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The passing of Edwin James Balbier a couple of years ago went virtually unnoticed in UK northern scene circles: indeed few outside of the industry will recall his name. Yet, this individual would be the unwitting driving force behind one of the most popular soul re-issue (if brief) label imprints of the 1970s, even if it was the company’s younger soul music enthusiast employees who shaped the nature of the label arm of the operation. Balbier’s initial interests did not lie in soul music, but more generally in the oldies market. Born in 1930, the Philadelphian had an early career...

The DJs, producers and label owners WLAC DJs Gene Nobles and Herman Grizzard are often cited as the first who braved plugging black music in Nashville in the 1940s, largely through playing jazz records. Individual DJs pivotal to the story of the development of R&B and soul included Morgan Babb and Ted Jarrett at WSOK through the 1950s, then Bill “Hoss” Allen and John “R” Richbourg at WLAC in the 1960s and early 1970s. These DJs extended their role to other related industry activities, including record promotion, label ownership and production, cementing the R&B sound in Nashville’s music history.  ...

For Roger Branch, original founder of The Tempests, New Orleans had an attractive pull for studio engineering and production work. Like any musician, he had a deep appreciation for the vibrancy of the city’s musical culture. In addition, he had already forged professional links with key industry figures there like Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn, from his early days at Reflection Sound back in Charlotte. Toussaint and Sehorn had already been working closely together some ten years before Roger had first connected with them in the early 1970s. Toussaint’s musicianship helped define the Nola R&B sound of the late 1950s...

The home page of A Nickel And A Nail emphasizes that its wider purpose, beyond being a commercial entity and serving readers interested in exploring the history of soul and R&B, is to contribute to the preservation of that music history through a variety of means, including reviews, blogs, biographies and supporting self-publishing authors. Preservation is not just about holding onto what we know soul music's past. It also requires effort to obtain new insights into past events, to add context, debunk myths and get the stories straight. This is achieved admirably by a number of writers and researchers on...

(A book by E. Mark Windle. Publication date 15 July 2019. Pre-order facility available now). I doubt it was just a moment-in-time thing. Thirty years on, my memory of first hearing Someday echo across the dancefloor at an all-nighter and stopping this young teenager dead in his tracks has not faded. It wasn’t a recording which necessarily broke the mould upon ‘rediscovery’ on the early 1980s northern soul scene. The new open-minded approach and healthy appreciation for musical diversity had already seen to that, whether it be mid tempo, beat ballads, latin soul, early R&B or others  - and the...