Music journalist and historian Dave Godin was the heart and soul of Britain's enduring Northern soul collector's culture. Not only did he inadvertently give a genre, scene, and community their name, but he compiled a series of tasteful, illuminating records and CDs that lent enormous meaning and historical meaning to music that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks.

Born in London on June 21, 1936, and raised in nearby Bexleyheath, he earned a scholarship to Dartford Grammar School, which he attended alongside a young Mick Jagger. The white Godin discovered the music of black America at the age of 16 -- while in a local ice cream parlor, he was bowled over by the sound coming out of the establishment's new jukebox, which proved to be Ruth Brown's Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean. An older youth recommended several other RB hits he thought Godin might enjoy, and soon he was sharing his discoveries with Jagger, even sitting in on the tentative jam sessions that would eventually give rise to the Rolling Stones. But Godin later bitterly resented Jagger's easy appropriation and often uncredited exploitation of the RB music he worshiped: "I introduced [Jagger] to black music, I'm ashamed to say," Godin said in a 1997 interview. "It's ironic that as a result of meeting me he's where he is today."

Godin quickly amassed a formidable collection of American RB sides, an even more impressive accomplishment given that such records were rarely imported by British retailers or broadcast over BBC airwaves. After leaving Dartford Grammar, he worked briefly in advertising. In 1963 he established the Tamla-Motown Appreciation Society, which earned him an invitation from founder Berry Gordy to visit the label's Detroit headquarters. Godin left Motown on the company payroll, becoming a paid promotional consultant, and upon returning home he encouraged U.K. distributor EMI to set up its own proprietary Tamla-Motown imprint. He also worked tirelessly to secure the latest Motown releases airplay on the expanding number of pirate radio stations appearing across Britain. Godin emphasized the overall Motown sound instead of individual artists, a strategy that worked to great success. He remained Gordy's fair-haired boy until a Motown Revue package tour played British venues to half-empty houses. Godin left the label in 1967, soon after setting up his own London record store, Soul City, the first European retailer to specialize in black music. Around that same time, he began writing a popular, thoughtful column in the fledgling magazine Blues Soul.

In June 1970, Godin devoted his column to documenting the evolving rare soul collecting community. Noting the number of Northern-based customers frequenting Soul City in search of little-known Motown knockoffs, he wrote about the "Up-North Soul Groove," giving Northern soul its name in the process. Godin eventually launched his own record labels, Soul City and Deep Soul, but the entire Soul City portfolio went bust in 1971. He soon relocated out of London, first migrating to Lincolnshire and in 1978 to Sheffield, where he earned his degree in the history of art, design, and film at Sheffield Polytechnic. From there Godin co-founded the Anvil Film Theatre, acting as its senior film officer and schedule programmer -- he even became something of a global authority on film censorship.

But music remained his greatest love and his area of greatest expertise, and although he oversaw numerous soul collections in his lifetime, his most outstanding accomplishment was the Kent label's Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures, a series issued occasionally between 1997 and 2004. Compiled and annotated by Godin, each is a remarkable document of the devastatingly emotional, operatic American soul he worshiped above all. The fourth and final volume in the Deep Soul Treasures appeared just weeks prior to Godin's death from lung cancer on October 15, 2004. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi