Great review Roger, you know your stuff! I too had heard that one of their biggest sellers was a funk CD. I'd love to know which one, as although I have them all I can't say I have enjoyed a single track!
ReviewI consider this to be the CD equivalent of Helen of Troy. OK, it didn't quite launch a thousand ships but it did spawn a few hundred Soul Compilation CDs on the famous/notorious (delete as applicable) Goldmine Soul Supply imprint..
This was the very first CD issued by Goldmine, it quite clearly has the year of publication of 1990 on the disc, though strangely the essay that came with their 1993 Sampler CD GSCD 13 claimed that the idea for the label didn't come around until late 1991!!
The idea was quite simple, dub a couple of dozen little-label "in-demand" 1960s "Northern Soul" tracks onto CD, put it out and see what happens. What happened was that it sold well enough for the formula to be repeated with other styles of Soul ... soon there were other "Essential" collections out there and within two or three years Goldmine were bringing out new compilations seemingly every week. Most of the compilations were aimed fairly and squarely at the "Northern Soul" scene, though they used to claim that their biggest seller was actually one of their "Funk" compilations.
The big spanner in the works was that Goldmine had a reputation for (ahem) not always sticking to the niceties of properly licensing the tracks they included on their discs, even though they sometimes involved some of the big record companies and well known 1960s music producers in their projects. This led to a number of irate songwriters and performers wondering why they weren't receiving royalties for what were obviously strongly selling discs and after a run of about 15 years Goldmine imploded.
Anyway ... as to the music on this CD, this is typical mid 1960s NS fare (generally 1964-67) and most of the tracks had become well known favourites among "Northern Soul" fans in the preceding 20 years. About a third of the recordings are from Detroit, with Philadelphia also being well represented. Some of them are quite raw (some might say underproduced), but they all have that driving sound that "Northern Soul" fans look out for.
Hard to pick a favourite, but if pressed it would probably be the Patti Young track at #19, a stomping Detroit recording that seems tailor made for inclusion in a shampoo commercial ....