Jump Children Jump!

[Mullardman]

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I'm on a roll! King of Kings was the first proper 'Blue Beat' tune that grabbed me. I was about 13.

Probably the last apart from Marley was this one. Sentimental pop reggae, but I loved it. Pat Kelly. How Long Will It Take. I only just realised how much this guy's voice and phrasing echoed Sam Cooke's.

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Sorry for 'jumping' your thread Dean, but I am having so much fun and so many memories you won't believe....
Col

 

[cooky1257]

Hi Cooky,
Nope.. it wasn't the American Breed, though that is a great song! Dean has it in his post, though I'm still not sure it's the version I had.

I started DJ ing about 67-8.

I had just walked out of a job in the Coal Board Laboratories in Nottm and was doing a door knocking sales job. I was invited to join 3 mates in setting up a mobile disco.

One guy dropped out pretty quick. The rest of us carried on.

We had no money, and started by hacking the auto changers off a couple of Dansette decks and throwing them into a chipboard box. Amplification was via a BEL guitar amp. It sounded horrible, but got us started. Our very first gig came about when we went to a disco at a local miner's welfare and discovered their DJ hadn't arrived. We offered to stand in and after a frantic hour of driving about to gather the kit we did it. We went down a bomb!

Our first regular gig was a place called the 'Room at the Top' in a pub in Glasshouse Street Nottingham.

Soon we were doing residencies in the 360 Club, Bulwell, Nottm. This is still fondly remembered by many people. We also did a couple of other local clubs, the usual 'weddings and funerals' circuit and a residency at the 76 Club in Burton on Trent.

Frankly, we were damned good. If you wanted a good Motown/Stax/Atlantic soul type night we did it. We also had the usual Ska/RockSteady stuff. But we also had enough sense to recognise that the weddings and funerals circuit demanded a wide range of stuff. We could throw in everything from 40s swing to 50s R&R etc. We had a ball.

We eventually had 2 sets of gear and DJs out 7 nights per week. I regularly did Graduation Balls at Nottm uni and we did a few epic gigs in country houses for very wealthy people..

The kit improved as well. You have to remember that short of commissioning something from a specialist audio engineer, you couldn't really buy an 'off the shelf' set up at the time. We pooled all of our money, our profits and our knowledge. We also enlisted a bit of help. What we ended up with was a dual mono set up powered by two Leak TL50 mono valve amps and controlled by a pair of 'Linear' pre amps and a cross fader. We used a pair of Goldring Lenco GL68 TTs and made two,. then four open backed column speakers containing 12 inch Baker and Fane units and Wharfedale Super 3 tweeters.

Best of all, and hilarious to use, was our 'strobe'. These were pretty obligatory back in the psychedelic days of the late 60s, but the lamps for them were horrendously expensive. So, ever resourceful, we worked out that smallish standard tungsten filament bulbs had near enough quick enough switch on/fade characteristics to give a semblance of a strobe effect.
We mounted a dozen or so such bulbs inside an open ended tin. (originally intended for wholesale pig's livers!) These were controlled by a little electro-mechanical gizmo. The effect of this strobe alongside the hypnotic drone of Donovan's 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' was phenomenal.

We used to book a lot of groups in to the 360 as well, including some pretty famous ones. They commonly consented that we had the best disco sound they'd heard. TBH, whilst great for many venues, we struggled in bigger halls.

Still, we got loads of work and I had a ball for a few years. In the end, we started to suffer as Carlsboro brought out a cheap and effective 'instant DJ' kit, which resulted in everybody and his brother becoming a mobile DJ.

I walked away from it about '71. My only regret was leaving all those classic soul singles behind. That was a mistake.

Col

Col, Great story. You may want to have a shufty on facebook-someone my have started a 360 club group(There's one for The State in Liverpool for example).I know the feeling about leaving/losing classic tunes, I lost half of my DJ collection in a burglary.
You've a few years on me but I was introduced to and still love Bluebeat/Ska/Reggae by staying with relatives for the long summer hols as a kid-they lived in a shared West Indian/Irish flats in Tavistock Cres ,Notting Hill.
I was the youngest of 4 so the soul/r'n'b is doing the trick too.
Cooky

 

[Mullardman]

Thanks for your kind words Cooky.

Here's another fave. Dontcha jes luv You Tube?

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[SCIDB]

Dean, you are genius!

That was indeed the song, though I'm not 100% it was that version. Could it have been done by anyone else? I'm almost certain that the label wasn't the black Minit label shown. Mine was Orange or Red with the title printed along the 'bottom' of the label, IE below the centre hole. Also, I don't recognise the names of the singers at all, and I'd have thought I would once reminded. Still, it was more than 40 years ago....

You've got me thinking now. I'm going to have to do an 'ultimate soul' compilation...

Thanks again.

Col

Hi Colin,

Glad you are enjoying the thread.

The record came out in the UK in 1967 and was released on the Liberty label. Here is a picture of a dj promo version of the tune. The colour is different to the standard release but the layout will be similar. Was it laidout like this one?

I have just found a picture of the standard release. It's in black.

The song was also released in 1972 on the United Artits label.

Dean

 

[Mullardman]

Hi Dean,
Yep! That looks more like it, though I still have a strong memory of it being red/orange, rather than black. But Hey!. Even I am occasionally wrong..

Mull