Published at 11:51, Monday, 12 January 2009

IT’S the 1960s. The songs of The Supremes, The Isley Brothers, Stevie Wonder and The Four Tops are being played in the Duke of Edinburgh. The teenagers of the time have something new to discover – and something to belong to. Fast forward four decades and the youngsters united by Motown are still hooked. Rob Mckeever runs the quarterly soul nights in Barrow and is currently writing his second book on Northern Soul.WHEN an impressionable young Rob Mckeever first heard the Motown Sound it was a revelation.

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He spoke to reporter JO DAVIES about the iconic label’s 50 years in music

“In the mid 60s I remember as a young teenager hearing The Four Tops, The Isley Brothers and The Temptations for the first time. It was the beginning of a new musical experience for me and millions of others,” he said.

He experienced the best of Motown – The Supremes, The Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye – artists that generations have come to know and love since.

Tamla Motown was the record label that popularised Soul Music and is credited with its commercial delivery.

“It took a little while to get going here,” said Rob, 57, of Croslands Park Road, Barrow. “It was localised in Detroit but then spread across America with the advent of the new 45 format and radio and TV.

“It was the sound that defined Motown.

“It was a commercial sound up until then – mainly RnB, Blues, Gospel, that sort of thing.

“Motown popularised black music worldwide.

“When the Motown sound arrived in the early 1960s white kids in USA and Europe connected with black music for the first time. There were notable exceptions like jazz and blues but until Motown black music was essentially a black preserve.

“It was being in the right place at the right time.”

In Barrow the right place was the Duke of Edinburgh in the mid-60s.

“The Duke of Edinburgh was the first disc-o-the-que in the town,” recalled Rob.

“There was a small raised, illuminated dance floor with a jukebox to one side featuring 45s by artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Bunny Sigler, Bob & Earl and the dance music of Tamla Motown’s Four Tops, The Isley Brothers, Junior Walker and The Supremes.

“Programmes like Ready Steady Go had new artists in the early 60s but by the mid 60s it started to really take off.”

In the latter part of the 60s in Barrow, the Catholic Youth Centre in Nelson Street ran a Friday night disco, followed by Vickers Sports Club, Furness Rugby Club, the British Legion, Maxims and the Penny Farthing in Ulverston in the 70s.

Peter Burns was the first soul DJ in Barrow and he used to play at the Catholic Youth Club. Bill Newby and Brian Mulholland played at The 99.

“There were few teenagers in Barrow during that period whose lives were not touched in some way by the certain type of black music which has become universally known as Northern Soul,” said Rob.

“It was the beginning of a new musical experience for me and millions of others.

“In Barrow every youth club played it and Brucciani’s jukebox was full of Tamla Motown music.”

Fifty years on why is the Motown sound still so popular?

Rob explained: “It’s just got that certain timeless quality. It’s still being played now. My wife went to see Diana Ross in concert last year.

“It was quite a revolution at the time. It had been bubbling around Detroit and America for 10 years and then came over to England.

“It was quite exciting.

“It was a northern wide phenomenon.

“All the Merseyside sound was born from Motown’s sound.

“The Beatles recorded early Motown stuff, The Searchers and Cilla Black.”

Its universal appeal has seen a resurgence in the Motown and Soul nights, with four held a year at The Nines, in Dalkeith Street, Barrow.

“Me and my brother have been running them for eight or nine years,” said Rob.

“We get a couple of hundred at each one,” the next being Good Friday from 9pm until 1.30am.

Rob recorded the Motown movement within Furness and the North West in “Northern Soul in Barrow: The Story of one town’s part in the phenomena known as Northern Soul.”

He is currently writing On The Right Track with Ginger Taylor, the country’s number one Northern Soul DJ.

“He’s been dragging his body all over the country for the last 35 years,” said Rob.

“This guy is amazing.”

This, his fifth book, is due out in May.

Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk