Category: Soul Choir

My second, very enjoyable, Christmas Social Sing with the The Soul Choir was again held at Holmfirth Civic Hall. Another very good turn out with all the available tickets sold out.

As before we steered clear of many of the overdone Christmas Carols and festive background tunes that drove me mad when I worked in retail.  Dan also had his fill of them when he worked primary schools so happily he chose some selections based upon them being Christmas chart hits. We had to encore / finish with a popular Soul Choir choice  and on this occasion that was Gloria Jones’ ‘Tainted Love’.

The ‘Social Sing’ format chosen for this final 2025 rehearsal again opened the event to the public, so Dan gave a short tutorial of each song with the choir also guiding newcomers. 

We sang the following ten songs:

Song	Original Artist
White Christmas	Drifters Doo Wop style
Do You Hear What I Hear	Bing Crosby
Only You	Yazoo / Flying Pickets
Caravan of Love	The House Martins
Fairy Tale of New York City	The Pogues / Kirsty McColl
Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy	David Bowie / Bing Crosby
Mary’s Boy Child / Oh My Lord	Boney M
Children Go Where I Send Thee	African Tradition Gospel
Sleigh Ride	The Ronettes
Tainted Love	Gloria Jones

The Soul Choir performed in St Bartholomew’s Church as part of the annual Marsden Cuckoo Festival, held to celebrate the arrival of Spring.

We had a nine song soul set for our 40 minute slot but the audience wanted more so we performed two encores.

• Facebook

Looking forward to my third gig with the Soul Choir on Saturday 26th April when we will perform a ten or more song set at St Bartholomew’s Church as part of the Marsden Cuckoo Festival.

It’s going to be huge with over 70 singers delivering soul / reggae classics from artists like Tina Turner, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Otis Reading and Aretha Franklin.

A personal and Soul Choir Northern Soul favourite, ‘The Night’ (Original by Franki Valli & The Four Seasons), gets a surprise inclusion in the programme as we welcome our new Soul Sisters and Brothers from Wakefield Soul Choir. This was one of the two songs that I performed solo at The Blind Pig back in December at a Sing Pop student showcase event.

This weeks session attracted members over from the Slaithwaite group, as Dan couldn’t run that scheduled session as he was swanning off to London, being a rock star in a recording studio.🤘😁

The full hall produced a glorious sound as we progressed through the set-list for the forthcoming concert.

As usual, lots of good songs, good humour and good company. It really is a worthy social event in itself.

We ended with a pretty good rendition of Gloria Jones / Soft Cell’s Tainted Love from memory, although I did cheat and sneakily viewed the lyrics on the Smartphone.

No Candi Staton, ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ at Soul Choir this week, (not on the set-list). Will be singing backing vocals for that with the Sing Pop group this summer. It really helps when rehearsing the same song for two performances ~ I like a two for one!

The antidote to the madness in today’s world is getting together and singing some Soul classics with like minded folk.

This week we turned attention to the set-list for our forthcoming concert at Marsden in April.

First up though we acknowledged the birthday of of Soul legend, Aretha Franklin by singing ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ and ‘I Say a Little Prayer’.

Another fun, music and laughter filled evening led by Dan Price, his guitar and Peter Kay like tales!