So could you tell me about that whole concept of stretching a singer?

We always felt that, uh, this was something that I sort of picked up from the early Motown records, and that was that, uh, and I think is really exhibited with the Intruders, was that, um, depending on where you wrote the song and what key you put it in, uh, determined how comfortable the singer was going to be. You made it to comfortable you lost a lot of the excitement. And I think that Kenny and Leon knew where to place that key and where to put those notes so that the, the singer was at the edge of where he could go. And it created a sort of excitement, a sort of urgency about the music. And I think that followed right through all the records that they made. I mean, Teddy was up there, and unless you were doing a really Jerry Butler type mellow, smooth type ballad, uh, they knew how to work the spectrum they put the singer in.

How did Gamble and Huff work together, how did that process work?

Well, uh, the, the typical way a song was created -- let me start that again. Typically the way Gamble and Huff approached production, depending on who the artist was, they would come into town if they were out-of-towners or whatever and work with Kenny and Leon and literally they would, Kenny and Leon would write the songs with the artists or have some skeletons prepared when they got into town and they would refine the music. When they got to the studio, they would basically come with a chord chart and uh, maybe the artist was no longer present. But they'd come in with a chord chart and half a dozen musicians. And typically Kenny and Leon would rehearse the song with the musicians over and over and over again. And as they played it and the musicians got used to it, they would start to improvise. And uh, Kenny would say, I like that bass line. Or Ely, play that guitar part. And sometimes we'd spend three or four hours just running the song down. But never, never a heavy experience. They would stop and joke, they'd make everybody relaxed, go get coffee, take a lunch break, and come back and pick up where they left off. And sometimes we would do like four basic tracks in a day or five, and some days only one, and then come back the next and do it again if they didn't like it. But typically it was, Kenny and Leon knew how to use a collaboration of the people that bring out the talents of the people they were working with. Unlike many other successful Philadelphia producers, I can think of Thom Bell, who really when he worked with the Stylistics and the Spinners and the, the Delfonics, it was very structured. Thom Bell wrote every note on paper and dare you depart from what was written. In the case of Gamble and Huff they looked for that spontaneity, and once they heard it they picked and choosed through what the musicians were giving them, they would lock it down, rehearse it and smooth it out and cut the final rhythm track. But never, never, uh, never looked at the clock, never worried about how long it was taking, never let anyone feel pressured. It was Kenny's belief that if people were tense they weren't going to give you that easy, that feeling he was looking for.

Give us a physical description of how Leon would get at the piano and bang something out.

The Gamble and Huff team, Gamble was, from where I sat, now I didn't sit with them every day when they were writing the music, but the essence, I think that Kenny in most cases, not all, because there were songs that were written solely by Huff and vice versa. But typically when they worked together, Huff would set the what we call the groove. He would sit at the piano and bang his foot on the floor, and, and, uh, and develop a rhythm pattern, and to Gamble's melody line, and uh, and this was all interchangeable, because sometimes it worked in reverse. But typically, uh, uh, Leon was the piano man and the rhythm man. And Huff, and Kenny was the, uh, the guy that came up with the theme. Often Kenny had something in his mind before he, before he started to write. And a lot of people credit him because he was always writing positive songs and, and most of the time message songs. Today we hear there's so much criticism with rap music and so forth, and you know, demeaning women and so forth. Kenny Gamble's music was entertaining but also inspiring. "Message in the Music," typical. The O'Jays, a lot of the music was, was uh, "How It Should Be," "Family Reunion," uh, uh, and, and, uh, many people came up to him on the street, boy that, they would comment on the fact that there was something beyond the entertainment in the music. So typically when they worked together it was Huff's dynamic piano playing and forceful rhythm patterns that set the tone in the studio, and Gamble would sit in a high stool in the corner of the room and just pick and choose the little nuances that he heard the musicians do. And fortunately we had a rhythm section that was so tight and worked together. The way we set up in the studio, I would have to put the bass player in a position where he could see the drummer's foot, because he wanted to see the bass, the foot pa-, if he couldn't hear it he wanted to see it so he could play along with it. And most of the times with modern techniques with multi-track tape recorders, you wanted as much isolation as possible. If you, if you had the opportunity you put everybody in a separate room. This way if the producer decided he didn't want a guitar part that would exist or whatever, he could take it out. But when you, in the type of music that Gamble and Huff wanted to make, where the musicians felt each other, it was necessary for them to be close to each other. It was a, uh, a sound man, a sound man's nightmare because when he said, gee, that guitar part, I really don't like it, can you duck it. Now the guitar is in the piano track and it's in the drum track and so forth. But he felt it was more important that the musicians, that it be a human experience in the studio. So, as compared to today's modern music with electronics and so forth, and on, I certainly think they have their place. But it's, uh, it's sort of artificial. When the rhythm section cooked, the hair on my arms used to stand up, because it was so exciting. And that, when we captured that on tape, when it had that magic, Kenny was happy.

