
CHARLYL326 - SOUL SHACK... Time & Place
R&B • SOUL • FUNK
Side One
Side Two
The Soul Shack manifesto is stark - let your body take the place of your mind Pt 1/Pt 2 (and let’s add in an unreleased Pt 3 for the sheer fatback-drum-funk of it).
Soul Shack fave 45 “Keep The Groove” by Bostonian captures the mantra: ”Just remember in everything you do the bottom line is you’ve got to keep the groove”. That lovely Detroit 45 sold the not so grand total of 25 copies on release. In contrast the legendary Edwin J. Bocage (Eddie Bo) had a huge hit with his Crescent City anthemic call-to-dance “Hook And Sling”, another Soul Shack winner. So, to be clear to make our playlist a record does not have to be stupid rare, although as this tough-as-nails compilation confirms obscurity is not discouraged.
The Soul Shack sessions in the Midlands are a homage to mind-blowing and spine-tingling black music gems. They encompass the cerebral jazz fusion preciseness of Larry & Fonze Mizell’s peerless productions, the simple rawness of New Orleans funk (check out “Dap Walk” by Ernie And The Top Notes for quintessential Soul Shack), NuYorican Latin Strut frenzy, the rhythm driven angry polemics of Gil Scott-Heron, the sheen of Philly Soul, the Big Apple Soul Disco genius of Patrick Adams, and, inevitably, the Soul and Funk of Detroit’s many music alchemists.
The soundtrack is a potpourri of blistering horns, splintering percussion, haunting flutes, discordant trumpets, metronome beats, emotions-tearing and goosebumps-inducing so-Soulful drenched vocals, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, (and often both), extravagant 12-inch remixes segueing into primitive street beats and dancing in outer space Brit Funk grooves designed to trip your mind. They are all integral parts of a time and place called Soul Shack.
The schizophrenia of the music selection is an essential part of the master plan. That is, perhaps, best summed up by skin-tight fetish funkateers The Ohio Players (maybe the best live band I have ever witnessed, but that’s another story) being somewhat perversely represented here by the quintessential Northern Soul perfection “Love Slipped Through My Fingers”.
Disparity-Creates-Clarity.
Northern Soul Never Sounded So Good
Club Soul charts the inception, development and eventual commercialism of the world’s most enduring underground music movement; Northern Soul. Born in the post-war city club scene, alive with the hot new sound of American Rhythm & Blues, Northern Soul would evolve into its own unique style capturing the imagination of the Nation’s youth, seduced by its secret world of all-night dancing, a world alien to their parents and even their peers. Here are hits, standards, rarities, obscurities, and here are too are those very tracks researched, compiled and annotated as never before.
Club Soul is managed, marketed, distributed and fulfilled by Snapper Music, one of the U.K.'s premier independent record labels. All orders are shipped professionally and promptly from our Lewes warehouse.