The former Philadelphia International Records Building

Just as Motown and STAX were closely associated with a specific sound from a specific city (Detroit and Memphis) in the 1960s and early 1970s, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff created “The Sound Of Philadelphia” in the 1970s, catapulting Philadelphia International Records (PIR) to worldwide fame.

Kenneth Gamble (born 1943 in Philadelphia) was a background singer and lyricist who first met Leon Huff (born 1942 in Camden, NJ) in 1962 at Philadelphia’s Shubert Theatre. They complimented each other as songwriter and pianist. Eventually, Gamble and Huff became members of a local band, the Romeos, along with Thom Bell, who later became a famous songwriter and producer.

Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff collaborated on a number of earlier R&B songs, but the pop hits did not arrive until 1966 with the Intruders and Soul Survivors’ We’ll Be United, Together, Cowboys To Girls, and Expressway To Your Heart among others. They also wrote and produced Atlantic hits for Archie Bell & the Drells and Wilson Pickett. But most of all, they were instrumental in reviving the career of ex-VeeJay singer, Jerry Butler in 1967 with hits like Only The Strong Survive, What’s The Use Of Breaking Up and Hey Western Union Man on the Mercury record label.

Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff

These Jerry Butler records really set the scene for what was to come: silk voices singing in high register, a tight rhythm section and lush string arrangements. Gamble got the entrepreneurial bug and started his own record company in 1967, but it folded due to distribution and collection issues common to small record labels. He next tried his hand co-founding Neptune Records with Huff in 1969. Wiser from the first experience he signed a national distribution deal with Chess Records.

In 1969, the Neptune label was founded and distributed through Chess Records. Although Neptune released only 4 albums, it marked the starting point for Gamble and Huff’s collaboration. Upon recommendation by the Intruders, they also brought in the O’Jays. And in 1970, Thom Bell joined the label as an arranger, writer, producer and musician. By 1971, Chess Records’ involvement with Soul Music declined, so Gamble and Huff signed a national distribution, music catalog and financial deal with CBS Records, then changed the company name to Philadelphia International Records (PIR). Though no longer an independent record label, with distribution and financial issues behind them, PIR was free to go in the positive message artistic directions it desired.

What elements lead to the creation of their musical signature? Gamble and Huff learned that a successful record label needed a strong cache of writers, musicians, arrangers and producers to maintain a stream of hits. They had the brilliance and luck to hire Gene McFadden and John Whitehead as associate producers and arrangers. Linda Creed joined Thom Bell to form a high-impact Soul Music writing, arranging and producing tandem at the company. Next, Gamble and Huff constructed a house band from accomplished session artists. In keeping with their mission statement to deliver positive messages, they called their session band, Mother Father Sister Brother (MFSB) comprised of Roland Chambers and Norman Harris (guitars), Vince Montana (vibes), Ronnie Baker (bass) and Earl Young (drums).

In the 1970s, Gamble and Huff puzzled together dance rhythms, orchestral arrangements, and positive topical lyrics that established a musical signature having sophisticated soulful orchestration. It was lovingly called, The Sound Of Philadelphia. Recording most of The Sound Of Philadelphia at the Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, PIR was finally prepared for lift-off.

The O’Jays finally hit it big in 1972 with Back Stabbers. The O’Jays continued rolling out the hits with Love Train, For the Love of Money in the 1970s.  Other prominent acts on the PIR label were Billy Paul (Me and Mrs Jones) and Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes (If You Don’t Know Me By Now and The Love I Lost), Blue Magic, Jean Carn, The Spinners (Could it Be That I’m Falling in Love), Stylistics (Betcha by Golly, Wow). The Three Degrees, and Delfonics (Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time). PIR were causing Philadelphia ticket agencies to go crazy with business with hit after hit. Philadelphia International Records became a force in the Soul Music market and even drew praise from its rivals.

As PIR rolled out the hits, STAX Records imploded and Motown’s record identity tarnished a bit after moving from Detroit to LA. Soon it became easier for PIR to attract top artists like The Jacksons, Jerry Butler, Lou Rawls and Phyllis Hyman. They nearly signed the Temptations after they left Motown in 1976.

