1966

I have to confess I didn’t know the singer of this Northern Soul favourite, Bobby Garrett, was the same ‘Bob’ in Bob & Earl, who sang the mega-hit Harlem Shuffle.

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Run For Cover was one of first minor hits for The Dells, one of the finest and longest-lasting vocal groups in R&B history – and it’s a Northern Soul classic.

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Nancy Sinatra didn’t know the hidden meaning behind Sugar Town, the seemingly sweet song she was first given to sing by Lee Hazlewood back in 1966.

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This long-forgotten garage band was the first group my friend Craig Poland Smith ever got to see, at East Aurora High School in upstate New York in 1965.

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The word genius gets bandied around rather too much when it comes to musicians. But few would dispute that Brian Wilson was a genius.

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The Litter languished in garage rock obscurity during their brief career in the late Sixties – until they were rediscovered a decade later.

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With a name like The Electric Prunes, whose founder and front man James Lowe has just died, they could only have been a late-Sixties band from California.

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Soul ballads don’t come more soulful than this gem, the title track of Jimmy Holiday’s debut album in 1966.

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The Remains made one of the best tunes to feature on the Nuggets anthology of ’60s garage rock, but never made a mainstream breakthrough.

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Dobie Gray’s stomper Out On The Floor has been called the best Northern Soul record of all time, though I remember Dobie Gray for two other songs – Drift Away and The In-Crowd.

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