Keith Minshull R.I.P.

I was saddened to discover a few days ago of the death of my old friend Keith Minshull.  Having been in self-imposed lock-down, for the last two years, his death at the end of 2020 had escaped my attention, as it had, it appears, many more people.

A couple of years ago, before COVID, I was talking to my sister about going dancing at Moorville Hall, and she told me that Keith was also organising soul nights at Alsager Civic Centre.  I'd been intending to go, but then locked down for two years.  A couple of weeks ago as we were feeling confident to start going dancing again, I decided to check out if they had restarted, but couldn't find any info, on the Council website.  By chance, looking on Youtube, I found a video about the funeral of Keith Minshull, six years ago, but as is often the case, it was a different Keith Minshull, and I found videos of Keith and Colin Curtis, doing a soul night in Nuneaton from 2018, in which me and my wife commented that he actually looked quite well.  But, then, I also found that Keith himself had, in fact died, in December 2020.

In the late 60's, when me and my schoolfriends started going to the Torch, a lot of the people who went to the Torch were locals.  I don't just mean locals to Stoke, in these days before the All-Nighters, in the early 70's, but locals in that many of us came from within a couple of miles of the Torch itself, living in Tunstall, Goldenhill and, like Keith, Kidsgrove.  As well as knowing Keith as Torch DJ, when I first started going to the Torch, we all knew him from his weekly discos at Kidsgrove Town Hall, where his mum used to sell bottles of coke, no alcohol was allowed.  And, Keith's brother Jeff also worked at Bill Eardley's barber shop on Goldenhill High Street - this was before men went to hairdresser's, and you could get your hair cut for a couple of bob - before opening his own place, in the old Co-op butcher's premises in Sandyford.

Other well known regulars from the Torch, like Phil Morgan, would always stop in Goldenhill High Street to talk with us, when he was going through on his SX 250, bedecked with mirrors and paraphernalia, even before any of us were old enough to have scooters.  A number of my friends went to the Stoke Sixth Form College, whilst I started work.  Giving a feel of just how close and local everything was, one of the people who started work at the same time as me, at Stoke Council was Trevor Harley, already, at that time, also working on the door at the Torch.  The following year, when I was out of work, Trevor arranged with Chris Burton for me to work at the Torch, collecting glasses, and I also did a couple of stints at DJ'ing, getting told off by Keith for playing "Long After Tonight Is All Over", way to loud, in the closing minutes.

But, also, another of the DJ's at the time, was Graham "Davo" Davison, whose girlfriend was also going to the Sixth Form College, and was friends with my, now, wife.  In 1971, when I wasn't working, for several months, I spent time with Keith in Bews record shop in Burslem, as well as at the Torch, as the interior was being reorganised, with the centre stage taken out, and the record decks moved.  I remember walking around the town centre with Keith, both eating family sized meat and potato pies from Wright's.  I said to my wife, when we were reading about his death that he was amazingly solid, and when he was walking with you, especially with his limp, if he leaned into you, he would bowl you over.  There again, I was only about 10 stone, wringing wet at the time.

After I got married, we stopped going dancing for quite a while, because we saved all our money to buy a house, but I kept in touch with Northern Soul via my friend Keith Beardmore, who has the most encyclopaedic knowledge of soul music of anyone I know, a feature that also Dave Evison, commented on, in the 1980's, when Keith kept winning his Northern Soul competitions, on his weekly Signal Radio Show.  I became friends with Keith in the mid 70's, when we were both at Cauldon College on day release, and when he got married, I was bis best man.

In the early 1980's, when I was in temporary employment teaching, I met up with Keith Minshull again, when we were both singing on at Kidsgrove dole, and I was also helping produce and distribute the Dole Mirror, unemployed workers newssheet.  I would go back to his mum's house with him, and sit in his bedroom listening to music, and I would buy records from him, to add to my collection.  In 1981, I was involved in the campaign against a toxic waste tip, near to our estate - See Pits, Pongs and Politics - and one of those involved was Andy Myatt, another Torch regular from the old days, who had also owned a record shop in Market Street, Burslem, which had now been taken over by Davo.  Andy lived just a couple of streets away from me, in Sandyford, and his son was in my son's class at school.

Not long after that, I also met another Northern Soul DJ, Mark Dobson, known to all as Butch.  He joined the Stoke Socialist Organiser branch.  By coincidence, he lived a couple of streets away from my wife's parents in Trentham.  He was too young to have actually gone to the Torch, before it closed.  He was by trade a plumber, and around this time he plumbed in a new bath, and additional radiators in my house in Sandyford, and did a very good job of it too.  Making regular trips to the US in search of records, he was also in touch with people on the left there too, and for many years after, he used to let me have copies of left-wing magazines from the US, he obtained from a Native American contact he had there.

Again as a coincidence, Butch was a guest on Dave Evison's Signal show on the day that I had my "Six of the Best" chosen to be played.  Soon after,  Keith Beardmore contacted me for the first time in several years about going to Keith Minshull's Birthday Party at the The Clough, in Kidsgrove, which we did, where I also met up with Dave Evison, Andy Myatt and others again, including John Oldfield, who I had had a dance off against at the Top Rank, one night in the early 70's, which brought the entire dance floor to a standstill, with people also looking over the balconies, and was only ended when, the DJ Chris Williams, played Jackie Wilson's "The Who Who Song" at 78 speed.  It was followed by my old friend Trevor Harley coming to me and buying me a drink, for "keeping up the tradition of the Torch".

When my son was crewing on the film "Soul Boy", there was a kerfuffle because Keith had been refused entry to the set.  My son was working on the film crew, but as a junior was also driving Martin Compston and the other actors around Stoke, helping out with locations, as well as doing work on redecorating the inside of the the King's Hall to look like the Casino.  I told him to tell Shimmy Marcus that he really couldn't exclude Keith, and, in fact, I pointed out that it was rather a shortcoming of a film about Northern Soul, based in Stoke, that it didn't even mention the Torch!

In the early 90's, I used to see Keith Minshull and Butch regularly at the Keele All Nighters, which we used to go to with Keith Beardmore, and I used to see Andy Myatt and Dave Evison there too.  At around the same time, Keith and Butch used to do a monthly Northern Night at the Queen's in Basford, and after that Keith used to DJ at Motown and Northern nights at Trentham Gardens.  Keith would always come up and talk, and if, as was often the case, he was eating, he would ask "want a chip".