J.J. Barnes - Our Love Is In The Pocket

"Our Love Is In The Pocket" by J.J. Barnes is just about the quintessential Northern Soul record, loved and acclaimed by soul lovers everywhere over almost the last forty years. J.J.'s other monster Northern Soul record, "Please Let Me In", was the first record I ever found on the Ric-Tic label, in a tiny junk shop in New Orleans, when no-one in England had ever heard of this wonderful singer, and the sound of it musically changed my life into discovering more and more records like it, with that magical Motownesque sound. J.J. has been my lifelong friend. He started out on several small Detroit labels before being picked up by Scepter, but then J.J. got his career into full swing, by the mid Sixties, when he and Edwin Starr both started out on the same label, Ric-Tic Records in Detroit. I first met J.J. Barnes in 1971 when my first business venture with my Father, when I was eighteen, was to put him on at Blackpool Mecca. I had written an article about him when I was fifteen for Collectors Soul Magazine called "J.J. Barnes The Uncrowned King Of Soul" Eighteen years later he signed to Motorcity and recorded about twenty five songs, this being one of the stand out ones, our re-cut of the legendary Detroit classic, and released on the CD, "The Very Best Of J.J. Barnes"