<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title>Gamble and Huff - The Soul of the 70s</title> <style type="text/css"> <!-- body { background-color: #FFFFCC; } .style1 { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif } .style2 { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 36px; } --> </style> </head> <body> <p align="center" class="style2">Gamble and Huff-The Soul of the 70's</p> <p align="center" class="style1"><img src="gambleandhuff.jpg" alt="GandH" width="363" height="538" /> </p> <p align="center" class="style1">An RCE Exclusive</p> <p align="center" class="style1">By Byron Lee</p> <p class="style1">They published more than 3,000 songs, and it s been estimated that a song that came through their factory is played on the radio every 13.5 minutes, yet to some people they are anonymous.</p> <p class="style1">For this issue of the River City Examiner, we will profile Soul music pioneers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.</p> <p class="style1">The journey begins with the birth of Kenneth Gamble on August 11, 1943. The middle child of a single mother, Gamble took to music very early. As he recalled to J. Poet in a 2008 piece for the website Crawdaddy (crawdaddy.wolfgangvault.com),</p> <p class="style1"> My original inspiration was the sound of the Glen Miller band. I saw The Glen Miller Story when I was young. It was my favorite movie. The horns were smooth, but they had such power. Then there was a band at the church around the corner from my house The House of Prayer for All People. I couldn t have been more than five. They were holding an outdoor baptism about a block away from my house, and when I heard that music I went into the street and followed the sound, and I ve been following it ever since. After the baptism they marched back to the church and played, and I followed them back. They had a trained horn section that was unbelievable. They were a pure Gospel shout band. I was also listening to the local DJs on WDAS and standing around the candy store in front of the jukebox that was blasting Frankie Lymon, Louie Lymon, the Dells, Spaniels, and all that rock n  roll and Rhythm &amp; Blues music. I love that vocal group sound. </p> <p class="style1">Inspired, the child, as noted in John A Jackson's must-read 2004 book &quot;House On Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul,&quot; would record himself singing using a machine located at the a local arcade. He would also learn about arranging techniques by being one of many people to wander through the home of noted producer Bobby Martin, while spending the remainder of his spare time as a gofer for radio luminary Georgie Woods ( The guy with goods ) at station WDAS.</p> <p class="style1">Determined to make it in the music business, Gamble knew that he would need someone who knew how to play the piano well. He would find someone unexpectedly, while arriving at the house of Barbara Bell, a girl he found attractive, under the guise of needing help with his homework. There, sitting at the piano, he found the girl s brother, Tommy. Tommy s work ethnic, honed by Jamaican-born parents who told him, You re different. You will have to work 4 times as hard as the black man and 100 times as hard as the white man,  would serve both Bell and Gamble well in the ensuing years.</p> <p class="style1">Gamble and Bell would initially go their separate ways, with Gamble trying to make it as a singer with his group, The Romeos, and Bell trying to become known as a classical pianist and composer. While Gamble cut a few songs as the lead singer with the Romeos, he became more known for his business skills. Gamble had a way of drawing talent out of people and organizing them en route to making things happen. Bell, who shuffled back and forth between Philadelphia and New York , found many doors closed to him, due to his race.</p> <p class="style1">The fortunes of both men would change with one development: the success of Motown. During the 60s, Motown was in the midst of becoming a juggernaut, making it clear that black performers could have major hits and, just as importantly, that black musicians and arrangers could compose them. &quot;We modeled ourselves on Motown, who had put out unbelievable music, but Motown sold singles,&quot; Gamble recalls to J. Poet. &quot;Just as we went to Columbia,&quot; he continues, &quot;it became an album-oriented business, radio changed from AM to FM, records went from mono to stereo, and we were right there during the change in technology. </p> <p class="style1">During this time, Gamble would be visited by good fortune twice. He would first be recognized as a songwriter for his work on the Sapphires  song, Who Do You Love?,  although the song would soon be lost in Swan Record s push of The Beatles  She Loves You.  