long and Winding Road’ that glides as it winds, and a stomping ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself’, a lot less glossy than niece Dionne's rendering. 

Aretha Franklin’s Let Me In Your Life (Atlantic, K50031) is simultaneously the best and worst of Aretha; it misses the good old Muscle Shoals mud. Aretha Franklin, Who’s Zoomin’ Who (Arista, Al8-8286); no comment. Two albums by Joe Simon, Get Down (Southbound SEW 013) and Drowning in the Sea of Love (Southbound, SEW 021); I never really got Joe Simon (I mean nice voice, but...). Oh, and Chuck Jackson, Passionate Breezes (Capitol, SW-11775). 

A historic album in it’s way, Passionate Breezes defines the budding sub-genre Boudoir Soul, which went on to become the dominant force in the soul/R’n’B market, for better or worse (worse). Boudoir Soul projects a state of blissful sexuality, and tends to carry the pleasure principle to ridiculous extremes. I might be tempted to laugh Passionate Breezes out of the bedroom, were it not for ‘The Train’, first track, side two, which is very, very good indeed: shimmering guitar, a slow groove and pleading vocals. At one point Chuck takes the phrase “I remember the time…”, repeats, expands the statement, and repeats, adding more words again, all the while squeezing the syllables to fit into the limited space of the musical metre. It’s a trick I associate with the folk song ‘The Barley Mow’. Ah, but George Spicer, when he sang ‘The Barley Mow’ (at The Half Moon, Balcombe, Sussex, on the 17th June 1962: cf. The Voice of the People: They Ordered Their Pints of Beer & Bottles of Sherry) didn’t double-track his voice, like Chuck Jackson does here. Is this the first time Chuck Jackson and George Spicer have been mentioned in the same paragraph? Anyway, I digress. It’s significant that the only song on Passionate Breezes that deals with romantic loss, as opposed to gratified desire, is the stand-out cut. 

Was I down on the blues at the time, I wonder? You Got to Reap What You Sow by Jazz Gillum (RCA Camden, INT 1177) is typical of the pre-war Chicago blues style and there’s nothing wrong with it. Big Foot Country Girl by Mel Brown explores the musical and cultural roots of Brown, a guitarist from the B.B. King school, and incorporates spoken reminiscences and singing from his father, John H. Brown. It’s a funky, bare-arse masterpiece. 

Faulty logic #2: you can be editor of the foremost folk and roots magazine in the UK (that is, Folk Roots) or a notable bluesman, but not both. I think my issues with Carrion On by Hot Vultures (Best Seller, 4C054-96947), basically Ian A. Anderson and Maggie Holland With Friends, were a) there were no originals by Maggie Holland, whose songs became a fixture of June Tabor’s repertoire, and b) if I wanted to hear ‘You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover’, I would go direct to Bo Diddley. Oh dear! Talk about false premises. 

In fact, Carrion On is a little gem: modest, unpretentious and brimful of the joy of casual music-making. If I only looked beyond ‘YCJABBTC’, Carrion On could have opened up an entire cosmology of fabulous, mythical (mostly) USA artists. Carrion On includes covers of tunes by Derroll Adams (‘The Sky’, described as “relatively recent”), The Holy Modal Rounders and (related), the enigmatic Antonia. As it was, I took the long way around to get to the Holy Modal Rounders (it was the connection with Michael Hurley, and where did I find out about Michael Hurley? Why, I read about him in Folk Roots!). Even now, some artists highlighted by Carrion On await discovery. Tracking down Tucker Zimmerman’s self-titled LP on Village Thing might be the task of a lifetime (two Zimmerman songs appear and both are beauties). And skiffler John Pilgrim turns up playing washboard on ‘The Midnight Special’. If anybody knows the whereabouts of John Pilgrim, I would love to talk to him. Not to be mysterious, but my reasons are another story altogether.

Postscript 

And that’s where the original posting left off 24 hours ago, rather abruptly, on the cliff-hanging digression, ‘Where are you, John Pilgrim?’ (It’s just that I’m researching a book about Bill Leader, and Pilgrim’s name has cropped up more than once.) Shall I say, simply and directly, some things I omitted to mention, or was going on to develop? 

