Northern Soul club was set up by five friends

REGARDING Soul Nights at Hinckleys Claredon Club (“Northern soul huant is set to be the site of new town care home,” February 1), I would like to give readers a bit of background info.

Firstly, there were no bands at the soul nights, the music was from vinyl records only.

That’s not to say live acts don’t appear at soul nights as plenty of the larger venues do sometimes feature artists and these are mainly from back in the day, so from the 1960s/70s. But the club I’m talking about didn’t feature anyone live during the last period of its life (as a soul night venue).

Also perhaps, to acquaint readers unfamiliar with Northern Soul, I think I should take you back to when it really started.

During the musical heyday of the 60s, Mod clubs and discos were shooting up all over the country and with that there was an urge to play a type of music.

It started with music from the charts by groups such as the Small Faces, Spencer Davis, Alan Bown Set, etc, but as each club wanted to be the best the DJs started looking further afield, to America.

At this time a lot of the Motown and Stax/Atlantic records were being played in the clubs, so this set the tone for the type of music disco goers wanted to listen to.

As the late 60s approached a few tracks by unknown artists were beginning to get played and became popular to the extent that it created an underground music scene where DJs at certain clubs would be playing these sounds.

These clubs and DJs were mainly in the north of England, hence the name Northern Soul. Into the 70s and clubs were now playing exclusively rare and unknown tracks that had been imported from the states.

Back to the Clarendon Club. This was formally known as The Sweet Pea Club and had hosted soul nights for the town in the late 70s/early 80s but as most of the clubgoers from this period had grown up got married, the scene started to die down.

It didn’t die altogether as some clubgoers kept a small venue going still playing this hard-to-obtain soul music from America.

The Soul Nights at The Clarendon Club were started by myself and four friends who had been on the scene in the early days and were now getting out again after bringing up their kids.

What we wanted to listen and dance to were those tracks that we had heard back in the day, but as there wasn’t a club locally playing these tracks we decided to put a soul night on ourselves.

The five of us – myself, Kelvin Knight, Mark Lester, Julian Perry and Wayne Hayes – contacted the Clarendon Club and hired the venue for one night.

The date was set of January 8, 2003. We organised equipment, enlisted the help of some DJs and advertised the event hoping someone would turn up.

On the night we kept our fingers crossed but we needn’t have worried as over 250 people turned up.

This venture by the five of us had been a success to the extent that the Soul Night is still going 19 years later, unfortunately not at the Clarendon as there was a fire there a few years ago and the Soul Club had to relocate and now runs from Sapcote Club, just a few miles away.

Four of us are now no longer involved but Wayne, one of the founding members, has been there from the beginning.

David Nicholls, Barwell