THE HISTORY OF "NORTHERN SOUL" IN SCOTLAND
 

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WELCOME TO WEB SITE IN WHICH WE TRY AND TRACE SOME OF THE "HISTORY" OF NORTHERN SOUL IN SCOTLAND

 

Over the next few months I hope to have a few pages up and running, I will also be out and about getting interviews with as many people as possible that have been involved, be it as promoters, Dj's, record collectors, dancers and people who just love the music during the last 50 + years.

 

If you have anything such as old flyers, club badges, membership cards, pictures, good stories, in fact just send me all you have and if I use anything then you will be given credit for your help, all material will of course be returned.

 

 

You can contact me, George Wallace, in any of the following methods:

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E-MAIL:     scotsoul60@aol.com

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MOBILE:    0776 777 57 96

 

 

GEORGE WALLACE  -  HISTORY

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So where did all this begin for me, well going back to the early to mid sixties when I was a growing teenager in Wilmslow, Cheshire, most people around me were getting into The Beatles, Rolling Stones etc, etc, that was not for me and it got me listening to all the new Soul Music that coming out of the States, nearly all of it at that stage on the MOTOWN label with the likes of THE FOUR TOPS, THE TEMPTATIONS, all those sounds with the great dance beat that we like so much, even now all these years later if you put on a record such as THE CONTOURS - "A LITTLE MISUNDERSTANDING" you just want to get on the dance floor, maybe not as much or as fast as we used to but the same feeling is still there after all these years.

I joined the Royal Navy in 1966 and ended up going out to the Far East based in Singapore for two years from 1967 to 1969, that did a few things to me, one of them being to give me a very quick lesson in the art of drinking in large quantities ! and the other was the bug of record buying which over the years has not gone away, I used to go around the shops buying up all sorts of Motown and other soul records that I liked including a lot of great LP's.

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My sister LYNN who sadly passed away many years ago got me into the Northern Soul side of the music, I used to go home on leave from the Navy and she would be full of tales about all niters at such places as THE WHEEL, THE TORCH, VA VA's, she also to drive my mum wild by getting a new Northern sound and in those days she had one of those old record players that you could set up to keep on playing a 45 record over and over again !!, mum might not have liked them but I did, I remember one that she played for about six hours and that was on the pink PROBE label called THE SHAKERS - "ONE WONDERFUL MOMENT", happy days. My travels around the world always involved looking for and buying soul sounds where ever I was at the time, then in 1972 I was posted to HMS NUBIAN in refit in ROSYTH dockyard in FIFE !. Not long after coming to Scotland I met Maureen who had been to some nights down south and the rest as they say is HISTORY, we got married in 1974.

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In the early days from 1972 it was hard to get much Soul Music of any sort played anywhere, I even used to go out to clubs take some records with me in the hope of getting some sounds played !. We started going to Northern Nights at the ANGUS HOTEL in DUNDEE and that is where I was asked if I would like to Dj as I was supplying some of the records for them to play, this went on for a while and meant a journey up to DUNDEE every Sunday night, after that came THE MARRYAT HALL in DUNDEE which held some great all - niters, around the same time lots of things were happening with CLOUDS and TIFFANIES in Edinburgh all coming along, great days and ones that I look back on with a lot of good memories.

Following on from the early days up here that gave us the chance to go to other places and the ones that I can best remember were:

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• WIGAN CASINO

• BLACKPOOL MECCA

• DUNELM HOUSE (DURHAM UNIVERSITY)

• SOMBRERO CLUB, CHESTER LE STREET

 

There were many others around at the time and they will be mentioned on the CLUBS pages, just like many other couples we had some time out while we brought up our first two daughters but always managed to keep going to a few nights, visits to ALLANTON All-Niter brought back all the old feelings and then there seemed to be a big revival that took off around the mid 90's with clubs starting all over the country again, we have gone forward since then in Scotland and have had some great nights over the last 15 or so years, remember the all-niters at THE QUAYSIDE in Musselburgh, clubs are now well established in Edinburgh, Dundee, Bonnyrigg, Bathgate, Macmerry, Aberdeen, Dumfries and recently we have Glasgow coming back with a few Soul Nights, in these days of the Internet we are also well looked after with web sites for our information, SOUL SCOTLAND  run by Paul Massey, Paul deserves a lot of credit on the scene for his very informative web site, other sites are also available in Scotland:

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SCOTTISH SOUL WEB SITES

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• SOUL SCOTLAND  (All the info for Scottish Soul including an event calendar)

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SOUL SCOTLAND  -  Paul Massey

Paul Massey is another of the people in Scotland who does a lot behind the scenes and his web site  SOUL SCOTLAND  is what I consider to be the central system of all things soulful in Scotland, if it happens in Scotland then you will see it on Pauls web site, the calendar is a must see and all the gossip, clubs snippets and flyers are all there so as you need never miss a thing, Paul has also produced a book made up of pictures taken at the Hib's Club All-Dayers, on behalf of all the soul folk up here in Scotland I would like to say a big thank you to Paul for all his efforts and it is much appreciated by all.