Firstly, the reason there is a preponderance of soul, jazz and gospel – did I mention the copious gospel? To keep it brief, can I just say, Myrna Summers and Singers, Give Me Something to Hold On To, Savoy SL 14520 = Good; Rev. Jasper Williams, Jr. Eulogises Rev. C.L. Franklin, A Good Soldier, Church Door Records, CDR-22032 = Bad. As I was saying, the reason there’s such a lot of soul, jazz, gospel and other USA forms is because two thirds of the records came from Yanks/Power Cuts, the record shop, now defunct, which operated from the basement of Canada House, just off Oxford Road (Manchester), and which specialised in cheap cut-outs from the USA. Clearly, I was taking Power Cuts for granted. It’s now second only to Alan Fearnley Records, Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough, as the record shop I miss most in the whole wide world. 

Here’s a typical Power Cuts product: Toby by the Chi-Lites, Brunswick BL 754200. It has the trademark Chi-Lites sound – symphonic soul, lush harmonies, ballads that blur the boundaries between extreme romance and extreme creepiness – but I want to mention it because of the inclusion of a cover of ‘The First Time (Ever I Saw Your Face)’, credited to Chesley McCaull! What was that all about? Were Ewan MacColl’s royalties being siphoned off to a Harlem dealer? 

On the subject of unlikely folk connections – only one LP in the entire batch is overtly folkie and that’s Poetry and Song 3, Argo ZPL 1096 (non-PC; that is, non-Power Cuts), which is a companion to the Voices series: readings and folk song (extended to classical on Voices), a book tie-in, designed for school audiences in the late sixties/early seventies: the producers did the obvious thing and rang Ewan MacColl, who farmed the work to his followers in the Critics Group... While we’re on the subject of unlikely folk connections, as I say, items of Leader interest (because all roads lead back to Bill), include Let Us Get Together by Rev. Gary Davis, on Kicking Mule SNKF 103 (present only because of its distressed condition) with two (very fine) drawings of the Rev. on the back cover by Gloria Dallas, the first Mrs Leader.  

I didn’t mention the classical contingent, did I? Oh, the usual tatty Pictures at an Exhibition and battered Planets. Best of the bunch is Songs From the Land of the Midnight Sun by Brigit Nilsson, Decca LXT 6185, which I notice fetches up to £50 at current prices. Popsike was a resource we didn’t have when I stocked the time capsule.       

But the harsh fact is – and this is the reason why there will be no Revenant Records Part 2 – I must get rid of them, and pronto. If I needed to declutter back then, now the situation is far, far worse, and the strain on my shelves has reached crisis proportions. So it’s eBay for the best (apart from the ones I decide to keep, of course), and maybe Wes, my favourite illegal street trader, for the rest. 

What the hell? Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disneyland DQ-1201. How did that get here? Whereas the musty smell, and this is corroborated by personal memory, reveals that Mauricee Jarre’s Academy Award Winning Music From Doctor Zhivago as played by The Metropolitan Pops Orchestra, MFP 1200, is a relic of my own dear parents’ record collection, sneakily slipped into the time capsule by Dad when I wasn't looking. Did you know that John Hartford penned ‘Gentle On My Mind’ in half an hour flat, directly upon returning home from a screening of Doctor Zhivago? And all it makes me want to do is throw a brick at the nearest passing troika.     

Troubled Soul, or In Search of the Perfect Spin: Revisiting Northern Soul

Thanks to the film of the same name, Northern Soul is everywhere. Not to be left out, I’ve exhumed  a piece I contributed to a small magazine (‘Saturday Night Fervour’, The Buzz, July 1996), given a slight make-over here. The idea was to get movers and shakers to choose the ultimate Northern Soul record, and I then filled in with a bit of social detail and personal bias. At this distance, 1996, the date of publication, falls midway between the actual phenomenon and Elaine Constantine’s cinematic celebration. It’s long enough ago to evoke a bitter-sweet feeling itself. Of the contributors, Dave Godin died in 2004. Ace Records’ four-CD series, Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures (the first one appeared in 1997), is his legacy. Steve Parry, whose chaotic lifestyle outstripped anything seen in the film (it’s hinted at in the text), finally got in too deep and ended it all by throwing himself into the North Sea. So let’s dedicate this blog to the memory of Steve Parry, who was a True Believer and a great lad. 

The Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ provided a blueprint: a sincere, heartfelt statement delivered by a histrionic singer to a frenetic dance beat. Back in the sixties, countless small US labels poured out thousands of 45s in an attempt to emulate the glories (and profits) of Tamla Motown. These records barely dented public consciousness and met, at best, with some limited regional success. By a strange quirk of fate, foremost among these regions was the North of England. 

In 1967, Dave Godin was the proprietor of Soul City, a specialist record shop on Deptford High Street. He noticed how visitors from the North, invariably in town for football matches, stuck loyally to Chicago/Detroit-based sounds. Godin coined the term Northern Soul to distinguish this music from JB-styled funk, its streamlined successor. 

So the term applies to English geography, and not to its country of origin, the USA, notwithstanding the fact that the biggest record-producing centres – Detroit, Chicago, New York – are North American cities. In fact, Northern Soul can come from anywhere. Benny Spellman’s ‘Fortune Teller’, a great club favourite, is pure New Orleans. It can also, on occasion, skip racial boundaries. Country singer Ronnie Milsap’s ‘Ain’t No Soul (In These Old Shoes)’ was a firm favourite at Wigan Casino, and, for a while at least, his ethnicity was a closely guarded secret. 

‘Southern Soul’, on the other hand, exclusively refers to Afro-American music made in the Southern states of the USA, which tends to be slow, stripped back and searching and tortured in feeling. There was some crossover. ‘Get Out of My Heart’ and ‘My Elusive Dreams’ by Moses and Joshua Dillard and ‘Any Day Now’ by Chuck Jackson, exemplars of Southern Soul, could be frequently heard at The Twisted Wheel. Generally, the North/South divide in soul music is a thorny, textual matter, and best side-stepped altogether by dropping ‘Southern Soul’ and adopting ‘Deep Soul’, another Dave Godin coinage. 

But let me throw open the floor to assorted back-flippers and spinners. A random cross-sample of movers and shakers were each asked to nominate a disc that embodied Northern Soul. This was the response.  

Tim Brown, Goldmine/Outta Sight: – 

Darrell Banks, ‘Open the Door to Your Heart’ 

The perfect combination of Detroit groove and Southern emotion. ‘Open the Door’ has a good melody, and great words. It has everything. The flip, ‘Our Love (Is in the Pocket)’, is very strong too. It qualifies as the best Northern double-header. It’s a Twisted Wheel record, really. It was far too slow for the Wigan Casino.

Tim Brown, in 1996, co-owned Goldmine, and these days is involved in another reissue label, Outta Sight. He is author of The Wigan Casino Years, a study of the Golden Age of Northern  Soul (1973-1981). ‘Open the Door to Your Heart’ can be found on the CD, The Twisted Wheel Story (Goldmine Soul Supply).   

PC Mark Bridges, first generation North Soul fan and a community policeman with a beat in the Manchester Gay Village: –    

The Salvadores, ‘Stick By Me Baby’ 

This was a massive club anthem and monstrous at the Casino. I think Richard Searling discovered it. You heard it and you just had to dance, it grabbed at your heart, and pulled you down the stairwell to the dance floor.

Bridges is enlightening on the accessories and favourite shops of True Believers. The t-shirts (two or three were needed over the course of an all-nighter), Fred Perry bags made to measure at Harvey and Ruperts on Brown Street and, the heaviest item of all, Church’s brogues made by Jones’ in Bolton. “They cost £50 even in those days,” says Bridges, with undiminished incredulity. 

Steve Parry, Middlesbrough-based DJ (Soul Survivors): –

       

Dena Barnes, ‘If You Ever Walk Out of My Life’ 

Way back in the halcyon days before House and Garage, Disco Music was in its infancy. A band of fanatical followers of sixties soul music with a passion for frantic dancing and collecting obscure American Soul 7” records gathered each weekend in such exotic locations as Wigan, Wakefield, Sheffield and Warrington to engage in their passions, not unlike the trainspotter anorak we know and love. I was not a teenage werewolf, I was a Teenage Northern Soul Boy. My friends and family couldn’t understand my passion for travelling hundreds of miles every Saturday evening to listen and dance to records like Richard ‘Popcorn’ Wylie’s ‘Rosemary What Happened to Your Baby’ or Dana Valerie’s ‘You Don’t Know’. What they didn’t know was that the whole Northern Soul scene was more of a religion or a cult in the real sense of the word. The unbelievers were to be either scorned or converted to the ‘faith’ by the Chosen Few. As I write this I still believe we were just as fanatical as the followers of Charles Manson or David Koresh.

