When i first heard this I wasn't sure about it. Having grown up with the gritty sould of Stax, which featured loads of brass accompanied by the guitars of Steve Cropper and Donald 'Duck' Dunn, who along with other session musicians not only backed people like Johnny Taylor, Rufus Thomas and others, but also were responsible for numerous instrumentals put out under a range of names from Booker T and The MG's, the Mar-Keys etc, this was something completely different. Even Motown, with its more commercial sound was still noticeably rooted in R&B. It too had its own brassy sound produced by the Funk Brothers, who again not only backed all the Motown Artists, but also in a variety of names produced some great instrumentals, perhaps most noticeably under Early van Dyke. After Motown took over the Ric-Tic label, it picked up the Wingate Strings, and Motown began to feature strings as part of its full orchestration far more than the more traditional R&B sounds of Stax, Atlantic and others. "One Wonderful Moment" contains all that, and despite the fact that to me its not part of that traditional R&B sound, it is a Northern Soul classic, because it contains all of the features, the beat and rhythm that got lots of Northern soul dancers up on heeir feet.
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