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ABOUT THE LABEL

In Autumn 2008 a bizarre series of events took place which led to the formation of Soul- Intention Records.

Ian Dewhirst and Phil Dick were two veteran Northern Soul DJ’s and fans from the 1970’s and were both spending a bit of time perusing the popular Northern Soul website, Soul Source (www.soul-source.co.uk) when they both stumbled into a huge thread on the forum  which was discussing another veteran DJ’s contribution to Northern Soul, Ian Levine.

In the course of the thread, a record called “Café Regio’s” by Gary The Master Blaster was discussed which has only ever been available on a long-deleted CD, so Dewhirst checked his CD collection, found the CD and played the track and was immediately blown away by the quality and ethos of the recording.

Meanwhile, 200 miles away, in Leeds, Yorkshire, Phil Dick was re-discovering the track himself and coming to the same conclusions.

Gary The Master Blaster was the legendary radio D.J. from Miami radio station WCKO who established a huge local audience as a result of his organic early radio ‘raps’ which were typical of the personality DJ’s on U.S. black music stations in the early 1970’s. Luckily, Ian Levine had some 40 hours worth of Gary The Master Blaster’s original radio shows which he had recorded onto cassette at the time. One of the most evocative raps from Gary was over Isaac Hayes’ “Café Regio’s” – the ‘B’ side to the multi-million selling “Theme From Shaft”.

So in 1999, Levine re-discovered the Gary The Master Blaster cassettes and skillfully re-made “Café Regio’s” carefully cutting in the Master Blaster's vocals which he had painstakingly isolated from the nearly 40 year old cassettes, in the process making a brand new record, which itself was a tribute to the skills of this extraordinary DJ from some four decades previously.  

Dewhirst then posted the track up as a downloadable file on Soul Source where it gathered a staggering 500 downloads in just 7 days. Following Dewhirst’s suggestion that Levine should re-issue the track, Levine threw the ball back into Dewhirst’s court by suggesting that he would allow Dewhirst to re-issue it but only if the record would be issued on 7” vinyl with the straight instrumental on the ‘B’ side.

At this point, Phil Dick contacted Dewhirst and offered his assistance if required. Within the space of a few minutes it was jointly decided between the two veterans that a new record label should be formed which propagated the ethos of releasing Soul Music on the 7” vinyl format and thus the name Soul-Intention was created.