Can you describe to me the scramble that a lot of independent producers had to do to make a record, to get local airplay. Could you just give me that?

In the early, in the early, what I call the early days, but in the '60s, the middle '60s and '70s it was possible to cut a record in a couple of days, run to New York, master it, come back, get some airplay and get some noise. I mean, the formula was if you get, if you could sell records in your hometown you could go to New York and cut a deal. And that's what a lot of guys did and, and made a living at it. Uh, I'm sorry.

That's good enough. The rhythm section, the guys who were working with Gamble and Huff were very special and they were part of this Philadelphia Sound. What was so special about these guys? What did they have to offer?

We had, um, actually, in the course of the, the Philly sound, the Sound of the '70s, the way we liked to refer to it, there were really, uh, three or four rhythm sections that, uh, that evolved, uh, for one reason or another. But the one I guess that, that became the most dynamic or the most successful was Norman Harris, Ronnie Baker and Earl Young. Norman was the lead guitar player, Ronnie Baker was bass player, and, and uh, Earl Young was the drummer. These guys had been working together previously, and uh, and, and like everything in our business, one day Kenny couldn't get the guys that he'd set out to get, and uh, and Baker, Harris and Young showed up and it was, like, uh, sort of a magical thing. Uh, they uh, they worked, it was just, it was just, it just clicked. They brought a lot, they brought a lot with them. I mean Norman, Norman came up with such great guitar lines, that, that, uh, just listening to music today, they were just so melodic. And Ronnie Baker and Earl, Earl Young were like a machine in terms of locking together and capturing a feel. Earl, the way Earl played -- are we out of film? Okay.

What is the Philly Sound?

I guess one of the questions asked most is what is the Philly Sound. In my mind it, it was the fact that, uh, it, it's a heavily orchestrated sound. Gamble and Huff took, uh, great melodies, sing-along melodies, and in the business, they call it the hook, their songs had great hooks. But they took it one step further and they had lush strings and, and pumping horns that would like accent. And one time I was just counting up on a take sheet, I was looking at the tracks and the number of people that performed on a given production. Well, you go to see a symphony orchestra, and there might 70, 80, 100 pieces. Well, on a, on a typical Gamble and Huff production, uh, there were I counted 54 in this particular piece. There was a, a large string section. We had 11, 11 rhythm players, the background vocalists. Of course, when there's 54, there were some doubles. For example, we'd have four background vocalists that we doubled and that made eight and so forth. But the Philly Sound was lush, large productions with great sing-along melodies that were palatable across the board. What started out as maybe R and B music, it hit the pop charts and everybody was humming "When Will I See You Again," or "You Make Feel Brand New" which happens to be a Tommy Bell song, but the melodies were on everybody's lips.

What was everybody struggling to get into their music to get the …?

Well, you know, uh, as much as the, I think that what the, what makes a record cross over in my mind is, uh, strong melody. A good urban record could be a strong repetitious dance record. Everybody enjoys James Brown, but James Brown doesn't hit the pop charts that much. I mean "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag," I mean we can name maybe a dozen records that really went to the top of the charts in his long career. But uh, he made great music. But it, its across the board appeal was sometimes limited. Gamble and Huff's music came along with strong, sing-along melodies with really lyrics that made you think. And the lush treatment, I mean, uh, the step beyond with the full orchestra really took it to a new dimension, took, took R and B to a new dimension.

