Northern Soul Radio — Station News

The Man Who Changed Everything: Ian Levine Joins Northern Soul Radio

The Blackpool Mecca legend — record hunter, producer, pioneer and one of the most consequential figures in the entire history of Northern Soul — is coming to the station.

Northern Soul Radio  •  March 2026

Northern Soul Radio is proud — and we mean genuinely, deeply proud — to announce that Ian Levine has joined the station. There are legendary names in Northern Soul, and then there is Ian Levine. Born in Blackpool in 1953, he grew up with soul music in his blood and rare American records on his mind from the age of thirteen. What followed was one of the most remarkable careers in the history of British music.

After leaving school in 1971 Ian became a resident DJ at the Blackpool Mecca’s Highland Room — a room that would become one of the two defining venues of the Northern Soul golden era, alongside Wigan Casino. Every Saturday night from 8pm until 2am, Ian and his partner Colin Curtis filled the dancefloor with a relentless stream of freshly unearthed soul 45s. But what set Ian apart from everyone else was how he found them.

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“Every Saturday night at Blackpool, he was debuting records that nobody in Britain had ever danced to before. That takes a level of dedication — and obsession — that very few could match.”

In the early 1970s, Ian was flying to the United States multiple times a year. He scoured record stores, warehouses, abandoned radio station stockrooms and any other dark corner that might be hiding a forgotten soul pressing from Detroit, Chicago or New Orleans. He brought hundreds of unknown 1960s singles back to Britain — records that had never been heard on these shores — and unveiled them, one by one, to a devoted Highland Room crowd each weekend. Records like Tony Clarke’s “Landslide”, R. Dean Taylor’s “There’s a Ghost in My House” and The Carstairs’ “It Really Hurts Me Girl” found their British dancefloor home because Ian Levine went looking for them.

Ian’s influence extended far beyond the decks. As a producer he co-wrote and co-produced records with combined worldwide sales of over 40 million copies, racking up more than 80 UK hits. He was first to spot the potential of Evelyn Thomas, L.J. Johnson and Barbara Pennington — all of whom he signed and guided to chart success. He became the founding resident DJ at London’s Heaven nightclub in December 1979, where he pioneered the Hi-NRG sound that would sweep across gay dancefloors worldwide and later inform the entire pop mainstream.

But perhaps his most extraordinary undertaking came later in life, when Ian embarked on a mission to track down the forgotten voices of Northern Soul itself. By 1998 he had located 179 former American soul singers — artists who had recorded one or two singles decades earlier and had no idea that their music had become the soundtrack to a generation in the north of England. Many of them, he discovered, had gone back to ordinary jobs; most were astonished to learn they were legends. Ian brought their stories together in his four-hour documentary The Strange World of Northern Soul. It is one of the most remarkable acts of musical preservation ever undertaken.

Northern Soul Radio now carries three of the greatest names the scene has ever produced — Ian Levine, Richard Searling and Kev Roberts. Between them they were there at every pivotal moment: the Torch, the Mecca, the Casino. If you wanted to understand what Northern Soul truly was, and what it still is, these are the voices you need to hear.

Ian’s shows will be announced very soon. Make sure you’re tuned in.

Welcome to Northern Soul Radio, Ian. The Highland Room would be proud.

Northern Soul Radio — Broadcasting the Sound That Never Stood Still