Ominous words. His wife, when I rang on a Wednesday tea-time, said she hadn’t seen Steve since 6am on the previous Monday. Her scorn suggested that this state of affairs wasn’t entirely novel. If You Ever Walk Out of My Life, indeed. 

Dave Godin’s experience at Soul City suggested the link between football and Northern Soul. Harry Pearson alludes to the subject in an excellent book, The Far Corner (subtitled A Mazy Dribble Through North East Football). In this description of Darlington on a typical mid-seventies Saturday afternoon, Pearson’s describes a shabbier Soul Boy than PC Bridges’ paragon. 

“And then there were the Northern Soul Boys in their star-patterned tank-tops, flapping about the place in Oxford bags with the button-shut pockets running from hip to ankle. Once, in a record shop in Darlington, I heard one say to another, ‘Well how many spins can you get off a push then, kidder?’ It was the only time I’ve heard one man threatening another with dance steps.” 

Raymond ‘Ginger’ Taylor, DJ, Todmorden Ukie Club, Burnley Rose Room, Cleethorpes Catacombs, Wigan Casino etc: – 

Ruben, ‘You’ve Been Away’ 

Within a month of surfacing in the States, ‘You’ve Been Away’ was bootlegged under the name Eddie Parker. The singer sounded like Eddie Parker, who was a real singer, and had a monstrous record in Torch days with ‘Love You Baby’. I located a copy of the original, on the Kapp label, down in Texas on a record-hunting tour of the USA. It’s certainly worth £100. 

The Roman Empire provides a precedent. Signs of decadence and decline are clear at the moment of its greatest height. The mid-seventies zenith of Northern Soul was marked by rampant piracy, inflated prices and self-absorbed collectors who prized obscurity above all else. DJs would routinely scratch off the artist’s name from the labels of 45s, to guard the source of the groove from rivals. Bogus Northern Soul records were manufactured by record producer Ian Levine under the name Wigan’s Ovation. A bad end was nigh. Steve Parry’s screed, quoted above, continues: 

As time progressed and the word spread the inevitable happened: the cracks began to appear, the hierarchy or high priests (DJs) sold out and the Northern Soul phenomenon became the subject of newspaper articles, TV documentaries and eventually a victim of pop chart success. 

“I became disillusioned with the whole affair as did many of my fellow devotees and we hung up our dancing shoes for the very last time. Or so we thought. In the mid-eighties we travelled to a Soul Weekender at Southport to see what all the fuss was about. The fire was rekindled as soon as I heard my all-time favourite Northern Soul track: Dena Darnes, ‘If You Ever Walk Out of My Life. I was reborn as a devoted follower of Soul Music but this time embracing the whole Black Music spectrum, and not just the Northern Soul sect. In time I became one of the high priests myself, as I now run the highly successful Soul Survivors, providing quality DJs at soul venues all over the country. 

Dave Godin, founder of Soul City record shop and label, compiler of Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures, commentator and soul lexicographer: –

From a fax dated 14 May 1996: 

Dear Mike, 

Many thanks for your letter which I got this morning. As your deadline is looming so threateningly, I thought I’d fax this small contribution. 

The problem is when you ask me to choose a record which “defines Northern Soul”… There were so many subtle, and almost imperceptible changes in the sounds this term was applied to from when I first coined the term, but right at this precise moment in time (next week it’d probably be a different one!) I think I’d nominate: 

Jimmy Robins, ‘I Can’t Please You’, Jerhart 2016 

A thunderous and almost ominous beat which is startlingly defined, matches Jimmy’s superb vocal which is soulful, impassioned and declamatory. In many ways this record brings together so many different threads and influences from Blackamerican music, and, like all Soul records, it’s all about the difficulties we all have from time to time with affairs of the heart. Mean and yet apologetic; angry and conciliatory; indifferent and yet still besotted; these contradictory elements (so true to life itself) produce what all great creativity should contain: tension! And, it is in the relating to the lyrics, and the ability to work along with the tension through dance, that makes ALL Soul records such a powerful weapon in our fight against what Reich termed the emotional plague of mankind. We ignore the important need for ritual in our psyches at our peril, and records like this, whether they realise it or not, help induct young people into the world of “adult” knowledge; when we are kids we think that when we are “grown-up” everything will then “be alright”. Records like this teach us that this was a very serious error of judgement on our part! This may sound a bit pseudo, but by god, the therapy of the music works as well for us as it has for any Blackamerican over the years. Just ask any Soul fan!! 

