Billy Davidson :: Interview & Mix anthology

On the eve of his final resident DJ sessions at Southport Weekender, Souldiggin.com interviews one of Southport Weekenders’ legends.
Plus we’ve put online a selection of Billy’s mixes from across the years to download.

Read Interview plus download mixes

It’s easy to forget how feverishly enthusiastic Billy is about the music he loves, especially as he sits collected and well-dressed, almost conservative, at the table with a cup of tea.

But this belies the truth.

Beneath this calm exterior lies the sprit of a teenager, evangelical as ever about soulful music, with little interest in the material trappings that can come with it.

‘I get on and do what I love. I am a dj, the guy who’s a conduit for the music, who filters the right stuff out, plays it in the right order and makes you feel good.

‘If I was in it for the money I’d have packed it in a long time ago’, he laughs.

Just turned 50 and after nearly 30 years of djing soulful music, from Northern to House, Billy prepares to play his last Southport Weekender, his 42nd.

Although submerged in the preparation that has been a biannual ritual for him for more than 20 years, he explains why this event will be his last.

‘It’s a bit of a crossroads for me. I won’t be djing forever. The fact is my hearing’s damaged and it’s not going to get any better, Billy admits.

‘As well as that, it takes an awful lot of effort in order to deliver for Southport. It takes weeks on end to get music prepared and it takes two weeks out of my holidays every year.

‘I chose to take things into my own hands and say: “This is when I choose to stop it”, rather than being kicked out for being a deaf old fart”.’

Prone neither to navel-gazing or purposeless philosophising about life after Southport, Billy’s sights return to the approaching target as if it were his first appearance and not his last, and shows that he is anything but complacent about his performances.

‘At this point I’m absolutely focussed on it as I have been for every one’, he says.

‘Southport is a global event, there are a lot of djs there, therefore the calibre of what you play and how you play it has to be extremely high. So I’m focused on getting everything right so I haven’t had time to think about the aftermath to be honest.’

It seems that Billy isn’t the only one who has felt the pressure of the discerning clientele and heavyweight peers who inhabit what is arguably the world’s premier soulful music event

‘Some big name djs have been physically sick before playing. When you stand up there on the Powerhouse stage and look out you can see two thousand faces’, says Billy.

However focussed on the job in hand he is, Billy reveals his view of the crossroads he has brought himself to.

‘It will be a huge loss and a huge change for me. I’ve been doing this twice a year since 1987.

‘Alex and Dave, who organise the weekender, are always trying to talk me out of it but the more time goes on the more I know I’m doing the right thing because I want to come back as a punter. I’ve never had that and I miss a lot of the great stuff. When I’m talking to people I won’t have to keep checking my watch’, he says.

Slightly better than a carriage clock or a gold watch, this is his retirement gift: surely one which most would agree he deserves.

Almost three decades of djing had to start somewhere.

But before you can play, you have to listen and love. And Billy started early as he explains the early signs of a soul affair.

‘The first record I forced my mother and father to buy for me was Where does our Love Go by The Supremes in 1964 so I was only six’, he remembers

‘My mother told me later that I hounded and hounded her to get it so I must have had a soul hankering then.’

He flirted with the 70s glam-rock scene, but seemed to gravitate toward a more soulful sound.

Every cloud has a silver lining as Billy recalls one of the favourite tracks of his youth while laid out with Asian flu.

‘It floored me and I was in bed for two weeks. I kept hearing The Four Tops’ Simple Game on the radio. It seemed like every time I woke up it was playing and it became a favourite record of mine at the time’, says Billy.

During the 70s Billy’s passion for soul and then jazzfunk grew and took him and others around the country in search of the groove and as the decade drew to a close, this listener, collector and motorway soul pilgrim was to make the move to jock.

‘I started djing in 1979 when I was 21. I started because I had a far better record collection than the djs who were playing. I used to take my records for them to play’, he recalls.

A friend from Dundee said there was no point in me taking these records along and that I should be playing.

So at The Isle of Skye Hotel in Perth I did my first warm up set. I was playing jazzfunk and there was no beat matching at that point: we were just drop-mixing it was quite simple but then you had to learn how to use the microphone and that takes a bit more skill, a skill that doesn’t seem to be gained these days.

‘It was bizarre because the parties were quite wild back then. Some one had a ships flare and thought it’d look quite cool to have red smoke billowing up the side of the dj console.

‘There was a dancing competition that night and the prize was a pig’s head with sunglasses on and a cigarette in its mouth. When the flare went off there was so much smoke that everybody had to run outside.

‘Someone called the fire brigade and they came. When the smoke had cleared we went back in and there were still two people dancing.

‘I played more and more after that and started to play the jazzfunk all-dayers. There was one every Sunday somewhere in Scotland at that time so we’d travel every week to them’, says Billy.

During a time of motorways, hitchhiking and fighting over the last sandwich in old-school truck-stops, Billy did the rounds of the soul, jazzfunk and disco scenes and appears to relish the memories as much as others may be jealous of them.

