The Apollas, re-record their Northern Soul monster classic, "Mister Creator", written by Ashford and Simpson. This is another performance filmed for my now somewhat notorious documentary, "The Strange World Of Northern Soul". Leola Jiles and Billie Barnum were The Apollas, and at the time of filming we could only get Leola, so we added a couple of backup girls to support her, but she was the only lead vocal on the original version anyways. She also made an amazing deep soul record on A&M, called "To Make A Long Story Short", written and produced by Van McCoy. Sadly, a few years after filming this, she had a terrible car crash, which left her scarred for life. I'm just grateful we had this recording for our documentary. I filmed and interviewed over three hundred people and 131 artists performing their Northern Soul classic songs. There is twenty four hours of footage, including some of the Motorcity reunion. The project started in 1997 and was first released on VHS tape. It premiered to 1300 people at the King George's Hall in Blackburn in July 1999, then took four more years to refine and re-edit into its DVD release in 2003. A life's labour of love. So, in 1998, after much searching, and the most massive amount of detective work imaginable, we tracked Leola down to make this one and only one-time performance especially for us, for our ground breaking Encyclopedia Britannica of Northern Soul, and I am so glad that we did. The documentary has some of the biggest all time blockbusters for example, "Out On The Floor", "Night Owl', "I'm On My Way", "Time Will Pass You By", "Blowing My Mind To Pieces", "Do I Love You", all sung by the original singers. We believe this will go down in history as the greatest Northern Soul DVD collection of all time.
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Music