As an added bonus, I also consider this single the best double-sider EVER, since on the flip, Jimmy Robins has one of the greatest Deep Soul outings of all time too [‘I Made It Over’]… but that’s another story! 

Hope the above is of help. Please ring if you need to. 

With best regards, 

Dave Godin 

Plainly, Godin’s analysis goes deeper than most Soul Boys would permit. In his urge to link social (and emotional) reality with the music, Godin is akin comparable to writers like Amiri Baraka or Valerie Wilmer. But neither does Godin over-intellectualise. His commentary, like his taste, rides on pure emotion. As he says, “I need to talk about what the grooves are saying.”  

Mike Butler, the present author (why not?): –

For me, soul music is the best pop music there is, and delivers on the promise of the best pop: uncomplicated pleasure, excitement and romance. I didn't insist on up-tempo beats and manic high energy, or even obscurity (I mean, Aretha Franklin is alright by me), so I was content to watch Northern Soul from the sidelines, and it was many years before I visited Wigan, and then not the Casino, only the town, and I was sorely disappointed.

But Northern Soul is great because it comes up from below; that's the music, the musicians, and the fans.

My sole Northern Soul intervention happened in 1975, when I still at school, and held down a Saturday job selling singles on a stall outside Alan Fearnley Records on Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough (I might add, the legendary Alan Fearnley Records…). I was at my post when a large consignment of USA cut-out 45s arrived from the States. Stylistically diverse, the 45s were mostly old; all had been previously mouldering away in one of those mythical warehouses that could be found in the USA in 1975 and are virtually extinct today. I was told to mark the records with the price Al Fearnley thought appropriate - variously 5p, 15p and 28p – and he gave me a thick marker pen to carry out the task. The word spread, and soon Northern Soul collectors descended from all points to pick through this treasure trove. I still have conversations with ageing Soul Boys who say things like, "with hindsight, the 5p's were probably better than the 28p's," before chastising me for scrawling on the labels of their most treasured 45s with an ungainly hand. (Lofty, I mean you.) 

My choice of Soul 45 came from the 15p box. 

Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson, Picking Wild Mountain Berries b/w Pure Love and Pleasure, SSS International  

It’s Deep Soul rather than Northern Soul, but I don’t care, and though the A-side with it’s propulsive backbeat and breezy sexiness is the obvious floor-filler, I’m nominating it for the B-side, which is an explosion of raw emotion that has rapture bouncing off the walls as Peggy and Jo Jo commit in wild, tuneful screams. Note, the instrumentation is as stripped back as it’s possible to get – just bass, piano and drums – and it’s as far from Wigan as heaven is from hell.

Jon Vipond, DJ, rig-worker, chef: –

There was one other contribution to the piece which didn’t get included at the time (whether because it missed the deadline, or was omitted for reasons of space, I can’t remember): a letter from Jon Vipond in Middlesbrough. I came across it in a folder with the other materials for the article. I include it here, in the awareness that Jon Vipond was another wild and doomed working-class lad. It seems that ‘Troubled’ and ‘Northern’ are interchangeable as a prefix for ‘Soul’. (Or would any charting of random working-class lives from a distance of three decades produce as many tragic stories?) 

Dear Mike, 

Regarding my favourite record at Wigan Casino. Although this record was better known at the Blackpool Mecca, I first heard it at Wigan Casino in about the Summer of 1977. The record is... 

Eloise Laws, ‘Love Factory’ 

History: (Holland/Dozier/Holland). Time: 3.24. Gold Forever Prod. Holland Dozier Wylie. Licensed from: Demon Records Ltd in association with the Holland Bros ℗ 1973. When first hearing this record, if most definitely sent shivers down my spine and pointed me in the direction of the soul music that I still listen to today. The record had more of a Southern Soul feel with a mid-tempo beat which was quite unique, as most of the records played at Wigan were very up-tempo. Even now it is still one of my favourite records and when I DJ I still play it regularly. 

