Search - Various Artists :: This Is Northern Soul: Motown Sound 1

Good value 2CD

Laurence Upton | Wilts, UK | 03/08/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This attractively priced 2CD replaces two separately issued CDs that appeared on the Débutante label in 1997 and 1998. The title of this reissue is slightly confusing as the original releases were called This Is Northern Soul Volumes One and Two.



They were much heralded at the time as several of the items had never been officially released before, but were well known from the clubs, where scratchy acetates and treasured bootlegs had been played to Northern Soul fans. While the sound quality was obviously better on the CD releases, and the general availability much welcomed, some of the tracks had clearly been transferred from vinyl pressings and some of them were in reprocessed fake stereo.



For this reissue on the Motown label, through the Universal Music Group, only the original Detroit analogue masters have been used for the digital remastering. Reprocessed stereo has been quite rightly eliminated and there is thankfully no vinyl surface noise, representing a significant improvement for most of the tracks. The Temptations' previously unreleased Forever In My Heart was included in the speeded-up master used in the clubs before and is now restored to the proper speed, as found on their Lost and Found: You've Got to Earn It (1962-1968) CD, and The Andantes' (Like A) Nightmare, which had surfaced briefly as a V.I.P. single in 1964, is ten seconds longer than before (but check out the extended stereo remix on The Motown Box). Carolyn Crawford's lovely single, written and produced by Smokey Robinson, also gains a couple of seconds and is now cleaner sounding. Frank Wilson's Do I Love You (Indeed Do) was in a great alternative stereo mix with a slightly different vocal to the familiar single, and remains so on this.



Mostly, however, the remastering and cleaning up has left the tracks slightly shorter than before. Brenda Holloway's previously unreleased Lonely Boy had been allowed to run until only the funky bass line was left in the mix - now it fades a full ten seconds earlier. Her other two tracks Think It Over and When I'm Gone both still appear in mono mixes in preference to the stereo versions on the subsequently released Motown Anthology set; this is also the case with the three Kim Weston tracks. Conversely, the Velvelettes' Lonely Lonely Girl Am I and Bird In The Hand are in stereo mixes that do not appear on their Motown Anthology double CD. The Detroit Spinners' What More Could A Boy Ask For now clocks in at 2.29 whereas before it was 3.08. The Isley Brothers' Tell Me It's Just A Rumour Baby, recorded in 1966, is now a mono mix lasting 3.08 whereas before it was in stereo and of 2.50 duration.



The Marvelettes' classic I'll Keep Holding On, with a lead vocal from the great Wanda Rogers, is also the well-known original mono mix, though a stereo mix has been released on 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of the Marvelettes. The Gladys Knight track No One Could Love You More dates from 1967-68, but was extracted from her 1971 album Standing Ovation (found on If I Were Your Woman/Standing Ovation) for a UK B-side a couple of years later. Incidentally, the version of Just Walk In My Shoes is the 2.46 mix found on the British mono version of the LP Everybody Needs Love in 1968, some twenty seconds longer than elsewhere. She can sing just about anybody under the table and all her three tracks are wonderful. Junior Walker's I Ain't Going Nowhere was another popular UK B-side. The oldest recording in the collection is Linda Griner's Goodbye Cruel Love, recorded in June 1962 and a single for Motown in 1963.



Virgil Henry's You Ain't Sayin' Nothing New may be the most recent, but is a bit of an oddity, having been originally released for Jerry Ross's Colossus label as a flipside (Colossus 115), and the same single coupling appeared on Tamla 54212F in 1971, possibly remixed, while Jerry Ross was briefly Berry Gordy's New York A&R man. The mastertape was in less than perfect condition on the 1997 release and is not improved here. Some collectors believe it to have been recorded in New York with local musicians as early as 1966 and this is the publication date given here, though it sounds more recent.



As always, the music is of the highest order and fully recommended, and only the more avid collector, of which there are many, will be concerned with the specifics detailed above, which are not annotated in the sleeve notes."