I’m having a great time introducing soul music LPs released on Atlantic in the UK by Barbara Lewis and Esther Phillips and others to customers in the City of London record shop. As the Nina Simone Appreciation Society founder, I’m still in the mix with the fellow Brits running fan clubs for US artists like Irma Thomas and I attend a party for her hosted by her fan club president Bob Nessling at a house on Albert Square in Stockwell, a place which will have much significance later in the year…

Dave Godin is no longer running the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society and he’s started The Friends of American Rhythm & Blues Society with the magazine Rhythm & Soul USA as its flagship publication. Dave makes me a proposition, working with him to build FARBS and the magazine into viable financial entities. He suggests I leave my job at the record shop, stay in my own room at the home he shares with his mother in Bexleyheath… I accept and by July, I’ve left the John Menzies shop and during the months that follow, the genesis for what will be Britain’s 1st record shop selling only American R&B is born…