R Dean Taylor - Indiana Wants Me 1970
Gotta See Jane – TM 656, 1968
There’s a Ghost in My House 1966
Indiana Wants Me (1971)
Indiana Wants Me: Although this is indeed a great track, it was frowned upon at the time by the Wheel Soul crowd because R Dean Taylor was white. Classed as White Motown pop trash! in 1966 he released a song about a ghost in his house, it kicked off a downgrading! Yes we were very elitist and we had a sort of alternative and reversed apartheid regarding Soul singers: they had to be black! Although everyone liked Gotta See Jane, when we found out that he was ‘white’ we stopped liking it.
Soul Mods in Manchester were extremely concerned about the pedigree of the artists and music they sanctioned. Don’t know what they would have thought about Indiana Wants Me as by 1971 when it was released most of the Mod Soul Twisted Wheel and Blue Note crowd had gone (probably to get married) and the clubs had closed. Later on the ‘New’ Northern Soul scene, they did embrace these records and Kev Roberts puts “There’s A Ghost In My House” at 20 on his Top 500.
It’s all a bit silly really especially looking back and discovering that Dean wrote I’ll Turn To Stone for the Four Tops. Tolerance wasn’t always part of the Mod/soul scene – ex mods have spoken of their disappointment at first when they saw two white guys in Booker T’s Mgs on the Sixties Stax Tour. The fact that they were the legendary Steve Cropper and Duck Dunne made them somewhat shame-faced.
The fact is that R. dean Taylor was a prolific Song writer at Motown and his own recordings are extremely good and quite experimental too.
R. Dean Taylor – Wikipedia