‘We’d go to the Wigan Casino, the Blackpool Mecca and the Manchester Ritz. We’d take that experience back and do the same in Scotland.

‘These places were colossal. Thousands of people would be regularly attending these things. Bands like Brass Construction, Crown Heights Affair, Al Hudson and the Soul Partners and Sylvester would play there.

‘We had some great opportunities to see some amazing artists’, he admits.

As the Wigan dream rolled on, the milk was turning sour for Billy and others like him. And one of their spiritual homes had started to change for the worse.

‘Unbeknown to us at the time, Wigan had become really commercial and was taking the piss’, says Billy.

‘Everyone was on this record by Lenny Gamble called I’ll do Anything, and it turned out to be Tony Blackburn. It was about then we’d see kids speeding off their faces and blood all over the toilets and we thought, nah, this isn’t right.’

Likewise that jazzfunk scene which had been a liberating force against the stayed northern scene was to run dry too.

‘The music got quite formulaic and you could tell what the next record was going to sound like so the artists shit in their own nest and people got bored with it’, Billy remembers.

Through the early and mid 80s modern soul and jazz mixed with what would become house music.

‘House was in its infancy. We were playing it but we didn’t know it was house’, says Billy.

‘My head was deep in the soul thing but my wife Susan really liked it and she was passing music on to me like Ce Ce Rogers and I started to think: ” I really like this”.’

And so Billy’s love affair with soul was to continue and his Southport performances, starting at the first event in 1987, would become more house-heavy until they came to resemble the sets he has become renowned for.

Throughout all these memories there seems to be little nostalgic dwelling on the past from Billy, more of a sense of good memories and thanksgiving for being there, a sentiment that seems to tie in with his views on new music.

In keeping with his forward-looking stance, Billy explains why we should focus on all that is new.

‘Everybody wants to go and see the djs who won’t be there in ten years time, which is silly.

‘Not enough emphasis is put on the younger djs and people won’t pay to see them so they don’t get booked.

‘They will regret it because people are going to see the dj when they should be going to hear the music’, he says.

If Southport is all about the music then the residents are the foundation on which the monolithic event has been built on as Billy explains.

‘That’s what’s great about Southport and the residents because the residents are the music.

‘They play for much longer periods of time at Southport so it’s them who define the music. For many years the residents were invisible but they showed that they could be a success’, he says.

With the importance of all that is new appearing important, who is hot property as far as djs are concerned in the UK’s house clubs?

‘I don’t know who’s up and coming because I don’t know where to go and hear them, that’s my point’, says Billy.

‘The way to do it, it shouldn’t be but it is, is to have your own residency and get a name and a following. Then you’ll get booked to play in other places.

‘There are the Soul City guys in London and they’re doing it the right way. There were the On Hubert Street nights which are sadly no more.’

Refocusing on his upcoming Southport gig, Billy takes it back to the here and now

‘I’m looking forward to Southport but it’s panic stations at the moment trying to get ready.

‘For me, Southport’s always been about new music so I’ve been hunting down some new stuff, the music that needs to be heard because that’s the lifeblood of the thing. People hear it, when it comes out they buy it and it gives the artist money to make more music.

‘That’s the only problem with going back with music. It might have been sung by some petrol pump attendant be the only person making money when the record sells for £50 is the record dealer. Meanwhile that petrol pump attendant is blissfully aware that his record is selling for a fortune.’

Regret is not a sentiment you might expect from Billy but perhaps this crossroads affords him the right to look back and be honest.

‘As residents we didn’t get enough opportunity in the Powerhouse. I’ve opened in the Powerhouse but we never got the opportunity to build on that. We never got to play much after 10pm or so,’ says Billy.

He says this without any bitterness or resent in his voice, more a candid view.

But not even this can come between the evangelist, his faith and his flock.

‘Southport is a unique experience and an opportunity to meet the heroes and heroines of house music’, Billy beams.

‘It can be surreal too like Su Su Bobien singing into my face while warming up backstage.’

His time as Southport resident may be over but the child-like enthusiasm burns strong and is still looking forward to more music and more good times.

BILLY DAVIDSON - MIXES

Latino Nights Vol.2 (October 2002)
Close your eyes (June 2003)
Jazz Funk (April 2003)
Soul Daze Sunday Shouting
Jazz Funk Daze
Movement Blues (Jan 2004)
Afternoon Session SPW (1995?)
Live@B-Bar SPW Nov 2004
Reach for Freedom (2002)
Ladies & Gentlemen - The Rythm (Nov 2005)
Souldiggin vol.2 (Nov 2007)

Further reading: Blues and Soul interview

*updated June 9th 2008*
More mixes:
Set You Free (June 2002)
Soul Symphony 2 (April 2002)
Diskonaught Vol. 2 (March 2002)
The Peoples Anthem (June 2001)
Latino Nights Vol. 1
Diskonaught Vol. 1 (July 2001)