Northern Soul : L. J. Johnson - Your Magic Put A Spell On Me

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Way back in 1964, New York filmmaker, David Hoffman was headed down with his new 16mm hand help camera (weight 49 lbs!) to spend three weeks driving the backcountry around Madison County, North Carolina, in the center of Appalachia, with the 82 year old founder of the pioneer Asheville Mountain Music and Dance Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford. The resulting film, "Bluegrass Roots" lets you hear and experience the hard scrabbling, dirt road real people sounds that dominated the back country of the southern mountains 40 years ago. It presents a string of the most extraordinary singers, players and dancers the BlueGrass Mountains had to offer. Many later became famous. Some were never heard from again. Most of the songs are classics, including Lunsford's own tune, "Mountain Dew." This scene was filmed at Bascom's home with a local dance group came to dance in Bascom's living room.

When this film aired on Public Television in 1965, TV Guide gave it a full-page positive review, because Americans had never seen a documentary on the roots of Bluegrass and Country music. Today, the dirt roads and the moonshine counties are largely modernized, and Bluegrass Roots, stands as a record of a uniquely talented group of people at a time just before the coming of television, changed them.

Ian Levine : After my first hit with "Reaching For The Best", I wanted to find my own new artists, so in July 1975 I went to Chicago and stayed with Danny Leake and discovered three - Evelyn Thomas, Barabara Pennington, and L.J. Johnson. Recording brand new songs with a Northern Soul flavour, my first two attempts both entered the top 30 simultaneously, and Evelyn Thomas, with "Weak Spot", and L.J. Johnson, with this song, "Your Magic Put A Spell On Me", both appeared on Top Of The Pos in the same week, in February 1976. Imagine a twenty two year old DJ, a newcomer to record production, who tried to make some new records and had two artists on Top Of The Pops in the same week. It still amazes me.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Northern
• Soul
• L J Johnson
• Dancing
• R&b
• Bluegrass
• spell
• magic

[jarlet4]

What a clever way to use a generation of kids dancing to another generation of music where kids danced so similarly to the music such as LJ Johnson at Wigan Casino no less!

[docludi]

Excellent.