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Chuck Berry

I took this photo in 1994 when Chuck Berry came to my college campus, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in Indiana, PA.

Northern Soul

What Is Northern Soul?

The Basics:

* Rare soul from the 60s and 70s popular in the North of England in the late sixties and throughout the seventies at all-nighter dance clubs. Djs were more concerned with finding songs with the right beat (stompers) than by 'big' name artists so the collectibility of many obscure artists came out of the need for speed, I suppose you could say. Basically 'northern soul' was a high tempo dance phenomenon (over 125 bpm) in American soul music played in clubs in north England. It still exists today all over the world in all-nighters and other dance events. Many obscure American soul artists albums are some of the most expensive and highly sought after records in the world.

* "Northern Soul" phrase coined by magazine writer Dave Godin after a visit to the Twisted Wheel club in Manchester in the early 70s when describing how the kids in the North England clubs were dancing to 'a form of northern       soul music' that was different from what people were listening to elsewhere in the country and even in the U.S. where the music was being created.

*"The trend began in the mid-Sixties, growing out of the Mod scene, as clubbers danced to rare, upbeat Detroit-style soul that was often entirely unaffiliated with Tamla-Motown. But as the London clubs went psychedelic, the discotheques in the North of England stayed the course, which is how their favorite music came to be called "Northern Soul." That means that the phenomenon has always been less about a style of music than a geek subculture (in the best possible sense) who just couldn't get enough of their favorite music, even as time passed it by. " from About.Com    

Some artists that made it big in the Northern Soul scene include:
(click for page with music samples via All But Forgotten Oldies website)

Major Lance
The Flirtations
JJ Barnes
Edwin Starr 

More Northern Soul song samples via Soul Surfin'

Mardi Gras / New Orleans

"I'm not sure, but I'm almost positive that all music came from New Orleans."
--Ernie K-Doe, NOLA musician

http://www.mardigrasindians.com

On Fat Tuesday "tribes"of  anywhere from fifteen to thirty working-class black men put on elaborately  beaded and feathered Indian costumes that they have been designing and  sewing all year and formally parade through black neighborhoods, dancing,  singing and chanting in a unique style and patois, of spyboys, flagboys,  big chiefs and what to outsiders can sound like nonsense. The musical/dance/chant  forms are African call and response patterns filtered through the historical  New Orleans experience.

New Orleans musicians  have inserted Mardi Gras Indian music into American music. In the 1920s,  New Orleans jazz musicians recorded Mardi Gras Indian songs. There were  several Mardi Gras Indian call and response chant/songs that were hits  in the 1950s, notably Sugar Boy Crawford's Jock-a-Mo.

Professor Longhair  used polyrhythmic Mardi Gras Indian music in his performances, and insisted  on upright pianos (rather than grands) so he could rhythmically kick the  baseboards. One percussionist explained playing with Professor Longhair:  "If the drummer is playing a certain rhythm with his foot, and Fess  got something happenin' with his hands, syncopatin', it's best for you to play in the spaces where nothin is happenin and kind of blend in with  the drummer and the bass player" Then in language that evokes the chanting/singing/dancing parades, he says, "It's just backwards and  forwards your hands and your brain, your eyes, your ears, and it's just  flowin like that into a rhythm.

--from George Lipsitz, Time  Passages.

"He's  a seminal force, a guru, an original creator of the New Orleans piano style  ... the teacher of great players like Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Mac  Rebbenack, James Booker, and Huey Smith. All acknowledge him as The Great Master."
--Jerry Wexler

Professor Longhair (nee Henry Roeland Byrd and aka Fess) ( 1918 - 1980) was a legendary New  Orleans blues musician, noted for his unique piano style, which he described  as "a combination of rumba, mambo, and Calypso", and his unusual,  expressive voice, described once as "freak unique".

His career in music  began in the 1930s, dancing for tips. "The very first instrument  I played was the bottom of my feet, working out rhythms, tap dancing.  We used to dance all up and down Bourbon Street."

In the late 1940s,  he sat in on piano at the Caldonia Club while Dave Bartholomew's band  was taking a break. He was an immediate hit and Bartholomew, later famous  as Fats Domino's bandleader and collaborator, was fired. The band all  had long hair and were dubbed Professor Longhair and the Four Hairs.

He began recording  the following year. His signature song, "Mardi Gras in New Orleans"  (still the theme song of New Orleans Mardi Gras) was recorded in 1949  under the name Professor Longhair and the Shuffling Hungarians. "I  had one Hindu in the band, but there weren't no Hungarians," he explained.

Professor  Longhair and others reproduced African forms throught the Mardi Gras Indian based music, and then musicians around the world "knowingly and unknowingly  absorbed mardi gras indian music into the basic vocabulary of rock and  roll." The New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer laid down the solid "parade  beat" behind the R&B of Little Richard and Sam Cooke, and the  melodies and chord progressions of a parade song reappear in Rock Around  the Clock. --George Lipsitz

Louis  Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz musicians. Armstrong defined  what it was to play Jazz. His amazing technical abilities, the joy and spontaneity,  and amazingly quick, inventive musical mind still dominate Jazz to this  day. Only Charlie Parker comes close to having as much influence on the  history of Jazz as Louis Armstrong did. Like almost all early Jazz musicians,  Louis was from New Orleans.

 

We were clowning around in the studio while the musicians were on break. It  was just the three of us using drumsticks on ashtrays and glasses singing  Iko Iko. We didn't realize that Jerry and Mike (producers Leiber and Stoller)  were in the control room with the tape running....We had never planned on  recording it....(The song) is the type of thing the Indians have always  used, inventing new words as they march along." --Barbara Hawkins, of the New Orleans female trio The  Dixie Cups, explains how their 1965 hit Iko Iko was recorded.

Good Rockin' Tonight

Originally recorded by Roy Brown in 1947 for DeLuxe Records, Good Rockin' Tonight is one of the oft-argued first 'Rock & Roll' songs. The story is that Roy Brown took the song to a Wynonie Harris concert and tried to offer it to Wynonie, who brushed him off. Roy jumped on stage during a break and performed the song himself with Harris' backing band. Harris then recorded the song about 6 months after Roy and brought the song higher on the charts than Roy had been able to. More info here.
Also, on the Hoy Hoy website, it quotes Wynonie Harris saying "I stole 'Good Rocking Tonight' from my man Roy Brown, and also his 'Miss Fanny Brown' and made bigger hits out of them and more money off them than he ever did...when I say I stole the tunes, I mean I waited until Roy had made his sides and then out-sang him with my own interpretation."
So a friendly rivalry began and they did what many artists at the time did and wrote/performed songs that played off each other's previous hits. (Good Rockin Tonight - They'll Be No Rockin' Tonight - Ain't Rockin' No More).

Elvis Presley also covered the song and was greatly inspired by Roy Brown.

Roy tells the story, "Some friends of mine came up to me one time and said, 'Hey Roy, we heard on the radio, some hillbilly was singing your song.'" After Roy found out who this hillbilly was, he remembered him as the kid who had come to his gigs to watch him sing. It's clear that Roy Brown was one of the main inspirations for the young Elvis. (Hoy Hoy)

Roy had fifteen hits between 1948-51 for DeLuxe Records and then went onto record some hits for Cincinnati's King Records.

Wynonie Harris - Good Rockin' Tonight