The Sonics

Have Love Will Travel

This U.S. band just goes on and on. Originally formed in 1960 in Tahoma USA, they have many reformations and released a new album, This is The Sonics in 2015. They have had multiple changes in line-up but are still producing their no frills, high energy rock and roll. If you like The Kingsmen and Mitch Ryder, you will love The Sonics.

Another group whose sound has been picked up by the Ad men – ‘Have Love Will Travel’ has been used to advertise LV car insurance in the UK.

The Sonics – Wikipedia

Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin - Piece Of My Heart

Carefree and wonderful free spirit, taken from us all too soon. A white woman with a soulful voice. A Soul singer, a blues singer, a great singer, a Soulful singer. A life of great promise cut short by an addiction to drugs, a lonely Soul, she just needed support and love.

Janis Joplin - as she was born
Janis Joplin – as she was born

She started out as the singer with Big Brother and The Holding Company before going solo.

Cry Baby (original – Garnet Mimms)
Piece Of My Heart (original – Erma Franklin)

Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin – Greatest Hits

The Fantastics – Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music

THE FANTASTICS - BABY MAKE YOUR OWN SWEET MUSIC

Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music – Minit 1968 THE FANTASTICS
Something Old Something New (1970)

The Fantastics released a cover of the Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music original sang by Jay and The Techniques and then Johnny Johnson And the Bandwagon who had a worldwide hit with the same song. It became particularly popular in the UK and still gets the occasional airing on radio and Sixties nights.

The Fantastics - Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music
The Fantastics – Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music

Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon

Jay & the Techniques

Jimmy Delphs


Jimmy Delphs - I've Been Fooled Before


I’ve Been Fooled Before
Walk On Into My Heart

JImmy Delphs hails from Detroit and released Soul/funk tracks which have become Northern Soul favourites.

The Hit Pack

The Hit Pack - Never Say No To Your Baby

Never Say No To Your Baby

Any serious Motown singles collector had to get this by The Hit Pack in the mid sixties and it was hard to find, although never popular on that sixties scene it was played occasional – more often at the Blue Note rather than The Wheel.

Many collectors of Motown singles just ordered them by numerical sequence.

Motown Junkies

Soul Swingers

Soul Swingers - Ca Ba Dab

Ca-Ba-Dab (1966)

Hammond Organ featured instrumental by The Soul Swingers.

Gene Bowlegs Miller

Gene "Bowlegs" Miller - What Time Ya Got?

The Frankenstein Walk

Gene “Bowlegs” Miller? Well, in them thaar now distant 1960’s every Soul singer thought it a good idea to do a song about a dance, even if they hadn’t invented it. The song basically is Frankenstein the monster telling us how to do his dance.

We had the Shimmy, The Boo-galoo, The Funky Broadway, The Jerk, The Shingaling, The Skate, The Duck, The Swim, The Hully Gulley and loads more. The songs are still with us. The dances? Who can do The Duck now?

Bowlegs Miller - Everybody Got soul
Gene Bowlegs Miller – Everybody Got Soul

The Frankenstein Walk was the offering from the legendary Gene Bowlegs Miller and record producer from the HI Records stable often collaborating with the fab Mr Willie Mitchell. A trumpet player and song writer.

Born: May 27, 1933

Died: December 25, 1987

@ The ‘B’ side Blogspot

Gene “Bowlegs” Miller – Wikipedia

The Steinways

The Steinways - My Heart's Not In It Anymore

My Heart’s Not In It Anymore
You’ve Been Leading Me On

FANTASTIC double ‘A’ side 45 with two really great Soul tracks by The Steinways.

Yvonne Gearing is the lead vocalist on My Heart Is Not In It Anymore and the male members of the group feature on the other.

493 on Kev Roberts Top 500.

The Human Beinz

Nobody But Me

Nobody But Me

We classified this record by The Human Beinz along with the Monkees as a white band pinching our originals.

God alone knows why this was made popular on that second Soul scene – its listed as 458 out of the Top 500 Northern Soul recordings by Kev Roberts. Surely this is a mistake?

A Total anathema to us on the original scene.

We stuck to the original by The Isley Brothers.

Melvin Davis

Melvin Davis - Find A Quiet Place (And Be Lonely)

Find A Quiet Place
Save It (Never Too Late) 1968

Find A Quiet Place is put in at 419 on Kev Roberts Top 500. His Action label release Save It was played at Manchester’s Blue Note club in 1969.