Able to anticipate market trends, PIR helped create the disco craze when it introduced The Hustle by Van McCoy in 1974. They also had good karma. Producer and songwriter Richard Barrett is credited with bringing the Three Degrees to PIR in 1973. A short time later, Don Cornelius, producer and host of Soul Train asked the Three Degrees to do vocals for the show’s new theme track, with instrumentals by MFSB. Thus, The Sound Of Philadelphia became a huge disco hit in 1974 and known the world over as Soul Train’s theme song.

Storm clouds came their way in 1975. Charges were brought against Huff for offering Payola in exchange for airplay. The charges were dropped in 1976, but Gamble was fined $2,500 in related matters, which tarnished the record company’s reputation. It’s unclear why they were singled out, particularly since Payola, often non-monetary, was common in the industry. Then in 1982, mega-star sex symbol Teddy Pendergrass smashed his car into a highway divider, paralyzing him from the waist down and body slamming his recording career.

Patti Labelle

In 1983, there was a bit of good news for The Sound Of Philadelphia. Patti LaBelle released the I’m In Love Again album and it reached gold sales status. Unfortunately, it was the last PIR album to reach gold. By 1985, the hits ebbed and Philadelphia International Records switched its distribution to Manhattan (a Capitol subsidiary). Still struggling to get more radio airtime, publicity and record store shelf space, they switched to BMG in 1991 — again without much success. The 1990s were not kind to most record labels, so no one should be surprised at the difficulties PIR encountered.

The prominence of PIR was usurped by a new generation of record labels. Nevertheless, PIR set benchmarks for community relations and style as Gamble & Huff maintained a Philadelphia record label rather than move to LA or New York. Gamble-Huff Music, the successor company to PIR, has a well-earned place on Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts and Philly loves them back. One example of that love is, renowned Philadanco Dance Company presented a work set to the vintage music from Philadelphia International Records.

Though the historic Philadelphia International Records building at 309 South Broad Street was torn down in 2015, The Sound Of Philadelphia lives on. For more about their triumphs and tribulations of Philadelphia International Records, visit http://www.gamble-huffmusic.com and Http://www.soul-patrol.com.

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Richard Allen

Philadelphia history has not always been brotherly. The first 150 Africans came here in 1684 when the slave ship Isabella arrived. Waves of enslaved Africans followed in the next thirty years. By 1720, approximately 2,500 people of African descent lived in the city. But unlike most other cities content to exploit slavery, a strong abolitionist streak in Philadelphia fought against that wretched institution.

In 1790, Philadelphia had the largest number of free African Americans in America. This community of free persons of color included Richard Allen, the Founder of the African Methodist Episcopalian (AME) Church, who helped initiate the independent black church movement. Allen’s church became a pacesetter for the Abolitionist Movement among black churches that followed.

Though slavery in Pennsylvania was abolished in 1820, circumstances did not immediately improve for African Americans. While they constituted 10% of the city population and were free, racism and the threat of white mob violence were a constant threat. A race riot ensued in the 1840s when competition for work was fierce. Though hampered from large-scale participation in the local economy, African Americans with assistance in many cases from Quakers, created their society-within-a-society. They built elementary schools, orphanages, and nursing homes. They opened Lincoln University in nearby Oxford, Pennsylvania.

John Miller Dickey, a white pastor of Oxford Presbyterian Church in Oxford, tried to help an African American student gain admission to two Philadelphia theology schools. When the black applicant was rejected, Dickey decided African Americans needed an institution for higher learning and founded Lincoln University in 1854. Consequently, Lincoln became the first college to provide post-secondary instruction for African Americans. Famous alumni include the great poet Langston Hughes, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first Prime Minister. By the 1920s, Lincoln alumni comprised 20 percent of the black physicians and more than 10 percent of the black lawyers in the United States.

Philadelphia saw a huge increase in the black population, as southerners fled to the city in the 1890s. The Philadelphia Tribune newspaper, Black churches, and organizations like the Prince Hall Masons were their survival guides. Newcomers also found bustling segregated Black communities in North, South, and West Philadelphia that continue today.

