Keeping the faith DJ shares his love far and wide for the stomping sounds and spirit of northern soul By: David Sanderson Posted: 5:46 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025

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This article was published 23/01/2025 (281 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Marty Emanuel is inviting you to drop by his place. Every Saturday night.

Emanuel — a.k.a. DJ Mod Marty — is the host of On Target, an hour-long radio broadcast that can be heard weekly on 101.5 UMFM, and around the world at ontargetpodcast.ca.

Episode No. 500 of On Target, which focuses heavily on northern soul, a musical genre that embraces largely obscure soul and rhythm-and-blues tracks from the 1960s and ’70s, aired in mid-December.

For his milestone instalment, Emanuel once again spun the sort of little-heard, up-tempo tunes he would gleefully throw on if listeners were kicking back on a couch in his living room.

Think songs by Erma Franklin, the less famous sister of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Aretha Franklin. Or ones from transgender soul singer Jackie Shane, who moved to Toronto from Nashville in the late 1950s, to escape verbal and sexual harassment.

“The original concept of the show was, ‘come over to my house and we’ll have fun playing all these really interesting records you probably haven’t heard before,’” Emanuel says, seated in his basement recording studio, where he is flanked by thousands of 45-RPM singles he has collected through the years.

(Did we mention On Target’s playlists are comprised entirely of seven-inchers, or what its host calls “those funny little records with the big hole in the middle?”)

“My show is basically a listening party masquerading as a radio program.”

OK, here’s a question: how did a 53-year-old graphic designer who makes his home in the West End become one of the continent’s leading authorities on northern soul, an underground music movement so-named for the dance clubs in northern England where it first surfaced in the early 1970s?

Interestingly, the answer begins 7,400 kilometres west of Manchester, England, the subculture’s acknowledged birthplace.

Emanuel, a married father of two, grew up in Ganges, the main hub on B.C.’s Salt Spring Island. He guesses he was 16 years old when he discovered Quadrophenia, the 1979 film revolving around the English mod scene of the 1960s, for which fashion, motor scooters and music — soul, R&B and ska especially — played a major part.

At the time, Emanuel was drawn to post-punk bands such as Depeche Mode and the Cure.

Practically overnight, he was scouring the shelves at Lyle’s Place in Victoria, his music store of choice, for recordings by Black artists such as James Brown, the Chiffons and the Ronettes, whose hits figure prominently on the Quadrophenia soundtrack.

“(Quadrophenia) kind of changed my taste in music, and led me to slowly understand what northern soul was all about,” he says, recalling how he often showed up at garage sales and flea markets with a portable turntable, which he’d use to test-drive 45s on the spot.

“I started getting to know producers, composers and artists, as well as where records considered to be northern soul were recorded and released. If it was a city like Memphis, Chicago or Philadelphia, I knew it was going to be something worth listening to.”

(According to a November 2024 article in Far Out magazine headlined What is northern soul?, the music scene’s records “have a certain sound to them, usually typified by a high beats-per-minute rate, making them much easier to dance to.”)

By the time he was 19, Emanuel-as-DJ Mod Marty was sharing his affection for soulsters such as Jackie Wilson and Betty Wright with dance-club crowds in Vancouver, where he was attending the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Next up was a volunteer radio show at the University of Victoria, along with more DJ work in the provincial capital.

Emanuel’s collection and knowledge of northern soul continued to grow following a move to Toronto — “and its millions of record stores” — to work as art director for CHUM Limited’s television division.

He was let go from the company in 2006, a year before it merged with Bell Media. On his return trip home to B.C. he made a pit stop in Winnipeg. That was when his “whole life changed,” he says with a wink.

It was a weeknight and he was checking out Osborne Village mainstay the Cavern. He met a gal, Catherine, and the two ended up going on a date the next day. Over coffee she suggested he accompany her to a concert the following week.

He said he’d love to, only he couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel that long. No worries, he could crash at her place, she responded.

“That was it, we ended up getting married, so happy ending to the story,” he says.

Emanuel says one of the reasons he and his future bride clicked immediately was because Catherine was also interested in DJ-ing. He was only too happy to show her the ropes.

Before their first child was born, the pair, billed as the Beat, was a popular draw at Readymix, inside the since-razed Osborne Village Inn. From there they were granted a show on KICK-FM, the instructional campus radio station at Red River College Polytechnic.

KICK-FM ceased operations in July 2012. Jared McKetiak, the station manager at UMFM, picks up the story from there.

“I got to know Marty a little bit when he was at Red River, and when KICK was no longer broadcasting, the host of one of our shows who goes by the name Penny Lane, and who is a friend of Marty’s, mentioned how sorry he was to see his show go,” McKetiak says.

“I reached out to him, saw the passion was still there, and he’s been with us ever since.”

McKetiak, who started at UMFM in 2001, says Emanuel’s knowledge of his craft is “out of this world.”

“He loves what he does, and the fact he’s so tied to the mod scene that exists in North America — he’s flying all over the place to DJ… last month he was in Pennsylvania, before that he was in Montreal — is pretty cool to see. Plus, he’s very conscious of supporting the station and flying our banner wherever he happens to be, which we really appreciate.”

Brent Jackson, owner of used-record shop Old Gold Vintage Vinyl at 187 Osborne St., considers Emanuel to be one of Winnipeg’s best-kept secrets.

“I’ve been trying to get people in the city to listen to the show forever,” says Jackson, who used to have a show of his own on UMFM called Psychedelic Soul Shack.

“I post about him, I brag about him because there’s nobody else who puts so much effort and passion into their product. I learn something from him every single week.”

Jackson smiles, saying whenever he acquires platters he thinks Emanuel might be interested in, he sends him a text and he’s over like a shot.

“I’ll throw tubs of 45s on the floor and he’ll literally spend hours with his headphones on, going through them all, one by one.”

“All the time,” Emanuel says, when asked if he continues to unearth acts and/or B-sides he wasn’t previously familiar with.

The number of artists who issued one or two songs on a minor label eons ago, only to disappear into the abyss, is seemingly endless, he reports.

“You’ll have a janitor from some high school in Detroit who had a remarkable voice and who cut a stellar record for a tiny label that couldn’t promote it, so went back to being a janitor,” he says, his eyes widening.

“I’m forever finding stuff where all I can think is, how is this not everybody’s favourite song?”

Anybody interested in witnessing Emanuel in the flesh can head down to the Army, Navy & Air Force (ANAF) Club 60, at 433 River Ave., where he spins soul and R&B records for a few hours on the second Friday of every month.

“It’s the same format as the show, so if you arrive thinking you’re going to hear The Big Chill soundtrack, you’re in for a rude awakening,” he chuckles.

“I do play some of those songs — or at least, versions of those songs by other artists — but 100 per cent, it’s still going to be stuff that makes you want to get out of your chair and move your feet.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca