Sounds Of Soul chronicles: Genre Wars
The inscrutable tangle of – seemingly on purpose – misleadingly named genres of Black music and Soul in particular is a recurring topic of this blog. There is probably no record that embodies the paradoxical world of genre wars better than my latest big number acquisition Everything Man/I Need Love by Daybreak – a 45 that files simultaneously under Modern Soul, Disco and Northern Soul. I’ve already covered the sense or nonsense of certain genre names in earlier editions of the SOS Chronicles – for example Modern Soul means by no means modern in the sense of contemporary – but this is not the angle of my weekly rant this time. It’s more the fact that most Northern Soul aficionados would readily express their utter disgust for Disco yet they embrace the exactly same kind of music when it is labeled as Northern Soul. Alfie Davison/Love Is A Serious Business is a prime example – it’s a guaranteed floor-filler with the Northern crowd, even those who are self-proclaimed 60s fanatics and a archetypical Disco record at the same time. So my advice for anybody trying to make sense out that mess is, to let it go – in the end genre wars are as unavoidable yet pointless as gender wars.
And here’s what I played in last weeks radio show, Modern, Northern or Disco – call it what you like:
The Natural Four/Free/LP Nightchaser/Curtom
Bobby Wilson/Deeper And Deeper/Buddah
Sammy Acuna/I Never Found A Girl /New Wave
Daybreak/Everything Man/PAP
Truth/Coming Home/Devaki
Captain Sky/Moon Child/AVI
The Masqueraders/Desire/Bana Records/CBS
Arnold Blair/Trying To Get Next To You/Gemigo
Gwen McCrae/Easy Rock/Cat
Charles Brimmer/Show And Tell/Testpress
Richard Stepp/Caught Up In A Whirlwind/Soul Togetherness
Leon Ware/Step By Step/Expansion
Sheba Potts-Wright/Love Fest/Grapewine
Syleena Johnson/I Am Your Woman/Jive
Al Hudson & The Soul Partners/When You’re Gone/Atco Records
Eldridge Holmes/Lovely Woman/Desu Records Francaise
T.S.U Toronados/Nothing Can Stop Me/Ovide
The Rotations/Don’t Ever Hurt Me Girl/Law-Ton Records
Chuck Bernard/Deeper Than The Eye Can See/Zodiac
Flambeaus/Darling I’m With You/Old Town
June Conquest/Almost Persuaded/Fame
Freda Payne/Unhooked Generation/Invictus
The Brother Love/I Can Be/Sound Of Soul
You can listen back to the last four Sounds Of Soul shows at our program page:
https://eastsidefm.org/specialist/soundsofsoul/
DJ Burn Hard