Background to Soul & Motown

During the British music invasion of America during the 1960s, here in the UK, American music was either ignored or relegated to a sub genre. However, music on Detroit's Tamla-Motown and the Memphis based Stax record labels played an important role in the racial integration of popular music achieving international success and a widespread lasting effect on the music industry. Literally hundreds if not thousands of record labels tried to recreate the Motown sound resulting in the establishment of records labels such as Philadelphia International the fore-runner of Disco during the 1970s. Throughout the 1960s and 70s many great rare and obscure Soul and Motown records were brought to the UK by enthusiastic collectors many becoming popular in the clubs in the North of England.