My protege, Tahira Jumah features on my album "Northern Soul 2008"with two tracks, the fabulous "World Of Your Own", and this bonus track, "Mister Right". I first cut this song with Frances Nero in 1991. It was to be the follow-up to "Footsteps Following Me" and I co-wrote it with my wonderful friend, the late great Edwin Starr. Edwin also sang the backing vocals on it, which you can still hear on this new version. In the end we didn't release it as a single, but I always thought the song was better than the arrangement, so in 2006 I re-wrote all the chords and restructured it and it became a bit of an anthem off the compilation album "Solid Ground". Of course there was never a video, so I decided to redo it with Tahira Jumah, the fabulous diva who is my Evelyn Thomas for the new millennium. When I first met her, she had come to the studio with Fay Jones, they were both friends of Angelo Starr, and he brought them along to meet me. I decided to pair them up to make a song which I wrote with Angelo, "It's An Ill Wind". They had never met each other before that day. As I got to know Tahira, I realised she had all the attributes of a real Ian Levine long term star, which is why she then sang my very first song, "Reaching For The Best", for my classics revisited album, "Yesterday And Tomorrow". And also, "It's An Ill Wind" has now firmly become one of my two favourite tracks off "Disco 2008", and, along with the Odette Adams track, these two ended up being the real sleepers of the whole bunch. Tahira is FABULOUS. I just want the privilege of introducing her to the world. The album, "Yesterday And Tomorrow" was released on March 3rd on Centre City Records, and we did another duet for it of Tahira and Fay, a remake of the Carol Woods hit, "I'm In Wonderland" which you can find the video for here on my YouTube channel. Anyway, the album, "Northern Soul 2008" was released on June 30th 2008 on Centre City Records, distributed once again by Passion Music and Pinnacle. A follow up to my "Northern Soul 2007" album. I have spent over thirty years honing my craft to the point when I am able to produce authentic records like this. There are some small minded people who call themselves fans of Northern Soul who refuse to accept that anybody can make a new record that sounds like the real thing. The album consists of twenty four brand new 2008 songs by soul and disco legends. Each song has an accompanying video of the artist basically performing it the studio and at outside locations. The work that we all put into this project is quite staggering, and I hope it will break down the barriers between the older Northern Soul stalwarts and a new generation, who need younger acts that still produce the same vibe we all witnessed forty years ago for Motown's glory years. Give new Northern Soul a chance this time.
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