Additionally, Gamble was joined in the Romeos by pianist Leon Huff, who had gained the attention of Jerry Ross, Gamble s songwriting partner at the time, for his intense performance during a recording session for the Lavenders. A Camden, New Jersey native, Huff had gained a reputation for being skilled at both the gospel and boogie-woogie styles. Gamble and Huff would first gain some recognition as a songwriting team for their work on 1965's The 81  by girl group Candy and The Kisses. The song was a local hit, but stalled nationally, with some listeners viewing the song as a Motown knock-off.</p> <p class="style1">Huff, like Gamble, became disillusioned with working for other people and yearned for control, or, as they put it, The Power to Say No.  However, to gain the cache to reach that goal, they needed hits under their belt. The first of these would come from an unexpected place. Crimson Records, a label for which Gamble &amp; Huff were hired as independent producers, signed a white rock act called the Soul Survivors, in order to cash in of the success of acts such as the Rascals and The Righteous Brothers. As they would often do, the songwriting duo would look around them to find inspiration. At that time, the expressway through Philly s Center City was all the buzz. The development was used as a basis for the song Expressway To Your Heart,  an infectious funk romp about a man who can not get to his sweetheart because he s stuck in traffic. Upon release, the song exploded on both the black and mainstream charts. (At this time, Bell was also marking a name for himself, playing on and arranging the Delfonics hit La La Means I Love You.  Bell would go on to do landmark work with the Stylistics and frequently work will G&amp;H as an independent composer.)</p> <p class="style1">The hit that would finally put them over was a boy s nostalgic look as the moment he started noticing the opposite sex. 1968 s Cowboys to Girls,  performed by The Intruders, would solidify both Gamble &amp; Huff signature sound (hand clapping rhythms, pronounced bass, stirring strings and complimentary background vocals) and the hitmaker s relationship with arranger Bobby Martin.</p> <p class="style1">With their notoriety in tact, Gamble &amp; Huff would now need to seek out session musicians to regularly flesh out their tunes. They accomplished this goal by pooling players, some the two would see around town, others they would hear about from word-of-mouth and still others who, aware of Gamble and Huff s reputation of both churning out important records and paying top rate session fees, would seek out the duo. In This pursuit, the songwriting team did not stop at the standard guitar, bass, keys, and drums set-up. &quot;We were big into large-scale instrumentation that most producers wouldn t think about,&quot; Huff said, in a 2008 interview with Songwriters' Universe Magazine, &quot;The sound of a French horn can be magnificent in the right contest. We d use vibes, bells, baritone sax, flugelhorn and go the orchestra route and include the oboe and harp. Everything sounded harmonious together.&quot; When the search for musicians was complete, the multi-ethnic, multi-generational band was christened MFSB, which stood for either Mother, Father, Sister, Brother,  reflecting Gamble &amp; Huff s focus on societal unity, or Motherf&amp;*^ing Son of a B&amp;*%h,  a bandmember s reaction when a fellow musician had played particularly well, depending on whom you ask. With everything in place, Gamble, Huff and Bell opened Philadelphia International Records in 1971 at 309 South Broad Street and started their own publishing company, Mighty Three Music group.</p> <p class="style1">Thus began the hitmaking years for the group, which found them releasing notable records from Wilson Pickett (&quot;Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You&quot;), Jerry Butler (&quot;Only The Strong Survive&quot;), Lou Rawls (&quot;You'll Never Find A Love Like Mine&quot;), Dusty Springfield (&quot;Silly, Silly Fool&quot;), Joe Simon (&quot;Drowning In The Sea of Love&quot;), The Three Degrees (&quot;When Will I See You Again&quot;), Laura Nyro (&quot;The Bells&quot;), Bunny Sigler (&quot;That's How Long I'll be Loving You&quot;, &quot;Regina&quot;) Billy Paul (&quot;Me and Mrs. Jones&quot;), The Ebonys (&quot;You're The Reason Why), McFadden &amp; Whitehead (&quot;Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now&quot;), Archie Bell &amp; the Drells (&quot;I Can't Stop Dancing&quot;) and MFSB (&quot;Love Is The Message&quot;, &quot;Zach's Fanfare&quot;). The duo even contributed tracks to The Jacksons  first two releases upon leaving Motown, 1976 s The Jacksons, which featured Enjoy Yourself  and Show You The Way To Go,  and 1977 s Goin  Places, which featured the title track, Man Of War  and Do What You Wanna. </p> <p class="style1">Looking back over their roster of artists, two acts stick out. The contribution of Canton, Ohio group The O'Jays cannot be overlooked. Eddie Levert, Sr. s powerful emoting, augmented by Walter Williams  smooth baritone provided the perfect sound for landmark recordings such as &quot;Love Train,&quot; &quot;Backstabbers,&quot; 'Stairway To Heaven,&quot; &quot;For The Love Of Money,&quot; 'I Love Music,&quot; &quot;Give the People What They Want,&quot; Darlin  Darlin  Baby  and Used To Be My Girl,  with the &quot;Backstabbers&quot; (1972) and &quot;Ship Ahoy&quot; (1973) LPs garnering critical praise of the highest order. (&quot;Love Train'&quot;s entreaties for world unity, paired with an uplifting beat and chorus became a signature tune for both The O jays and Philadelphia International.)