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Dancing the night away was a regular occurrence for hundreds of Derby teenagers who got into the Northern Soul scene in the late 1960s and 70s. Steve Handsley and Paul Baxter were up there with the best. Here Lynne Sterling describes how the pair are still spinning the tunes today, turning an early interest into a lifelong passion.

Steve Handsley and Paul Baxter who look back with affection to the Northern Soul scene in Derby in the late 1960s and 70s

Music is embraced with a huge amount of passion by the majority of teenagers, with certain sounds often defining a generation for many years to come.

And, although for some music is merely a passing phase to be left behind with those "ridiculous shoes, dreams and haircuts", for many others it remains a passion for life, to be revisited and cherished.

The latter is certainly true for ardent Northern Soul fans Steve Handsley and Paul Baxter, of Derby.

Both are now aged 53 and themselves the parents of teenage children but they have lost nothing of their original enthusiasm as they reminisce about the origins of soul music and the all-night dancing culture which went with it.

There is no doubt that Steve and Paul are pretty hard-core fans, as I quickly discovered when Paul corrected my terminology.

"Northern Soul isn't really the name for a type of music; it just became a handy term for the scene which was evolving in northern England," explained Paul, who now lives at Hilltop, Breadsall.

"The music itself was basically Tamla Motown and other soul sounds, which were being imported over from America, in the mid-60s.

"It wasn't a big scale or commercial operation at that stage. There wasn't much airplay for soul music on the radio either, at first. The fact that it got heard at all was mainly the initiative of a few enthusiastic individuals and small independent record shops.

"Two guys from the north of England, Ian Levine and Dave Godin, were particularly instrumental in spreading the interest at street level and they were the ones who coined the term Northern Soul - in other words, soul music which was being listened to in the North."

Although Paul's musical taste has evolved and widened through the years, he still remembers the rush of excitement at hearing his first soul record at the age of 12.

"It was a totally different sound to anything I'd ever heard before," he said. "I bought a copy and rushed home to put it on the gramophone player. Even my mum pricked up her ears with interest."

It soon became a lifelong passion for firefighter Paul who, since his own children have grown up, spends one night a week as a DJ at Susumi, in Derby Market Place, playing what he describes as "soulful dance music" - a mixture between soul and house music.

Steve, from Littleover, also discovered soul early and remembers that, by the time he was a young teenager, a number of cult clubs had sprung up around the country, including Derby.

"The prime venues in the mid to late 60s were all in the north," he said. "There was Blackpool Mecca, the Twisted Wheel in Manchester and the Mojo in Sheffield, which all hosted big names like Edwin Starr, as well as offering all-night musical extravaganzas."

As interest spread, however, the Midlands began developing venues too. In Derby, the Polish Club, Dam Polski, in Charnwood Street, started to host Northern Soul nights, quickly followed by Clouds, the Locarno, and the Stork Club on Osmaston Road.

"I was only 14 at the time but I looked older and managed to bluff my way in to some of the venues," said Steve. "I quickly became hooked and, before long, I joined up with other local teenagers who, at that time, were travelling to clubs all over the north of England, to listen to the music, buy records and dance."

One of the big attractions about Northern Soul nights, Steve recalled, was that they offered a very different type of atmosphere from some of the city 'meat-market' style discos which sprung up everywhere in the late 60s and early 70s.

"You tended to develop a network of friends through Northern Soul and everyone was there for two things only," he said, "the music and the dancing. It wasn't about chatting up women; it was about having a really good night and dancing to some of the best music around.

"The dancing itself was an amazing spectacle, too. It was more like a gymnastics display with people doing spins and back flips. Plus, it was always exciting to see if there were any new sounds being played that you hadn't heard before."

Paul recalls that there were always records being traded around the edges of the room.

"Because a lot of the music wasn't commercially marketed in Britain, it became a case of searching out your favourite sounds from small dealers, independent record stalls or second hand shops.

"As a result, some records had a real rarity value and became very sought after and expensive to buy."

He added: "Although most people associate Northern Soul with Wigan Casino, which was one of the main venues during the 1970s, there were hundreds of clubs north of Watford Gap which were holding all-nighters and soul evenings.”

"Clouds, in Derby, which later became Cleopatra's or Cleo's as it was known locally, continued with Northern Soul well into the 70s. There was also the Dungeon and the Brit Club, in Nottingham, the Blue Orchid in Draycott and the Coliseum in London Road, Derby, and many more."

Paul also remembers feeling proud to be invited to DJ at the Torch, near Stoke, on a few occasions.

Steve's turns as DJ with the Inner City Soul Club are a far cry from his day job. He works as a college lecturer for the Open University and has recently acquired a Phd in sociology, but he says the enjoyment he gets from playing, and listening to all the old numbers, plus a few new ones, is immense.

"I get as big a buzz from the music now as I ever did," he said. "Most people love hearing the old vinyl again. The scratches kind of go with the genre"

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County:  Derbyshire

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