6 Whitworth Street Manchester, The
Birthplace of Northern Soul
By Rob McKeever
ISBN 978-0-9553283-5-0
6 Whitworth Street, Manchester The Birthplace of Northern Soul
Comprising 120 pages including 8 in full colour with approximately 70 images size B5 250mm high x 176mm wide
5.0 out of 5 stars Well put together and accurate
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 November 2020
A good and comprehensive review of
the second location of the Twisted Wheel - I ought to know I went there from
1963 the first Wheel and regularly until 68' being the dj at the nearby Blue
Note club visiting the Whitworth St club after finishing to watch the fantastic
acts at The Wheel after midnight on Saturdays up to 71'. That last night with
Edwin Starr. My own book about the period is the Manchester Wheelers.
Well done Rob, a great book, great times and I guess we must have bumped
into each other in that cellar in the sweaty semi dark all those years ago
"Rob,Thanks for a great book; well researched and put together. Truly a labour of love after all this time. I really enjoyed it. Read it all the way through when I received it, re-living a lot of memories and antics going there; from late 68 to mid 70 when I lived North Wales.-- M Jones
"i have now recieved a copy of your book and i have enjoyed reading it - Ivor Abadi"
eBAY feedback/reviews " Great" "A Brilliant Book" "Recommended" "A Good Read"
Introduction
Chapter 1
Brazennose Street
“It was exciting at The Scene [the Scene Club London] there were lots of interesting people. The DJ Guy Stephens, the man with the best R&B collection in the country was playing some of his precious rare records. He had the best records before anyone else. I used to go along with [Pete] Townshend to his flat in Regents Park to hear records that the High Numbers [later The Who] might want to play on stage or record. He had hundreds of albums and piles of singles from unknown and remote small record companies. For a fee he would tape the ones you wanted”.
In 1964 Stephens
was employed by the Sue record label in the UK.
During his tenure there he was responsible for releasing by agreement a
string of successful singles on the Sue label, by obscure American artists. The Sue label was
owned in the USA by Juggy Murray. Murray
terminated the agreement when Stephens started issuing additional releases by other USA independent record companies on the
label. Stephens also advised on the UK
releases of Pye International who
had access to the Chess/Checker recordings. It
was Stevens who brought Chuck Berry to the UK for his first tour after paying
his bail to get him out of jail. ........................Inspired
by the Scene Club the two Rogers (Eagle and Fairhurst) went on a mission to fulfil their objective of
promoting Black music in Manchester, as Fairhurst explains:
“So on Friday and Saturday nights I think it
was, we use to get an armful of records each and walked around the centre of
Manchester going in all these clubs and saying why you don’t play this
stuff. And these people looked at us as
if we were absolutely out of our fucking minds”.........................
Eagle had previously
visited the Scene Club at a time when he briefly resided in London. Later when he became a DJ at The Wheel he
sourced records from Guy Stevens......................................The
initial invitation, made some months previously by the Abadi brothers had
finally materialised and Eagle started his DJ career at the first all-nighter held at the club on Saturday, 28th
September 1963 as Eagle recalled:
“That was the first time ever that a place [in
the UK] played almost 100% Black music.
It was danceable [music]. I had
to keep people dancing for 7 hours and there weren’t many Soul and R&B
records about at the time, the bands played for 45 minutes [on that particular
night Graham Bond Quartet and Spencer Davis].
I played Little Richard, Black Rock and Roll and Rhythm and Blues. The
first few weeks were dismal, as they were attended by a scruffy bunch of
ex-Left Wingers.....................
Carl Woodroffe who started going to The Wheel in
November 1964 and continued until 1965.
He later resumed his visits to The Wheel at Whitworth Street in
1967. Carl himself was a pioneer who
took Northern Soul to the Midlands under his DJ name, ‘Farmer Carl Dene’. He was responsible for starting the Soul
nights at Chateaux Impney, from January 1965-1967, and the legendary Catacombs
Club, Wolverhampton, which he started in October 1968.................................................
Chapter
2
Whitworth
Street
1966 brought a flood of releases; most were
hardly up-tempo.....................That year did, however, give the first
glimpse of things to come when TMG (Tamla Motown Group) released Stevie
Wonder’s ‘Uptight’ in January and, a few months later, The Miracles’ ‘Whole
Lotta Shaking in My Heart’. Both what
would later be termed ‘floor-shakers’. ................... Even
the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ Little Richard was recording Soul records on the UK
Columbia label by 1966 with ‘A Little Bit of Something’ and ‘Poor Dog’.
. Although
a lot of Motown was played at The Wheel, as the 60s progressed the crowd preferred
the more uncommon Motown releases such as Barbara McNair, ‘You’re Gonna Love My
Baby’; The Temptations, ‘Girl, Why You Wanna Make Me Blue’; The Contours, ‘Just
a Little Misunderstanding’; Marv Johnson, ‘I Miss You Baby’; Gladys Knight,
‘Just Walk in My Shoes’; The Velvelettes, ‘These things Will Keep Me Loving
You’; and Marvin Gaye, ‘Little Darlin’. All of these recordings became
enduring Wheel favourites and arguably, in technical terms, some of the best
Motown produced. ........................... by 1966 they didn’t have to look that far
for records. UK Soul releases were by
now plentiful and if you knew about them before they were deleted most could be
bought or ordered in Manchester at various record shops, notably at Barry’s
Record Rendezvous which became The Wheel managements’ supplier of choice. It was customary for one of
the Saturday night DJs to visit the record shop on a Saturday afternoon, as
Wheel DJ Barry Turner did. He remembers
Barry Ancill, the proprietor of the record shop, would have around twenty new
Soul releases already selected for him; he would go into the booth and listen
to them and decide what to play at The Wheel.
