Dave Godins Deep Soul Treaures

It’s not often you get a consistently good album….and to have a series of 4 sounds just too good to be true, but Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures is the real thing - a quartet of albums lovingly compiled by the late Dave Godin and released on the wonderful Kent label between 1997 and 2004.

Godin wrote for Blues and Soul magazine through the 60’s and was enormously influential in the developing UK soul scene, both as a journalist but also as joint owner of the labels Deep Soul and Soul City. He coined the phrases Northern Soul and Deep Soul. His Blues and Soul column always closed with the words “Keep the faith”…Northern Soul summed up in 3 words.

The Deep Soul Treasures series contains 100 tracks mainly recorded between1967 and 73 and while many of the artists may be little known outside Soul circles, there are tracks by Otis Redding, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and Ben E King. There’s Irma Thomas’s "Time is on My Side" and Bessie Banks’s "Go Now" as covered by the Stones and Moody Blues respectively. Godin was looking mainly at the actual vocal performance and searching for an intensity. It may have been found in hit records, but more often than not it was to be found in the lesser known songs or artists.

In his sleeve notes he describes Deep Soul as “Music for grown ups…It puts into music, the deep and powerful emotional reservoirs that we are too bashful to voice in real life. We think along those lines but find it hard to speak along those lines. That’s what Deep Soul is for”

Godin was also important for trying to describe how these records could have a social context, like George Perkins civil rights anthem "Cryin’ In The Streets". It sounds like a New Orleans funeral march but is powerful and uplifting. As a white English writer in the 60’s he was also grappling with the fact that so many of these singers had come from church and Gospel backgrounds where they’d not only learnt to how to sing, but also learnt that sometimes you’ve got to put on a show, whether it’s for God or an audience.

The preaching, testifying Holy Roller style, where damnation or salvation were just an eyeball roll away, was a long way from 1960’s England and Sunday School religion. Everything in 1960’s UK was black, white and mono. Fact! And didn’t it just show in the lightweight music we produced?

It didn’t start to get interesting until British bands started to borrow, steal and cover Black American songs. Both The Beatles and Stones were frequent visitors to the Arthur Alexander and Smokey Robinson songbook. Then UK acts started to write their own songs, the boundaries became looser and English Pop music became as good as American.

Godin’s view is that Black American music (even when it’s Pop music aimed at teenagers...I think he means Motown, pre "What’s Going On") has always been grittier and had more adult themes. He argues that Deep Soul is less about sex but more about desire. It’s the desire that torments the singer (and of course for it to work , the audience has to believe that the singer is always singing about themselves…which goes back to the Gospel and acting argument.) and it’s that torment that comes out in the singers voice, that takes us out of ourselves. The Deep Soul moment that we can’t express for ourselves.

"Temptation’bout to Get Me" by The Knight Brothers from Volume 4 is a case in point. The singer has clear, high vocals, a bit like a rougher Smokey Robinson, and the backing is sparse and restrained. The man is in pain but it’s a beautiful sound

Because Godin’s series is based on a feeling, the actual Soul style, tempo and recording techniques used stretch from Rhythm and Blues to gospel, to country soul to lush 70’s productions. His focus on the performance means that great efforts were made to locate and include the original mono version of "Wish Somebody Would Care" by Irma Thomas rather than the re recorded stereo version. This actually matters. Fortunately the sound quality of Kent albums is always top notch, no matter where they get the original source material, unlike lots of other reissue labels that re-release recordings with the hi fi quality of a beer mat.

My favourite tracks are those that Swamp Dogg had a hand in such as Doris Allen’s "How Was I To Know You Cared" and "These Four Walls" by Irma Thomas. He was a really imaginative producer and songwriter whose lyrics often had a Country twist to them, which usually involved brackets.

They’re not on the Deep Soul series but I feel compelled to mention "Did I Come Back Too Soon (Or Did I Stay Away Too Long)" and "To The Other Woman (I’m The Other Woman)." They also involved great singers, really clever bass playing (Pops Popswell is a name to reckon with), funky Country Soul style guitar, sweeping strings and the kitchen sink.

If you’re only going to buy one of the series, I’d go for volume 3. You can buy the others next week.