History of johnny tompkins

Hi there Soul Fans,

Well here we go, My love of soul music actually came about by my two older sisters, they visited "the Wheel, the Torch" & local venues like "Earls Barton". They were regularly playing Stax and Motown on the old teak veneered lift top gramophone player at home when I was a kid. little did they know at the time that from the age of around 9 ( approx 1965) this was setting the seeds for my love of Soul music and my future devotion to Northern soul. I was actually being brainwashed by my two groovy mod sisters, who spent a lot of their time riding around on the back of Lambrettas. Mind you, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

In the early seventies I frequented the pub disco's which played a mixture of chart, disco and Motown. Eventually around 1972, me and my mates were starting to hit some of the bigger better disco's. For those of you who know "Cambridge" my home town" I am talking about the Rex, and the Dorothy, although only a couple of times at the Dorothy as it shut down soon after I can't remember exactly when.

Then we started going to a couple of new places, like the Alexwood hall in Norfolk street and the Corn exchange, These venues are where I first started to follow a local DJ called "Tony Dellar". later there were a couple of other good local DJ's "Max Rees" and "Roger Stearn". These DJ's were playing rare soul music which was similar to Motown records, This music was at this time becoming nationally known as "Northern Soul" (see below).

There were a lot of people a bit older than us, they were doing this dancing, fast moves to the beat and a few were backflipping, this was dancing which I never saw anyone do before to soul music. I remember sounds being played like "The snake..Al Wilson" "Landslide...Tony Clark" and "Out on the floor...Dobie Grey" wow this stuff was great, although I had heard some of the records before I never really had taken much notice of it.

Eventually after getting to talk to some of these people, I found out some of them used to know my sisters specially my youngest sister "Linda" who is 4 years older then me. They were quite friendly, which was another thing I liked about the Northern soul scene. I was used to seeing punch ups nearly every time I went out (although there was still the occasional one when a few of the local hard nuts turned up). But that was it, I was hooked.

I discovered this now "Locally legendary" club just up the road called "The Howard Mallett" that was taken over on Friday nights by us Northern soul fans. It became the place to go on Friday nights, the atmosphere was fantastic and friendly and the music was Fabulous. It became very popular with soulies from all over the place and I spent many a happy hour there dancing to "Bunny Sigler" "Saxie Russell" and of course later on as more and more music was being discovered sounds like the great "Frank Wilson- Do I love you".

I started to hit the all-nighters with great regularity, they were becoming more popular with the younger soul fans around this time (1974). After my first all-nighter I became an addict (no not that kind of addict) But you know I really can't remember the first all-nighter I went to believe it or not because not only was it a long time ago but it all happened so suddenly. I think it was either St Ives or Cleethorpes in about 1974 or was it Peterborough, Wirrina?. It doesn't really matter I suppose.

Why the name the-SoulSurvivor ?.

Well about this time I got friendly with this bloke "John"who was also a northern soul fan, he had some disco equipment and I had collected some good Northern soul records, so we decided to run a disco together but only on a small scale in youth clubs etc. Obviously we played mainly Northern soul, Motown, R&B and Soul music. We didn't get paid a lot but enjoyed promoting the music to the younger kids (Blimey listen to me, I was only a kid myself then really). Anyway most of them loved it, and I would like to think We were responsible for some of them eventually becoming devout Northern soul fans as a result of it.. Apparently we got a mention in a top black music magazine (Black Echoes I think) we were mentioned along side some of the top local DJ's at the time (Wow I still find it hard to believe, heaven knows why they were interested in two youth club DJ's,) but we did, I haven't a clue how they found out about us in the first place but I only just recently learned all this from "John" when I bumped into him again last year. I have been trying to get a copy of the magazine but I need to find out for sure which one it was and what issue number first because I lost John's phone number (If you are out there John and reading this, e-mail me) When I do get a copy I will post it on this site.

Anyway back to the 70's, eventually me and John fell out and we went our separate ways, I can't even remember why we fell out, but the disco was taking up a lot of good evenings when I could be out dancing myself at the Mallett for instance.

But I would like to just add here what the name of the disco was and I thought it appropriate to use the Logo and name the site

"THE SOUL SURVIVOR".

(If you are the least bit interested, the "Soul survivor" logo was on the front of my disco)

Getting back to the all-nighters, there was one venue in particular which was supposed to be the beez neez, a club called "Wigan Casino", I never actually went there until later on though, mainly because I had heard some bad reports about it initially concerning certain troublemakers there, one of my mates got a hiding just going to the toilets, this put me off at first, plus the fact it was a long way to travel for us southerners, specially when coming home in the morning. But finally I decided I had to pay it a visit and I found it was fantastic, the music was superb and I discovered some great new records, I only returned a couple more times after that, mainly because as I said before about how far it was and also because there was a lot of other good venues on at the time which were a bit nearer.

