Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African-American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became popular for dancing and listening, where U.S. record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights Movement. Soul also became popular around the world, directly influencing rock music and the music of Africa. It also had a resurgence in the mid-to late 1990s with the subgenre neo-soul, which added modern production elements and influence from hip-hop.
Stevland Hardaway Morris, known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. One of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the 20th century, he is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include R&B, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. A virtual one-man band, Wonder's use of synthesizers and other electronic musical instruments during the 1970s reshaped the conventions of contemporary R&B. He also helped drive such genres into the album era, crafting his LPs as cohesive and consistent, in addition to socially conscious statements with complex compositions. Blind since shortly after his birth, Wonder was a child prodigy who signed with Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, where he was given the professional name Little Stevie Wonder.
Francesco Stephen Castelluccio, better known by his stage name Frankie Valli, is an American singer, best known as the frontman of the Four Seasons beginning in 1960. He is known for his unusually powerful lead falsetto voice.
Charles Edwin Hatcher , known by his stage name Edwin Starr, was an American singer and songwriter. He is best remembered for his Norman Whitfield-produced Motown singles of the 1970s, most notably the number-one hit "War".
Antony Kenneth Blackburn is an English disc jockey, singer and TV presenter, whose career spans 60 years.
Peter Mark "Marc" Almond is an English singer best known from the synth-pop/new wave duo Soft Cell and for his distinctive soulful voice and androgynous image. He has also had a diverse career as a solo artist. His collaborations include a duet with Gene Pitney on the 1989 UK number one single "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart". Almond's career spanning over four decades has enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim, and he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. He spent a month in a coma after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2004 and later became a patron of the brain trauma charity Headway.
Mark Lamarr is an English comedian, radio disc jockey and television presenter. He was a team captain on Shooting Stars from 1995 to 1997, and hosted Never Mind the Buzzcocks from 1996 to 2005.
Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged in Northern England and the Midlands in the early 1970s. It developed from the British mod scene, based on a particular style of Black American soul music with a heavy beat and fast tempo.
"Tainted Love" is a song composed by Ed Cobb, formerly of American group the Four Preps, which was originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. In 1981, the song attained worldwide fame after being covered and reworked by British synth-pop duo Soft Cell. The song has since been covered by numerous groups and artists.
Innervisions is the sixteenth studio album by American singer, songwriter, and musician Stevie Wonder, released on August 3, 1973, by Tamla, a subsidiary of Motown Records. A landmark recording of Wonder's "classic period", the album has been regarded as completing his transition from the "Little Stevie Wonder" known for romantic ballads into a more musically mature, conscious, and grown-up artist. On the album, Wonder continued to experiment with the revolutionary T.O.N.T.O. synthesizer system developed by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, and Innervisions became hugely influential on the future sound of commercial soul and black music.
Ian Geoffrey Levine is a British songwriter, producer, and DJ. A moderniser of Northern soul music in the UK, and a developer of the style of hi-NRG, he has written and produced records with sales totalling over 40 million. Levine is known as a fan of the long-running television show Doctor Who.
The Wigan Casino is the colloquial name for the nightclub the Casino Club, that operated in Wigan between Friday, August 27 1965 and 1981, associated with the Northern Soul movement in the UK. The club's enduring dedication to Northern Soul "all nighters" made it an icon among fans of the genre, continuing the efforts that other clubs such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, the Chateau Impney (Droitwich), the Catacombs (Wolverhampton) and the Golden Torch had started. It remains one of the most famous clubs in Northern England. In 1978, allegedly the American music magazine Billboard voted Wigan Casino "The Best Disco in the World", ahead of New York City's Studio 54, although there is no tangible evidence of this award ever being publicised.
Acid Jazz Records is a record label based in East London formed by Gilles Peterson and Eddie Piller in 1987. The label is the namesake of the acid-jazz subgenre of jazz music for which it is most famously known for producing.
Dean Parrish was an American singer from New York City, best known for the song "I'm on My Way", which became noted for being the penultimate record that was played at the last Northern soul all-nighter at the Wigan Casino.
Outta Here is the debut studio album by Dutch pop artist and songwriter Esmée Denters. It was released on Tennman Records in May and June 2009 in Europe, and was released in the UK on 11 January 2010. Production was handled mostly and executively by Justin Timberlake with Denters herself co-writing the album.
British pop music is popular music, produced commercially in the United Kingdom. It emerged in the mid-to late 1950s as a softer alternative to American rock 'n' roll. Like American pop music it has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, as well as that of the Singles Chart usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilising key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. From the British Invasion in the 1960s, led by The Beatles, British pop music has alternated between acts and genres with national appeal and those with international success that have had a considerable impact on the development of the wider genre and on popular music in general
Neil Rushton is a British journalist, DJ, record dealer, record label entrepreneur, event promoter and author who is closely associated with the Northern soul scene.
Belleruche ( BEL-ROOSH was a three-piece electronic/soul band from the United Kingdom. They were signed on the Brighton-based Tru Thoughts label. The members of the band were Kathrin deBoer, Ricky Fabulous, and DJ Modest.
"What" is a song and single written by H. B. Barnum, performed by Melinda Marx and released in 1965. Marx, daughter of Groucho Marx was a reluctant pop singer and the high notes on "What" found her straining. She recorded only one further single before leaving musical performing which had been foist upon her by her father.