Richard Allen’s tomb at Mother Bethel AME Church; (c) Soul Of America

Black population boomed again by World War II, as African Americans swelled to 18% of the city’s residents and worked in factories converted for weapons production. Following World War II, many job opportunities opened, but African Americans often faced retaliatory economic discrimination by returning European American veterans. There is ample evidence that housing segregation increased as well.

Like every old American city since the 1950s, Philly lost blue-collar jobs that once stabilized Black & White communities. Higher unemployment led to crime, more social ills, and population decline for decades. Those economic and social conditions were a breeding ground for race riots in the 1960s.

Over eager to get a handle on crime, the majority of voters elected Frank Rizzo, a former police chief, to become mayor in 1971. His administration was loathed for squashing the civil rights of African Americans.

In the 1970s, brothers from Philly attending colleges around the country used to brag with good reason, that they had the toughest (most unfair) police force in the nation. One of the best things they could brag about was world champion Joe Frazier, who gave Muhammad Ali all he could handle. to his credit, Joe Frazier opened a boxing gym that brought people of all stripes together.

Historic Joe Frazier Gym on Broad Street; (c) Soul Of America

The first Black mayor, Wilson Goode, was elected in 1983 and re-elected in 1987. But Goode’s legacy is infamous for authorizing the 1985 bombing of the house that inhabited MOVE, a group of black activists. Better precautions could have prevented the bombing from killing 11 MOVE members, including children. The devastating fire destroyed two city blocks and only heroic efforts by the fire department prevented it from getting worse. Social turmoil continued through the 1980s, particularly with the incident involving Mumia A. Jamal.

In the 1990s, most of Philadelphia’s college-educated and trade-skilled African Americans saw some economic and social doors opening. But the general population slid downward.

When the Million Women March was held on 25 October 1997, activists, blue-collar workers, professionals, students, celebrities, and single & married mothers all held the national spotlight on Philadelphia in an overwhelming show of unity and purpose. Traffic along Interstate 95 Freeway to the city was backed up. Attendance estimates ran over 1 million. U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Water’s speech set the tone for this gathering that completely filled Ben Franklin Parkway from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She stated, “We are profoundly responsible. We don’t need to promise-keep, bemoan or atone. We need to use our collective power to shape public policy and fight discrimination, racism, and old-boy network favoritism.

Like every city across America, many Black & White small businesses closed or barely survived the 2020-21 pandemic shutdown. But in 2020, Philly had one of the largest Black Lives Matter crowds in America. It was remarkable and refreshing to see so many White and Brown brothers & sisters join in the BLM movement.

Black Lives Matter on Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia; credit Chris Henry/UN

Today, there is much good news. More Black, White & Brown small businesses are opening. K-12 student attendance and four-year graduation rates are up. University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Temple University, Villanova University, Lincoln University, and Cheney University are generating more talent for jobs with more Black folk in the mix. The center of this cosmopolitan city is adding attractive office, hotel, and retail developments. The population has stabilized with growth anticipated. Philly government announced plans to enhance the rapid transit system too.

Cherelle Parker, elected Philadelphia’s third Black mayor, is helping to restore Blacks confidence in Philadelphia government policy, education, and infrastructure. Some gentrification is good for every city. The risk, however, is excessive gentrification at the expense of the working poor. The jury on that part is still out. But overall. Philly’s upside appears bright and ready for more tourism.

See Philadelphia Black Historic Sites

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Chicago Defender HQ

Black Publishers

Segregation in Chicago had an upside. Several black publishers leveraged the systemic exclusion from opportunity and media recognition to found businesses. In the finest tradition of the black press, they elevated issues, concerns, reflections and desires important to black life in Chicago and America with aplomb.

In 1905, Robert Abbott founded the Chicago Defender newspaper oriented for Black folks. Known for truthfulness and tenacity addressing issues, The Chicago Defender, which grew to 200,000 readers in Chicago and the South, made Abbott the first black publisher to become a millionaire. One example of its unbending tenacity stands out. In reaction to the 1919 Race Riot and other events, Abbott’s fiery editorials in The Chicago Defender urged readers to fight against racial oppression. He wrote his most famous editorial, “When the Mob Comes and You Must Die, Take at Least One With You.”

