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Pat Brady: Meet West Park's own Northern Soul man AUDIO
He's West Park's own soul man who's doing the record equivalent of selling coals to Newcastle.
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Meet Pat Brady – DJ, writer and all round Northern Soul devotee.
Along with wife Lynne he has run Pat Brady Records in Leeds for almost three decades.
Pat, 51, who lives in West Park, has bought and sold some of the rarest and most celebrated soul tunes committed to vinyl.
Music fans from across the world flock to his website at: www.NorthernSoul45s.co.uk
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He told the YEP: "I'm now selling 60s soul records back to the US.
"I've just recently packed off two Shrine Records, one of the rarest soul labels in the world, to a guy in New York.
"He bought the pair for 3,000 and he will be playing them at northern soul gigs in and around The Big Apple.
"We now ship to Japan, Australia, Finland, Israel and Turkey.
"There is a big Northern Soul scene across Europe so we often send records to Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Holland and Belgium."
Pat and Lynne are well-known faces on the circuit.
Pat was a DJ during Northern Soul's 1970s' heyday.
He span his original seven inch classics at the Wigan Casino, The Ritz in Manchester, Samantha's in Sheffield, as well as the Queen's Hall in Bradford and the Leeds Central (now the Hi-Fi Club).
Fans would go on 'all-nighters' or 'weekenders', dancing through the night and most of the day to Motown-influenced soul music.
In his pomp he would play up to eight clubs a week, including Wigan Casino's last night in 1981.
The dad-of-three said: "I play about eight times a year now. But it was pretty hectic when I was younger as we had a young family.
"I've never been out of the scene and now there's a big revival. We're having a reunion weekender at The Spa in Bridlington next June.
"There's two things that shouldn't be allowed – DJs playing bootlegs and DJs playing CDs."
In the mid-1970s Pat edited the soul fanzine Talk of the North and for 20 years was the rare soul columnist for Echoes magazine.
He and Lynne, 49, set up their business in 1980 and have a worldwide reputation for finding top quality, rare soul 45s.
Pat said: "When I was 14 I was in a local youth club in Ilkley, where I grew up, and some guys went to the Twisted Wheel nightclub in Manchester.
"I got listening to that music and very quickly realised I had an obsession for collecting records.
"I used to go to Bostocks, who had shops in the Merrion Centre in Leeds and Bradford Market.
"My first big find was Johnny Sayles' I Can't Get Enough Of Your Love on the Chicago label.
"I remember my father going ballistic when I paid 5 for Little Richie's Just Another Heartache in 1974. I suppose it's gone from there."
He added: "It's been Northern Soul, Lynne and I, and our children.
"Because without Northern Soul I'd never have met Lynne, at the Buffs Club in Keighley, and we'd have never had Gemma, 22, Michael, 20, and Lorna, 15, who's now into Northern Soul herself."
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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