Talking about disco, and this beat basically that was created in Gamble and Huff's music, was this a beat that they wrote together or was this something that Earl Young developed in terms of his own style? How did that driving, what made it different?

A lot of people when they hear, uh, when they hear Philadelphia music, say, disco, and really nothing could be, in my mind, further from the truth. Because some of the best Gamble, some of the best Philadelphia music were really, really ballads. But uh, uh, Ken, Leon Huff was a rhythm man. I mean he, he made that, he played such a rhythmic piano and stimulated the people, I mean, it was inspire… the studio experience was inspirational it really was. And, and uh, with the strong rhythm section of Baker, Harris and Young, they created dance records that people mimicked. At the height of the, uh, of the disco craze, you could record the national anthem to it, to the, to, to the disco beat, a la "Saturday Night Fever," and have a hit. But it was never Gamble and Huff's intention to go into the studio to make a disco record. It was something that, uh, that was emulated by other producers and other people. Their success brought people from all over the world to Sigma Sound. One case in point, uh, two French gentlemen came to the studio and they came with a, with a shopping list. They wanted Bobby Martin as the arranger, they wanted Baker and Harris and Young to be in the rhythm section, they wanted myself to do the engineering and so forth. And uh, one fellow, Jacques Morali and Henry Belolo were their names, and they came in and they cut a record called "Brazil" by the Ritchie Family. It was stone disco record. They later created the, uh, the Village People. But what they had done in France was to read the back of albums and they, and they knew exactly what they wanted, and they came to capture that, that, um, that sound. David Bowie came to do the same thing. Robert Palmer came to do the same thing. We had a string of, uh, uh, of black and white artists, international from Italy, Germany, England, uh, who came because they heard something that they liked and they wanted to try and capture it. It was great for the studio, we were always busy and so forth. But the core was what Gamble and Huff and Thom Bell had created.

Neil Bogart, he was a promotion manager, and he worked at Cameo Parkway.

One of the things with the whole disco sound that came in, the whole technology and what it did for the music or to the music. How do you feel about it? How do you feel about the way that music was put together?

Well, it, disco music in the beginning was, was just good dance music. And I think it, um, I think what caused its demise or the term to become a bad term was that it became very formula, uh, it became a formula that took away from the natural spontaneity and it just wore out in that sense. People dance today, and dance music will always be with us. Music and dance are synonymous. But I think what wore out disco was the fact that, uh, the, the formula, the bass drum pattern and so forth, you could almost do it in your sleep. And people got tired of it.

The Jacksons, did you work on that album?

Yes, I did. I worked with the Jacksons.

What was that like. What did Michael bring, and how did Gamble and Huff impose their own style onto the Jacksons?

Well, I guess one of the more exciting experiences I had was working with, with uh, the Jacksons, in 1978. Um, they uh, they uh, had signed with Epic Records and Gamble and Huff did a collaboration album that was on Philadelphia International and uh, and Epic. And they, the whole family moved to Philadelphia for like a two month period and we cut the album. I was really intrigued because they were, they weren't your Philadelphia, your typical Philadelphia kids. My impression of the Jacksons were, uh, very mannerly, very polite, very soft-spoken, very nice kids that had their, uh, tutor with them at all times, and uh, and, I had so much fun with them, I invited them to my house for dinner and they sang "Happy Birthday" to my daughter on her 16th birthday. And they brought a cake. I mean, they were just very attentive kids. But I think one of the interesting things that, that, that really became apparent, even back then, was that Michael had his own, he heard something in his head, and he was an active participant in the production. He, he wanted to do his own ad libs, and he wanted to, uh, to turn the mike on. I just want to record this part. He heard little things he wanted to add. And I, I read in I guess it was the book "Moonwalk," he really credited Gamble and Huff teaching him how to write songs. So uh, uh, typically, uh, it was Gamble and Huff's show. But, it, it was evident that there was creative juices in that family for being producers. I mean, Tito was very, I know he had drive to be a producer. But I think mostly though, Michael exhibited that, that intensity about being involved in his productions.