The record’s charm lies in the way that Williams’ angst is set against cheerfully out-of-tune Mariachi carnival horns. In fact, the Levi Stubbs-esque lungbuster was Dusty Williams, whose impassioned performance has you worrying he’ll give himself a pulmonary hernia. Persistent rumours had it that the vocalist was prolific Detroit singer Dusty Wilson, and the musicians Bob Seger’s backing band the Last Heard. For years, mystery surrounded the identity of the band, thought to be named after 1958 slave rebellion drama Tamango. Originally on Washpan, the label run by Gino (not to be confused with Geno) Washington, I Really Love You is the Tomangoes’ only known release. On which reckoning, Michigan band the Tomangoes were basically the Faux Tops, right down to having their sole single engineered by one Dr Edward Wolfrum, who frequently worked for Motown (as well as making every sound tech’s life immeasurably easier by inventing the DI box). In the wake of the Detroit label’s success, scores of tiny start-ups across the States attempted to replicate the Hitsville sound on a budget, often with small-batch, one-off local releases by artists who would never record again (providing a rich seam of rare vinyl for northern soul DJs to mine in future years). It’s reductive, of course, to describe northern soul as “failed Motown”, but there’s a grain of truth in that. It quickly became one of the most sought-after singles on the scene (at one point, even a bootleg would set you back £50), and is sufficiently iconic that a T-shirt bearing only its title and a mock-up of the Bond gun barrel is available, no further explanation needed. You Didn’t Say a Word is a classic flipped disc: at first, merely the B-side to Baker’s 1967 torch ballad To Prove My Love Is True, until DJs discovered its club-friendly potential. Indeed, a funkier recording by co-writer Jean Wells would later end up on an actual film soundtrack (for 2014 YSL biopic Saint Laurent). Tellingly, Renzetti was a film buff (who would later pick up an Oscar for his work on The Buddy Holly Story). It was fronted by Philadelphia singer Yvonne Baker (nee Mills), previously a member of doo-wop band the Sensations, but the distinctive arrangement was down to prolific composer and guitarist Joe Renzetti, whose CV includes dozens of hits from Chubby Checker’s Let’s Twist Again to Barry Manilow’s Mandy to Bobby Hebb’s Sunny. The James Bond song was so nicknamed because its underlying melody bore a pronounced resemblance to the 007 gun-barrel theme.
One of the ironies of northern soul is that the modern dilettante has access to more information about the artists and records than even the most obsessive fan at the time, when the identities of highly localised dancefloor hits, sometimes associated with just one venue, were jealously guarded by DJs who stuck plain white paper over the labels in order to prevent rivals from stealing their set. Many of the feather-cut kids in their three-star tops, flare-flapping Oxford bags and slippery Solatio shoes would have known this as the James Bond song. Even the fairy-dust twinkle of its piano topline evokes the heart-racing amphetamine thrills of the all-nighter.
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In 1966 Dobie Gray, a versatile old pro who was equally as comfortable singing country as cabaret, recorded a celebration of nocturnal kicks whose lyrics seemed to uncannily anticipate the northern soul scene. That’s why it would be redundant to fill this list with the titles everyone knows, although it would be churlish not to include some obvious selections, like Out on the Floor, for starters. Northern soul is a culture based on chance finds, crate-digging and word-of-mouth recommendations. Despite the sterling work of legendary DJ Kev Roberts in producing an “official” Northern Soul Top 500, or the many charts in books like Wigan Casino DJ Russ Winstanley’s Soul Survivors and David Nowell’s Too Darn Soulful, or efforts by admirable amateurs like Terry Christian (whose personal Top 100 is packed with treasures), there is no carved-in-stone canon – everyone’s journey through it is unique. It’s a genre that inherently defies definitive list-making. Since it first emerged in the dancehalls of northern England in the late 60s, it has existed in direct opposition to the very concept of greatest hits.
It’s a scene that has always thrived on the rare, the obscure and the undiscovered. One of the many beauties of northern soul is its sheer unknowability.
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