I hope this information is helpful to you. 

Regards, 

Jon Vipond 

Kyla Brox - A Listener's Guide

All this talk of Victor Brox is very well, but what about his talented daughter?  

There is probably no more authentic blues and soul singer in the UK than Kyla Brox. Born in Lancashire in 1980, she was given various instruments by her supportive father, which were mostly taken back and sold. The flute remained, however. She joined the family business in 1992, singing with Victor onstage at Band On The Wall, and joining his regular touring group shortly afterwards. The core of the Kyla Brox Band go back to this remarkable unit, laughingly referred to as 'the child slavery band'. As well as Kyla (13, but could pass for 21), it contained bassist Danny Blomeley (13, but unfortunately he went the other way, and could pass for eight), and drummer Phil Considine (19), both Kyla Brox Band mainstays. 

When Blomeley left to travel the world, he eased the blow with the promise to find Victor some Australian dates. The resultant tour, in 2000, introduced a new audience to the Brox blues brand and Kyla, just turned 20, became a full-fledged soul belle. The band travelled the Stuart Highway, entertaining at mining camps in the outback.  On the 2001 return tour, Victor and Kyla circumnavigated the continent by the seaboard route, clocking up 38,000 kilometres. 

She recorded with her father around this time, mostly lo-fi documents of live shows with minimal packaging, or even unadorned CD burns, cheaply produced to sell at gigs (Victor, prolific but economic, is a discographer's nightmare). The most professional of these is Darwin Night Train, recorded live at Darwin Festival, September 2000, by ABC Radio on the group's maiden Australian tour. Then, back in Manchester, the nucleus of the child slavery band reformed around Kyla. No more Victor and Kyla, or Kyla Jane and Victor with the Brox Gang, or even Victor 'Pur & Dur' & Kyla 'Raving Jane' Brox (her father was the last to drop her middle name). The soul belle was ready to step out on her own. A succession of albums followed. 

Kyla Brox - Window (2003)

Solo debut, takes its cue from the lo-fi ethic of Victor's last few albums, gathering home recordings with a smattering of live tracks . The songs are evenly divided between soul/blues standards and originals. Of the former, there are nice, unvarnished accounts of Let's Stay Together and I Can't Stand the Rain. Of the latter, here's the first sighting of Candice, a long-time staple of live shows. A balance is struck between the soulful originals - where the tone is summery,  bitter-sweet and romantic, sung with the trembling ardour of a young girl - and songs in the risque blues tradition, sung with the delight of a much older woman. This split more or less characterises Kyla's music to this day. Arrangements are stripped down to Danny Blomeley's adept and sympathetic acoustic guitar, Tony Marshall's tasty sax - he sounds like the missing link between King Curtis and John Coltrane - and, sparingly used, Kyla's delicate flute, at once incongruous and perfect.  

Kyla Brox - Beware (2003) 

This is the Kyla who rocks them in the aisles at Colne Blues Festival. Beware finds the singer trying on the mantle of Ann Peebles (Beware, Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home), Etta James (I Just Want to Make Love to You), Gladys Knight/Marvin Gaye (Heard It Through the Grapevine), Sugar Pie Desanto (Soulful Dress), Betty Lavette (Damn Your Eyes) and Nina Simone (Feeling Good). Perhaps because of her unique background - she was undertaking annual tours of Australian mining settlements with bluesman father Victor at the time of recording - she makes a very good fist of it. No one in her twenty-something generation understood the blues quite as well. Her very name, Kyla, sits naturally besides Etta and Betty, and she moves as seamlessly from the lacerating to the ecstatic. In an act of filial piety, she cuts the definitive version of Sick and Tired by Brox Snr, and offers a universal statement of malcontent of her own, Feel My Pain. 