Reaction was quick. The South placed an official ban on the distribution of The Chicago Defender. Despite the ban, Pullman Porters distributed the paper throughout the country along their train routes. The Defender was so popular it attracted W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker to write columns or feature articles at the height of the careers. It remains a publishing force in Chicago.

Final Call Newspaper HQ

In the 1930s, Elijah Muhammad first published the Final Call to Islam newspaper. By the 1960s, it evolved into Muhammad Speaks and could boast of having a 2.5 million monthly circulation. Its acerbic editorial edge is written from a Black perspective. Although renamed The Final Call, it still tackles controversial national and international news from a perspective important to African Americans.

In 1942, John H. Johnson borrowed $500 from his mother to found the company and launch its first publication, Negro Digest. Ebony magazine followed in 1945 as another national publication. Initially, he was based in a law office of at the Supreme Life Insurance building. A year later the company moved to a slightly larger building at 5619 South State Street. Then in 1949, he moved to larger offices at 1820 South Michigan Avenue, where the company remained for 23 years. Johnson Publishing Company has maintained its status as having the #1 selling Black-owned magazine to this day. At its peak, Ebony magazine reached about 2 million subscribers and newsstand purchasers along with 6 million pass-a-long readers each month. And to think for years he had problems attracting advertisers. Johnson later added Jet magazine and a book publishing business. His daughter, Linda Rice Johnson, runs the company. In 2005, the great John H. Johnson past away.

John H. Johnson, founder of Ebony and Jet magazines

In 1967, Don L. Lee founded Third World Press. An acclaimed poet and essayist, Lee rejected his “slave name” in 1973 and is now known as Haki Madhabuti. The mission of Third World Press remains to publish the works of Black writers with an unfiltered voice. It may more important than the others to Black intellectual empowerment. The company enables many Black writers to reach the public that were never given a chance by the general publishing community. Gwendolyn Brooks, Chancellor Williams, and other noted writers have been published here. Madhabuti is also a recognized leader in African-centered education.

In 1996, Oprah Winfrey launched “Oprah’s Book Club” on her talk show. It instantly became a major force in the publishing industry and helped many Black authors place on bestseller lists. In 1998, that dynamic sister diva launched Oxygen, cable network and.  Not content to sit on the publishing sideline, she launched Oprah.com website for women in 1998 and Oprah Magazine in April 2000.

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First Church of Deliverance, Chicago

Chicago Gospel Music

Thomas A. Dorsey, as music director of Pilgrim Baptist Church, is famous for not only writing gospel standards, but also setting them to a syncopated Blues-like rhythm. He is credited with writing more songs that became Gospel standards, earning him the title of the “Father of Gospel Music.” Under pastor and founder Clarence H. Cobbs, the First Church of Deliverance was on of the first Black churches to broadcast its services on the radio. At one point, more than 1 million daily listeners heard its broadcasts.

Rev. Cobbs hired organist and composer Kenneth Morris to be his choir director. Soon the church attracted the top gospel artists of the day. Musical events often included the likes of Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Earl “Fatha” Hines, and Billie Holiday. Kenneth Morris introduced the electric organ to Gospel music and church member Sallie Martin wrote many Gospel standards, including How I Got Over, the churches theme song popularized by Mahalia Jackson.

Mahalia Jackson moved to Chicago at 16. She joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church and supported herself doing housekeeping and odd jobs. But she never stopped singing. With talent larger than any single city could hold, she began touring with a gospel quintet. Jackson only sang Gospel, refusing to sing secular (non-religious) music, because, she said, “When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what’s wrong.”

Thomas A Dorsey

She made her first solo recordings in the mid-1930s and eventually signed with Columbia Records in 1954. Jackson collaborated with the “Father of Gospel Music,” Thomas Dorsey. She recorded with jazz great Duke Ellington, packed Carnegie Hall in New York City on a number of occasions, had a radio show, and sang for four presidents. She was a highly successful businesswoman who managed her career.

In 1936, the Soul Stirrers moved to Chicago. A young Sam Cooke joined the gospel group in 1950. For eight sparkling years the Soul Stirrers were one of the premier Gospel groups of the ages, until Cooke left in 1958. Mahalia Jackson, Thomas A. Dorsey and Pilgrim Baptist Church, The Soul Stirrers, and First Church of Deliverance made Chicago the unofficial “Home of Gospel Music” for many years.