</p> <p class="style1">Another indispensable act was Harold Melvin &amp; The Blue Notes.The group was mired in Revue Act purgatory until the vocal chops of their drummer, Teddy Pendergrass, became the focal point of the group. &quot;I Miss You&quot;, &quot;Yesterday, I had the Blues,&quot; &quot;The Love I Lost&quot;, Bad Luck , &quot;Wake Up, Everybody&quot; and the group's biggest hit, 1972 s &quot;If You Don t Know Me By Now&quot; joined the work of the O'Jays, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Sly Stone on the soundtrack of anyone who came of age in the 70s. (In a testament to &quot;If You Don't Know Me By Now&quot;'s enduring power, Simply Red's version of the song, released 17 years after the original, was a smash and garnered Gamble and Huff a songwriting Grammy.)</p> <p class="style1">Quantifying this time in his life, Gamble said, in a 2006 interview with Billboard, &quot;It was fun. It was work, though, because I'm glad that it's over with. Hey, you're trying to do 13,14 albums a year, that's a lot of work. Say an average of 10 songs an album, 13 albums, that's 130 songs. How many songs you figure you gotta write to get 130 songs? You might have to write 500. We didn't cut just 10 songs, we might cut 25 songs on the O'Jays and you pick 10.&quot;</p> <p class="style1">Their success becomes even more impressive when hearing about their recording technique. The sound is in the mix,  Gamble explains, in the crawdaddy piece, The final mix is what makes you or breaks you. We were lucky to be recording at Sigma Sound with Joe Tarsia. He was a great engineer and got a clean, clear sound from every instrument. If you record the music right, it s easier to mix, and, as an engineer, he was the best. He knew what we wanted and kept us moving at the speed of thought. Him, me, and Huff were all in the studio, moving like one big person. The mixing required four to six hands on the board at the same time, so we made good use of the manpower, but there was still a bit of trial and error. You had to have the right EQ on all the instruments, the right mics for drums and strings, the right amount of echo, and different mics for different voices. You couldn t use the same mic for Eddie Levert, who was so powerful, and Walter Williams [of the O Jays] or Lou Rawls.</p> <p class="style1">Even with all of the technical aspects to be covered, the duo could not forget about the most important element, the song. &quot;It was a challenge because they were such great singers,&quot; says Gamble continues, &quot;We couldn t give em any songs that we dashed off. They had to have something to chew on. We would never have given Eddie [Levert] or Teddy [Pendergrass] a weak song, cause they bring such unbelievable emotion to the performance.</p> <p class="style1">With all of their success, Gamble &amp; Huff have not found themselves immune to the resentment and squabbles that can come along with ensemble songwriting, particularly when done under a corporate banner. Joe Jefferson, who wrote for Mighty Three Music, stated in Jackson's &quot;House on Fire&quot; that &quot;Once they got you involved, nobody would give you anything back! You would prove your worth and you still wouldn't get anything back. After three years of [writing] all those mega-hits, if [Gamble, Huff, and Bell] had just said, 'Look, from now on, everything you guys write, you get half,' we probably would still be there. And I think most of the other people would be there. It was that kinda thing, a lot of resentful people, man.&quot; (In the book, Jackson mentions cases involving two of Gamble &amp; Huff s biggest hits: Backstabbers  and Me and Mrs. Jones.  Gene McFadden and John Whitehead, who sung under the moniker &quot;McFadden &amp; Whitehead&quot; wrote the former, and Hippie Gilbert wrote the later. Half of the writing credit for each song went to Gamble and Huff.) Ironically, the songwriters manifested their frustration in songs that made their bosses even richer: &quot;Games People Play&quot; recorded by the Spinners in 1975 and written by Jefferson, Charlie Simmons and Bruce Hawes, was a million seller, and &quot;Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now,&quot; written and performed by McFadden and Whitehead in 1979 and rumored to be based, in part, on their discontent with working under Gamble and Huff, remains immensely popular to this day.