In Manchester, as the 1960s progressed, The Wheel went from strength to
strength. The Mods ruled The Wheel until
around 1968 when the mohair suits were replaced by denim jeans and jackets and
Ben Sherman shirts. A fierce competition
to find obscure Levi and Wrangler jackets with cord or leather collars ensued. The club still espoused fashion, dance and a
passion for Black American dance music.
.....................The club’s reputation had stretched far and wide,
and there were few towns and cities in the North, Midlands and parts of
Scotland that were excluded from its members’ address list. Phil Saxe, who was a regular, then a DJ at
the club from 1965-71, estimated that by the late 60s “50% of the attendees
were from the Manchester area and 50% were from out-of-town”.
............................. No one, on a first visit,
could fail to be mesmerised as they walked downstairs to the basement and into
the DJ room early doors, to see the dancers in full flow to a record like Mitch
Ryder’s ‘Breakout’. Fast and furious
footwork, arms flying in the air interspersed with spins, drop-backs and the
splits. The dancing, at times, was
complemented with the spontaneous handclap of leather on leather. At work the following week, some of these
dancers would almost certainly be shrinking violets but, at that very moment in
time, they were masters of their own Northern Soul universe, filled with a
confidence and a look of invincibility that amphetamines readily gave....................If
there are any doubters that Northern Soul dancing was inspired by Black artists
then, with the benefit of hindsight provided by technology, we can lay that
argument to rest. You can now observe on
YouTube, Jackie Wilson’s performance live in 1965, dancing and singing to ‘Baby
Workout’, spinning, doing the splits and drop-backs with natural ease. Similarly, watch the 1963 recording of
‘Monkey Time’ by Major Lance, as he effortlessly displays his footwork ‘Northern’ style around the dance floor or any number of James Brown
videos showing his finesse at the splits.
Not only did Wheelers follow the music of Black America but also the dance
moves.......................................................It is
difficult to describe the excitement this club generated for its members. To
most of them, the music and the club was everything. The sheer adrenaline rush felt when you
queued outside waiting to enter hearing the music from inside being blasted out
by a speaker on the street and again when you walked into the club, was
immeasurable. Contrary to popular
opinion, the club was probably the safest place most of them had ever spent a
night and by far the most atmospheric.
To every uninformed parent,
it was their worst nightmare. In their
mindset a violent drugs den, full of undesirables and swarming with police. Or as one regular aptly put it
“The club was very
edgy in its ‘60s heyday, in that it was publicly regarded as a hellhole full of
drug-crazed zombies. However, if you
were a Wheeler, it was a great friendly club at the cutting edge of fashion and
music”....................................The
Wheel was instrumental in inspiring most ‘things’ Northern Soul: exclusive
records, the dancing, talc, badges (originally worn on blazers), the
traditional handshake and holdalls for the travellers. It spawned the first UK Black music magazine,
R’nB Scene, and the first bootleg records on the Soul Sounds Label,
Chapter
3
Saturday
Night DJs
..................Paul Davis played 90%
UK releases. Generally, all were new to
the Manchester public at their first playing, but he also had some Motown
imports. He was probably the first to
bring to The Wheel: The Contours, ‘First I Look at the Purse’; Earl Van Dyke,
‘I Can’t Help Myself’; The Incredibles, ‘There’s Nothing Else to Say Baby’; the
immortal Darrell Banks’s, ‘Open
The Door to Your Heart’ (on Stateside);
and he is almost certain, Lou Johnson, ‘Unsatisfied’. In 1968, his plays from release included Al
Wilson, ‘The Snake’ (on Liberty); Tommy Neal, ‘Going to a Happening’ (on
Vocalion); and The Show Stoppers, ‘Ain’t Nothing but a House Party’ (on
Beacon)...........................He
enthuses, as he remembers sitting in the dressing room and chatting with the
likes of Junior Walker, Ike and Tina Turner and Ben E King, after they had made
an appearance. In particular, he was
full of admiration for Edwin Starr and Jimmy Ruffin...............
.......................Brian
Phillips “In my time DJ-ing
at The Wheel, imports were becoming more and more prevalent and
accounted for around 35% of my plays.
Soul imports started surfacing in the mid-‘60s, turning up in obscure
places, especially market stalls in London, where I visited on a regular
basis. I went frequently on a Saturday
getting the early train and returning on the last one. There were regular market stalls I used to
visit, Record Corner in Balham was a good source but I never had much luck at
Soul City. Many shops seem to have
records in the 60s, I remember going into a book shop in Manchester and there
was a stack of Okeh records lying on the floor”..................
Chapter 4
The Clubs Legacy
Chapter 5
‘The Twisted Wheel Revival
“You don’t know what you
have got here, this was once a famous R&B/Soul club, it’s famous all over
the world and I would like to reopen it for a few nights a week”.
“Sorry
not interested,” was the reply.
Undeterred he retorted, “Well
I am going to keep coming in here and keep asking until you say yes”.
Every
so often he would go to Whitworth Street and ask the same question and every
time he received the same answer, No.
After about 6 months of pestering, one evening when he walked into the
empty club the owner looked at him and retorted:
“Oh no not you again, I have had enough
of this, what night do you want”?
“A Friday”, he replied.
“No chance, you can have a Thursday.” “I’ll take it”, he said.
On
Thursday, 6th July 2000, for the first time in 29 years, the club
opened its doors to the sound of Black American music, 215 people turned out at
a few days’ notice. Surprisingly even in
the latter years of the 20th century, although the building had been
knocked about a bit internally, it had essentially retained much of the same physicality as in 1971.
A Whitworth Street ‘Northern Soul’
Discography