As a journalist and record shop owner, he made a major contribution internationally in spreading awareness and understanding of the genre, and by extension African-American culture, through his promotion of Motown and other R&B artists, and by establishing the term "Northern soul".
[3] After working at an advertising agency, and as a hospital porter in place of National Service (he was a conscientious objector),[3] Godin founded the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society, and in time was recruited by Berry Gordy to become Motown's consultant in the UK, setting up its distribution through EMI.
In a 2002 interview with Chris Hunt of Mojo, he explained that he had first come up with the term in 1968 as a sales reference to help staff in his shop differentiate the more modern funkier sounds from the smoother, Motown-influenced soul of a few years earlier: "I had started to notice that northern football fans who were in London to follow their team were coming into the store to buy records, but they weren't interested in the latest developments in the black American chart.
"[5]In his career he also coined the term Deep Soul and he promoted the interests of a large number of American musicians whose work had fallen out of favour in their home country.
In the mid 1990s he started to compile a series of CDs of rare (and some not so rare) recordings – Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures – for Ace Records, which featured such artists as Loretta Williams, Eddie and Ernie, Jaibi, Ruby Johnson and Jimmy and Louise Tig.
[6][7] As a memorial to Godin, a blue plaque was unveiled in November 2024, at the former site of the Anvil arts cinema in Sheffield.