Let's kick off with four awesome pieces of Jazz Funk. An all-time favourite of mine is this piece of vocal magic by The Whispers - 'Can't Do Without Love'. Another three gems now from Kleer- 'I Shall Get Over', the awesomely uplifting Kinsman Dazz - 'I Searched Around', and O'Bryan's beautiful mid-tempo 'Doin' All Right'. 
 
Moving swiftly along to a selection of Northern Soul mind-benders. 

An atmospheric, pumping slice of 60's soul that filled the floor at Wigan was this one - The Professionals - 'That's Why I Love You', as did this one by The Four Perfections - 'I'm Not Strong Enough',  and the more sublime 21st Century - 'Shadow of a Memory'. 

 A couple of unlikely sounds from white female vocalists. First off, here's an absolute 60's stormer from a seventeen year-old Australian - Lynne Randell- 'Stranger In my Arms'. Let's follow this with an even more up-tempo 'white' sound by British vocalist Sue Lynne - 'Don't Pity Me'.

A mid-tempo Northern favourite of mine is this one on Epic, an absolutely fantastic slice of soul by The Spellbinders - 'We're Acting Like Lovers'. 

A couple of tracks which slightly defy classification are these two, which were released on the Heritage label in 1970. First, here's The Mob - 'I Dig Everything About You'. Another one which (again) seems to be neither white or  black, 60's or 70's, is this classy cut - Virgil Henry - 'You Aint Sayin' Nothin' New'.

I don't know if this one falls into the category of Northern or 70's, or both ? This one was released in 1970, and gained alot of play at the famous Torch club in Stoke. Here's First Choice - 'This Is The House Where Love Died'.

I'm assured that the next one gained exposure on the Northern scene, although this 1964 recording by Cal Tjaeder - 'Soul Sauce' would sound just as at home if played in a latin or jazz venue.

A strange term within the scene is that of Crossover Soul, which refers to a variant of modern soul recorded between 1968 and 1973. Here's one of the few really decent sounds to come within this classification, The Ultimates - 'Girl I've Been Trying To Tell You'.

The 1980's Rare Groove scene enabled many fine 70's sounds to resurface, mainly thanks to Norman Jay's show on (the then pirate) Kiss 94FM. This sound by The Voices of East Harlem - 'Wanted Dead or Alive', used to take the roof off at many a warehouse party.

The Blackpool Mecca gained itself a reputation for breaking alot of new Modern Soul sounds during it's peak in the mid-70's, with messrs. Levine and Curtis spinning such blinders as Aquarian Dream - 'Phoenix'. The famous Friday night sessions always closed to the beautiful instrumental sound of Young Holt Unlimited - 'California Montage'

A good example of how quality soul productions continued into the 1980's, despite the scene being ravaged by droves of horrible electronic sounding tracks, here's Barrett Strong - 'Is It True'.

As I described in the Pirate Radio section, many a pleasant weekday evening was spent indoors listening to specialist soul shows presented by DJs such as Terry Davis. Here's a snip of a programme presented by Bob Jones on Solar Radio in 1987. Bob is chatting to journalist Stuart Cosgrove about his favourite Modern Soul records, one of which is Jan Jones - 'Independent Woman'.

Anyone venturing into the Jazz Room at Caister may have come across this little-known gem on Bluenote. Recorded in 1971, here's the seriously cool sound of Elvin Jones - 'Round Town'. If that's not up-tempo enough for you, try this brilliant piece of fusion from Robert Watson - 'Reachin' Searchin'.

Finally, a track which brings back very strong memories of that mad summer of 1977 was this gem (it even made the UK charts!) The Trammps - 'The Night The Lights Went Out'.