Vinyl is in Robert Wells's blood.

After growing up on Motown and funk, Wells, a WCBN DJ and Rackham student, inherited a large collection of vinyl from a DJing uncle.

"It started the bug," he said. "The vinyl bug."

The bug brought him to People's Records in Detroit, where he met and befriended the soul and vinyl guru Brad Hales, who, among many projects, spins Funk Night the last Friday of every month at Detroit's singular Bohemian National Home. The two created the Ann Arbor Soul Club last December, packing The Blind Pig with ecstatic revelers the first Friday of every month.

They only play soul, and they only spin vinyl. It's not a coincidence.

Vinyl helps keep soul music alive. Somehow analog signal paths just make sense when it comes to Sam Cooke - CDs and MP3s don't cut it next to the gentle lowering of a stylus onto a newly purchased record. Add to that that wide swaths of recorded soul are available only in vinyl, and you have a genre with a treasure map, with unknown gems sitting in garage sales and basements. Countless artists couldn't afford to record a full album; 45s were a cheap, easy way to ply your sound on the market. The result is a nearly unlimited catalogue of irresistible dance music. "Once you start collecting 45s," said Wells, "you can never be satisfied."

The hunt is usually lifelong, the hunters a sprawling community. Thankfully the most devout are willing to spread the gospel. The record label Numero Group releases compilations of the rarest of b-sides, singles and lost demos of R&B and soul like "Good God! A Funk-Gospel Hymnal." Last year the DJ Sipreano and the label Light In The Attic released "Jamaica to Toronto: Soul Funk and Reggae, 1976 - 1974." Both albums plum deep into niche subgenres, offering tracks you'd never hear otherwise.

The Ann Arbor Soul Club holds the same values as labels like Numero. Their Blind Pig setlists consist entirely of unknown soul singles and b-sides. They only spin 45s, and it'd be difficult to find more than a handful of reissues in their cases. They're inspired by the phenomenon called Northern soul, the movement in the north of Britain during the '60s and '70s which saw mods, skinheads, DJs and collectors getting hip to popular and obscure American soul.

"They began to put on what came to be known as 'allnighters' and 'weekenders,' " Wells said, "allnight/weekend long dance parties fueled by pills and booze where multiple DJs spun and attempted to show off the rarest, most obscure and danciest singles from their collection to all those in attendance."

Northern soul fans would travel stateside and scour cities, especially Detroit and Chicago, for all the vinyl they could take through customs, thinking they'd collect it all. Thankfully they didn't.

"They contributed to the culture of dancing all night to soul music, tapping into that energy," Wells said. And that's exactly what Wells and Hales tap into when they begin their Blind Pig sets.

"We always want to mix it up, but we know what works, what gets people dancing," Wells said. "We usually stay with soul from the '60s, but since we're playing till 2 a.m., we'll start with some heavier tunes. We'll go into 'crossover soul' from the '70s and '80s but always bring it back to the '60s at the end."

Wells put down the notion that he and Hales are rejuvenating a genre. "We're not reclaiming our music," he said. "It's just great music."

Integral to these singles is their length. "These sophisticated soul records are trying to make the biggest pop hit possible," Wells said. "And they're doing it in two and a half minutes."

This soulful exuberance underlies the soul and vinyl communities. Wells and Hales consistently bring in guest DJs from around the United States and across the pond.

"Through Hales and (other DJs and collectors), you find all of a sudden you're one person removed from Cut Chemist or DJ Shadow," Wells said. Indeed, both Cut Chemist (formerly in Jurassic 5) and Nu Mark (currently in Jurassic 5) hung out with Hales and bought enough vinyl from him to help him establish his People's Records.

Both men live music and vinyl. Wells DJs for WCBN's The Hop, an eclectic show of Latin, soul and funk that airs from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Wednesdays. Hales is perhaps even more immersed. Keeping his record store humming is one thing. Being the other half of the Soul Club, running a Funk Night in Detroit and preparing to tour Europe with a performance punk act called "HUMAN EYE" for a month and a half is another. A serious addition to his to-do list is compiling a Michigan soul mix for the magazine Wax Poetics.

"Brad is one of the most genuinely humble, open guys I know," said Wells, who became friendly with Hales through frequent visits to People's Records. "Brad really directed me toward soul."