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Whether classics from the 1960s, smart 70S grooves or modern soul-the DJs at the “Soulful Shack” always had a wide range, every half hour clapped, each a sub-genre expert, each with their own singles. Because it was made almost exclusively with 7 ″. And the wooden floor in the Cologne city garden vibrated under the feet of the dancers.
Founded in 1985 by Gerald Hündgen and Olaf Karnik, they were traveling as “Soul DJ team number 1”. The Allnighter started with only 30 people in a tiny club in Cologne Südstadt called Salznuss. In the end, a regular 800 guests came to the dance nights in the significantly larger city garden.
“Soulful Shack was the thing at the time, we often drove from Berlin to the parties by car from Berlin, stayed in the car, danced the nights,” recalls Marc Forrest, who today equips the “Hip City Soul Club” in the Berlin private club and the “Soul Boat” in Potsdam with Rare Grooves.
“Soulful Shack” with “One More Time” revival in Cologne
The original party makers came from the ranks of the music magazine Spex, the Gerald Hündgen, who died in 2007, had published the book “Chasin ‘A Dream”, the first German-language history of Soul with Carnic in the 80s. DJs like Michael Reinboth, Oliver von Felbert, Götz Alsmann or Petra Müller later joined this. And the Shack no longer only rose in Cologne, but also in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna and Nuremberg.
Soul-Allnighter has been experiencing a new blossom since the mid-nineties-as Baltic Soul Weekender on the Baltic Sea or the Soulshaker Weekender in Bamberg, as a backdrop for Gucci spots or British romance novels (see Benjamin Myer’s current bestseller “Strandgut”), as a party series Soul Explosion in Hamburg Mojo Club.
Karnik initiates one under the motto “One More Time” Comeback party on September 27th in the Cologne Stadtgarten. With the original DJ team and guests. The revival night of the “Soulful Shack”, the most beautiful all-night of the 80s and 90s, should not only be a journey through time, but also tell what happened after that.
Olaf Karniks Top 20 Soulful Shack Classics
- Eloise Laws – Love Factory (Music Merchant/Inferno)
- Carl Hall – what about you (Columbia)
- Barbara Hall – You Brought It on Yourself (Invictus II)
- Eddie Holman – I Surrender (ABC/Kent)
- Leroy Hutson – Lucky Fellow (Curtom)
- Razzy – i hate hate (mgm)
- Rance Allen Group – There’s Gonna Be a Showdown (Stax)
- Sam Dees – What’s it’s Gonna Be (Atlantic)
- Stammerore – Sweet Vibrations (Glades/TK)
- Flowers – for Real (La Expressio)
- Teddy Pendergrass – The More I Get, The More I Want (Philadelphia International)
- Joe Tex – All The Heaven a Man Really Needs (Dial)
- Jackie Wilson – You Left A Fire Burning (Brunswick)
- Edwin Starr – Running Back and Forth (Motown)
- Millie Jackson – House for Sale (Spring)
- The Dramatics – You’re Fooling You (ABC)
- Barbara Lynn – Disco Music (Jetstream)
- Jackie Lee – would you Believe (Mirwood)
- Young-Holt Unlimited-Young and Holtful (Brunswick)
- Letter Encounter – Human (Sound Plus)