Posted in: Musicouching by MJ Sunderland on December 2nd, 2010 | 0 Comments
Northern Soul was vibrant youth movement that emerged in northern England in the late 1960s. It was sustained by a current of black American soul music based on the 1960s sound of Tamla Motown with its heavy beat and fast tempo.
Growing out of the British mod scene, Northern Soul became a fully-fledged subculture, with its own music, fashion, dance styles, drugs and geography. This was called Northern soul, not because it originated from the northern states of America, but because this particular style of soul music was celebrated in northern English towns and cities like Manchester, Wigan and Blackpool. Northern Soul was perhaps unique among music genres in that its indentity was determined, not by the musicians and producers who created it, but by the audience that consumed it and their specific collecting habits. 
The most-prized records were rare releases from lesser-known artists. Many had been released in limited numbers by small labels like Roulette, Cameo-Parkway and Okeh. The movement was guided by prominent DJs who discovered these rare records and playing them at key venues such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, the Golden Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool Mecca and Wigan Casino. These clubs became the centres of the Northern Soul movement. Within these venues emerged a new athletic dance style that resembled the later styles of disco and break dancing. The Northern Soul style was inspired by the stage performances of American soul acts like Jackie Wilson and Little Anthony & The Imperials.
The phrase northern soul was coined by journalist Dave Godin in his weekly column in Blues and Soul magazine in June 1970. Godin came up with the term to help employees at his record shop (Soul City in Covent Garden) to differentiate the modern funky sounds from the smoother, Motown-influenced soul of a few years earlier:
I had started to notice that northern football fans who were in London to follow their team were coming into the store to buy records, but they weren’t interested in the latest developments in the black American chart. 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 U.S. black chart, just play them what they like – ‘Northern Soul’.
Northern soul reached the peak of its popularity in the mid to late 1970s. At this time, there were soul clubs in virtually every major town in the midlands and the north of England. The key venues included:
