The Twisted Wheel - Land of a Thousand Dances - 60th Anniversary (Various Artists)

2025
21 Northern Soul Classic Tracks

"The dancing is without a doubt the highest and finest I have ever seen outside of the USA - in fact I never thought I'd live to see the day where people could so relate the rhythmic content of soul music to bodily movement to such a skilled degree in these rigid and armoured Isles!" DAVE GODIN 

When Dave Godin from Soul City Records, London, visited the Twisted Wheel in January 1970 he was blown away, mesmerised, by the music, the dancing and the togetherness of the emerging Northern Soul scene. It was unique, not only to the tiny basement club, but to the North. It was something that the swinging capital didn't have and didn't understand. This was Soul and solidarity - the yet-to-be-coined Northern Soul - and it belonged to the North. 

This compilation celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the "cellar-full-of-soul" years at the famed Whitworth Street location, September 1965 - February 1971. The groundbreaking years that saw the Wheel's playlist move from Blues and R&B to the upbeat sound of young America, or as Blues & Soul journalist Dave Godin put it "the groove up North". It was these pivotal years and these dance tracks that lit the Northern Soul torch.