That Chicago Sound
| To Many people
Northern Soul is the child of the Detroit sound of the 60t's albeit
the rare cuts that came from the well known vaults of the likes
of Gordy, The soul scene of the 60t's was alive and well not only in the
motor city but in many cities through out America, Cities like Atlanta,
New York, L.A, Washington and the topic of this article Chicago. While
nor underestimating the influence of the "Detroit sound" on
the artists and record companies of Chicago this city produced some of
the best Northern soul to be found on the scene, with it's mix of
R&B in it's two main forms "hard soul" a term coined by
soul writer Robert Pruter and the mainstream soul that took it's
influences from the more progressive sounds coming from other cities and
put Chicago soul on the map. The first "Hard soul" began a
wonderful migration of blues to the 60's soul sound classic tracks like
Jimmy Robins "I cant please you" Jehart the Blues Influence
shines though making this a favorite of blues and soul fans alike. Unfortunally
this sound did not evolve and the hits dried up unlike the
more mainstream classic Chicago sound which continued to produce
fantastic sound by the likes of raniants, artistics, Barbra Acklin,
Billy Steward, Drake and the ensolids, wade flemmons on labels such as
Sincere, Starville ,betty ,Maurci, Giant, Erica, Ramsel to name but a
few without even mentioning the superb sounds that came out of
labels such as Okeh, Chicago
was and an still is one of the major players in this scene of ours we
call Northern Soul even more today I feel as the "hard soul"
of yesterday is even more popular on the scene today than it as ever
been , The constant search for new sounds continues to push the
boundaries of what is known as "Northern" and it's no bad
thing as it brings with it such wonderful sounds to our ears and the
chance to turn back time and to get that buzz we used to get on hearing
a great song for the first time
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