Kyla Brox Band - Coming Home (2004)

This realises the promise of Window by adding an extra ingredient: the groove. it's a groove that comes from constant work with an active working band. Saxophonist Tony Marshall and Marshall Gill, a guitarist from the BB King school of searing sweetness, fulfil most of the solo honours. Bassist Danny Blomeley and drummer Phil Considine are veterans of Victor's 'child slavery band'. And what a tight unit they are, personally and musically (groove triumphs over song on Won't Fit There). Twelve out of the 14 selections are Kyla co-writes or originate from within the Brox circle (Victor is responsible for Working On Your Love; incidentally, brother Sam is producer). Coming Home displays an empathetic Kyla, working out the work/life balance (She Knows) or her issues of self-doubt (Things I'd Change, Guilty), but also a tougher Kyla. This means that all the raunch is concentrated in one song, Do I Move You (a smouldering Nina Simone number), which actually intensifies the impact. The other cover, Don't Change Horses, is a real find. Rescued from the back-catalogue of seventies West Coast funksters Tower of Power, the song is a certified show-stopper, mixing real emotion (a plea for a second chance) with outrageous showmanship ("Giddy up, hi ho Silver…"). And, with the Blomeley/Considine rhythm team piling on the coal, it builds up a fine head of steam. If Don't Change Horses represents the zenith of the Kyla Brox Band, then Working On Your Love demonstrates the latent strength of the Kyla Brox Duo, with Kyla and Danny giving an object lesson in how less is more. 

Kyla Brox Band - Live at Matt and Phred's (2006)

Recorded live in Manchester, UK, on 11 March 2006, this captures the Kyla Brox Band in their prime. The opener, Working On Your Love, demonstrates Kyla's mastery of the soul singer's art. She calibrates the performance perfectly, stoking up the heat by degrees. The band's constant roadwork is reflected in the tightness of the playing. The songs are more lived-in and feel comfortable. Dig the way Danny's supple bass lines twine around Tony Marshall's sax on She Knows, and marvel at how Phil piles on the funky counter-rhythm at the climax of Don't Change Horses. Kyla herself is at her expressive best on Today I Sing the Blues. It's an honest document too. The rough and ready sound, complete with electrical hum and audience noise (oh, the weekend crowd at Matt and Phred's!) actually add authenticity. The rousing spirit makes up for any deficiency in fidelity. 

Kyla Brox - Gone (2007)

First album entire of Brox/Blomeley originals, with the exception of a single Brox credit (more of that later). When guitarist Marshall Gill was recruited by New Model Army, the old band ceased to be. This is Kyla and Danny's record, with band accompaniment on assorted tracks. Kyla was never averse to putting her feelings on show - that is her stock-in-trade as a soul singer - but in euphoric songs like This Is The Life, we're now getting more of the inner life. The depth of experience of the title song, a moving testament to loss, is new, while More Than Me proves how attractively Brox and Blomeley can write in the orthodox soul idiom. The stand-out cut, however, is the a cappella closer, You Said You'd Be My Sunshine, which is Brox sans Blomeley, and written in bitterness about a lover responsible for "five long years, no ring and no change." The singer stirs up a maelstrom of passion that is beyond assuagement. It had the desired result. Shortly after the recording, Danny bought Kyla the ring.

Kyla Brox - Grey Sky Blue (2009)

Kyla and Danny in a stripped-down duo setting. Goose-pimples are aroused on the first track, All Breaking Down, and then recur with uncommon frequency. Kyla's torchy vocals and Clive Mellor's harmonica on Since I Fell For You, the token blues standard, accentuate the four-in-the-morning feeling. Elsewhere, the spartan, exquisite atmosphere is the pretext for a high level of creativity. Danny's acoustic guitar is by turns gentle and unrestrained, always inventive, whilst Kyla has never sounded more alluring. The blues quota is satisfied with Get Ready and Shaken & Stirred, executed with ripe self-confidence, but songs like Kasbah and Like The Sky link directly back to that gorgeous first acoustic album, Window, but have the patina of experience (and, it must be admitted, superior technical resources). Rest Assured is deeply felt, with a gravity that goes beyond the youthful ardour of Window. Feel My Pain is reprised with fingerpicking urgency. And here's an answer song: "Remember when you said you'd be my sunshine / And I cried / Because I thought it would never be my time / Well I was wrong / You came through / And turned my grey sky blue." Grey Sky Blue (the album) was recorded when Kyla was pregnant with Sadie. It has a valedictory quality, and is simultaneously a summation and a fresh start.