Tragically, in January 2006 a fire destroyed Pilgrim Baptist Church due to inadequate fire prevention aids. The outcome for this heritage site is TBD.

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Bronzeville mural depicts how Black Chicago lifestyle evolved from Southern lifestyle

Bronzeville

The jewel of Chicago’s Southside, known as Bronzeville, was second only to Harlem in providing black cultural gifts to America and the world. To launch black cinema, Oscar Micheaux first perfected his road show tactic in Bronzeville and Harlem. The first black heavyweight boxing champ, Jack Johnson, called Bronzeville home. Joe Louis won the heavyweight boxing championship here in 1937, then settled here and frequented the Palm Tavern on 47th Street.

Bronzeville enabled the careers of many Jazz, Blues, Gospel, and Soul performing artists. In 1915, Joe Oliver’s big jazz band headlined above all performers in clubs that lined East 35th Street. Other notables who gravitated from New Orleans and other places to Chicago included Jelly Roll Morton, Bennie Moten, Alberta Hunter, and Johnny Dodds. In 1922, a young Louis Armstrong apprenticed under Joe Oliver, but soon they both were setting the Bronzeville music scene ablaze.

From a modern perspective, that would be akin to Jay Z, Beyonce, Alicia Keyes, Jill Scott, and Snoop Dogg living and working here at the same time.

Bronzeville was the home of the gangster-owned Grand Terrace Ballroom (Chicago’s Cotton Club-equivalent) and Savoy Ballroom, for talk-of-the-town dancing all night. In 1926, the first jazz concert was held next to Bronzeville. Bronzeville was so jumpin’ that the best Anglo-American jazz musicians, such as Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke and Hoagy Carmichael, came to learn and jam with the best African American jazz musicians of the day. When the speakeasies of the Prohibition Era were raided, patrons of both races were carted off to jail.

The depression and crackdowns on mob-owned nightclubs dealt a harsh blow to Big Band Jazz in Chicago. Big Band Jazz could only survive in one city where more patrons could afford it and the police were more lenient towards club owners. Thus, the epicenter of jazz moved again, this time to New York City.

But jazz in Chicago did not die. After World War II, smaller less expensive Bebop bands flourished in the Southside. Sammy Davis, Jr., Dinah Washington, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Nancy Wilson, John Coltrane, and nearly every great jazz artist continued to gig here, whether by road tour or extended stay. Charlie “Yardbird” Parker played his last gig here.

The Grand Terrace Ballroom has been adapted for different use. The original Regal Theatre is gone, but the southeast corner, where the Savoy Ballroom stood, was reborn as the impressive Harold Washington Cultural Center. One of our nation’s most prominent cultural museums, Du Sable Museum of African American History, flourishes just south of Bronzeville. It preserves and interprets black history and culture in Chicago and America.

The Bud Billiken Parade has honored Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and Nat King Cole in parades down Martin Luther King Drive that now attract 1.8 million people. That kind of publicity kept Bronzeville from being relegated to out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

The black middle class finally noticed and cared. The Chicago Bee Building was renovated into a library. Martin Luther King Drive, adjacent and parallel streets infilled with a number of restored homes by celebrities, professionals and businesspersons. The Robert Taylor projects are gone. Inspiring monuments and historic markers dot Martin Luther King Drive. A bed & breakfast, and a Negro Leagues Baseball restaurant opened.

At MLK Drive and 47th Street intersection, the 47th Street Marketplace hosted a dozen Black businesses including retail art, picture framing, specialty foods, a coffeehouse, and an upscale restaurant.

Bronze historical map of Bronzeville inlaid on MLK Drive

Everything has not gone according to plan. Unfortunately, 47th Street Marketplace suffered a devastating fire. Many restaurants closed due to the Great Recession and excessive suburban migration, instead of more repatriation in single-family homes.

Like the inlaid map on MLK Drive, Bronzeville is made of tougher stuff. The Bud Billiken Parade is an annual reminder that it must rise again.

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