</p> <p class="style1">Some of the members of MFSB, particularly longtime players Earl Young (drums) and Lenny Pakula (organ) have also voiced resentment over the lack of credit, professional and financial, that they received from their labor. (In Fire,  Young is very pointed in his examples. He claims that bassist Ronnie Baker constructed the bassline for the Harold Melvin &amp; The Blue Notes Song Bad Luck,  without receiving credit, and, in pointing out that the backing track for the O Jays  For The Love Of Money  has no breaks, accuses Gamble and Huff of taking an MFSB jam session, putting the O Jays  vocals over it, and calling the result their own.) Defenders of Gamble &amp; Huff are quick to point out that the duo merely followed the blueprint of Motown, where the head of the company controlled songwriting and publishing royalties.</p> <p class="style1">By the 80's, Pendergrass had become PIR's main star, with hits such as &quot;Close The Door&quot;, &quot;Turn Off The Lights&quot; and &quot;Come Go With Me&quot; (Artists who had had their careers resuscitated by Gamble &amp; Huff, such as Jerry Butler and Lou Rawls, had left the label, due to feeling a waning of interest on the part of their benefactors.) Pendergrass's career would go into disarray in 1982 when he was involved in a horrific accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. In a decision that caused bad feelings that remain to this day, Gamble &amp; Huff terminated Pendergrass's contact. It has been rumored that PIR may have had to pay Pendergrass a higher amount if they resigned him, but the circumstances of the decision remain murky because neither side has addressed the issue at length.</p> <p class="style1">The problems of a thriving business would soon yield to a struggle to survive. The deteriorating relationship between Philadelphia International Records and CBS (with whom they had a distribution deal) would put PIR in a bind. Although Gamble wanted to back out of the deal, in light of the label losing it's main artist, but CBS held him to it, forcing him to cobble together albums and release them, actions PIR barely had the money to do. Gamble ended up laying off most of his staff. (It has been speculated that CBS was exacting revenge on Gamble for his reported arrogance during PIR's golden era. Stories of Gamble making last-minute demands, sometimes in the middle of the night, have been well-circulated.) Also, black singers were now bypassing black owned imprints and signing directly with major labels. The biggest example of this phenomenon is the success of Deniece Williams (of &quot;It's Gonna Take A Miracle&quot; and, later &quot;Let's Hear It For The Boys&quot; fame). In addition, the advent of disco, modern R&amp;B and rap left the Philly soul sound sounding out of touch. Moreover, the fatigue of a protracted payola investigation bore down on Gamble. (Gamble had been accused of providing cash, airplane tickets and suits to disc jockeys and radio programmers, in exchange for radio play. With all of the co-defendants unwilling to testify against each other, the charges were pleaded down to a $25,000 fine Gamble had to pay.) Furthermore, Gamble, who converted to Islam in 1975 and sometimes goes by the name Luqman Abdul Haqq, seemed to be more focused on the urban renewal efforts he had started through his own Universal Companies, a business which has been lauded for the way it has rehabilitated some of Philadelphia's most run down areas. Finally, perhaps due to all of the reasons mentioned above, the relationship between Gamble &amp; Huff, while reportedly never a close friendship, was, at this time, not nearly what it once was. (Tellingly, in 1980, Leon Huff released an well-received album of his own, without any input from Gamble, entitled &quot;Here To Create Music&quot;)</p> <p class="style1">The two eventually patched things up, but an effort to restart PIR with the assistance of the duo's offspring proved unsuccessful.</p> <p class="style1">In recent years, however, interest in the Gamble &amp; Huff's brand of soul has resurged. Part of a May 2005 installment of American Idol was dedicated to songs in their catalog, and many people believe that the popularity of Amy Winehouse's retro 2007 album &quot;Back to Black&quot; led to a renewed appreciation of soul music played with a live band accentuated by a horn section. Gamble &amp; Huff, now under contract with Sony/BMG, have overseen the digital reissue of the work released during their label's glory days and, last year, the songwriters received what many feel is a long overdue accolade: induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.</p> <p class="style1">It should go without saying that Gamble and Huff's place in music history is set in stone. As Gamble, quoted in the Songwriters' Universe piece, recalls hearing someone say about him and Huff, &quot;We put the bow-tie on funk!&quot;</p> <p class="style1">Patti LaBelle, a Gamble family friend who recorded with Gamble and Huff before finding bigger success elsewhere, adds, in a June 2008 piece in Ebony, &quot;Their music will always make you remember your past. Their music was strong then and still is today. Gamble and Huff are simply the best that ever did it.&quot;</p> <p class="style1">It seems as though the rest of the country is seeing things her way.</p> </body> </html>