One in particular was Cleethorpes pier and winter gardens, this was one of my favorite venues, you could keep nipping between the pier and the Winter gardens. I remember that little village we used to pass through on the way called "Swallow", that allways made us laugh, we went there a lot over the years But first started with the local all-nighters like St Ives and Peterborough, There was also Kettering another good all-nighter these venues were run by the" East.Anglian.Soul.Club (see badge) & phoenix soul club" . We had DJ's like John Vincent, Tony Dellar, Soul Sam (Martin Barnfather), and Smudge and many more. I visited as many all-nighters that I could at that time, I can't even remember half of them but traveling from Cambridge to Wigan or Yate near Bristol, Samantha's Sheffield really was a good days travelling either way, specially if you were thumbing it (which I often did) and quite a long journey by car even. Bourn was another good venue at that time and correct me if I'm wrong but didn't The Cambridge corn Exchange hold an all-nighter once?. Anyway; All-nighters and Alldayers, we weren't fussed which, sometimes taking in 2 All-nighters and an Alldayer on a bank holiday weekend was nothing unusual, I only just last through the evening ones nowadays.

You might be thinking" where the hell are these places? I never heard of some of them" Well I suppose if you lived near top venues like Wigan Casino or Sheffield you would be going to them most of the time and it's a long way from here. Anyway I could actually write another ten pages on the subject as there is loads I could talk about, I have hundreds of little stories like "the time my mate buried something in the sand under the pier at Cleethorpes, and when he came out of the all-nighter in the morning the tide was in" We laughed our heads off! but he didn't, but I'm sure you all have experienced the same sort of things yourself.

What is Northern soul ?

Northern soul to me is mostly up tempo soul music with a continuous backbeat that is not unlike Motown. I did and still do like 99% of the records played in the mid seventies Northern soul venues but there was a few records I did not really class as "Northern Soul" although they were popular (Mal -Martin Stevens is one of them) I Do think these records were really a part of the Northern soul scene at the time, even though I didn't like them as I think most people had their own ideas as to what northern Soul really was.

To others it was not necessarily up tempo soul but just rare Soul music with no particular form other than (Soul and on a rare label) in fact it was sometimes even sung by White singers like "Lynn Randell" Who was actually an Aussie, And the great "Dusty Springfield" who sang with as much soul as any of them. The main issue with a lot of Northern soul fans was definitely the rarity of the records themselves especially collectors, these people sometimes not only spent all their wages on a single just to own it but also traveled all over the country just to buy them and show them off, sometimes standing in the foyer all night and not even entering the main hall. You know someone like that don't you? I am not having a pop at these blokes because we all flicked through the odd record box sometime or other and loved drooling over those rarities ourselves didn't we? and also because again these geezers were a part of what was known as "Northern Soul"

You probably have your own idea of the description of Northern soul but if you had to explain it to anyone who didn't know what it was, how would you explain it?. I don't think you really can properly, you can only feel it, if you were or are into it, you will know exactly what I mean because I don't think anyone who was not into it would really understand.

A great description of Northern soul was written by a freelance music writer called "Scott Blackie" I am not allowed to place the article here but you can use search to find this article.

Why is it called northern Soul?

I'm not really 100% sure why it is called "Northern soul" and I suspect a lot of other people don't really know either, but I believe it was a phrase coined by "Dave Godin" in his column for Blues and soul magazine and also used by the great "Ian Levine" when he wrote about the rising popularity of this music in the Northern clubs in a magazine called "Black music", I think he was comparing it to the soul music being played in the southern clubs and just simply wrote "Northern soul". I like to think this is the real reason as a few other ideas have been suggested but I like this one so there.

Motown and soul music was changing to the newer funky and disco style in the seventies and was being played mainly in the London clubs (but not all ). This was not really favored by the northern clubs and DJ's at the time. It created a whole new alternative scene consisting of mainly up tempo soul recordings not much different to the Motown sound which eventually replaced it as more and more old records were discovered. Most of these so called "Northern soul" recordings never really made it in the States or even here in the UK when they were originally released, indeed some were not even released just pressed then shelved for example "Frank Wilson- Do I love you" was shelved so as to carry on a career at Motown in producing and song writing.

These records were mainly created by the "then" hopeful soul bands and singers who tried desperately to get in on the big market that Motown was dominating along with labels such as Stax, Atlantic, and Capitol to name but a few (see Solid Soul Page) A few probably managed to make it into the lower charts but most only got as far as to have a few thousand pressed off probably at their own expense only to fail to even get a play at the radio stations. This is probably the reason there was a few good demonstration copies (demo's) around in those days.

Anyway this is where the top DJ's came in by going to London and the States and finding these records in the junk shops and secondhand record stores etc, they then played them here at the all-nighters and covered up the really rare ones with false labels and gave them false names and titles; for example... Out of my mind by Rain was covered up as "I'm coming home -Joan Moody", if I remember correctly" this was to raise It's popularity, It's value and to stop anyone else finding a copy, this also used to make the DJ who owned it more in demanded. The fact the records were rare and valuable gave it another attraction to collectors and DJ's alike, specially the Demo's, so to actually own the music you had to pay an arm and a leg for the original if you were lucky enough to come across one (and I have come across many a lovely label in my day literally,) or they had to wait for a pressing to be released, maybe we would manage to get a tape of it if you knew someone with a copy, or you recorded it at an allnighter, then it was usually a crap recording.

Finally you could do the really frowned upon thing at the time and buy (dare I say it, I'm sorry all you label fans but I have to) an EMIDISC.....oh were they trashed by real collectors, specially if played by DJ's. But I must say that at least most people got to hear the record by a DJ with an Emidisc when they probably wouldn't have been able to I suppose eh. Anyway the records are still being discovered to this day and I think there will always be new discoveries in the future, but even if there isn't we will still love the ones we already have, specially me because the oldies are the best, probably because I am an oldie myself.