Well, the music that, um, that inspired me the most as a young man was Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Dells, Little Anthony and the Imperials, groups like that. And I think my greatest inspiration came when the Motown era started to come through, with the Temptations and the Supremes and people like that, you know.

What about you?

I was listening to Chuck Berry and Little Richard. The Flamingoes, the Moonglows, a whole wide variety. Gospel music. The Soul Stirrers, the Five Blind Boys. You want to go back to the old traditional gospel, that was going on in my family, especially on Sundays, I was listening to all that kind of music.

Classical music.

What was the music that set you on fire when you first started out.

The music that set me on fire? Boy, I guess, well, one thing to think of in my mind, uh, I think the Sam Cooke song, "You Send Me" really, that had a great impact on me. The first time I heard it the disk jockey must have played it about 20 times in a row. And uh, I guess that kind of song, sort of, I mean that's the first thing that jumps into my mind when you talk about a song that, you know, Frankie Lymon and all these guys, they had a tremendous impact on, you know, back in those days.

And you Leon?

Well, I was listening to basically the same Gamble was listening to. It's like, because we were basically listening to the same radio stations like WDAS and WHAT at that time. But I was listening to like Chuck Berry too and like Little Richard. Dion and the Belmonts and the Beach Boys, and Elvis. I was listening to all of that. Gospel, all the old traditional gospel groups like the Soul Stirrers and the Five Blind Boys and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. I was going to all those gospel shows. So all that music inspired me. Jackie Wilson, and the Motown, the surge of the Motown sound.

What was special about Motown?

A house full of talent. That's what it was.

I just need you to say that again.

Yeah, Motown was a house full of talented people that was just, it was on fire in that room with that creativity going on.

Was there any particular songwriters at Motown that you admired?

Yeah, I admired a lot, most off them. [both talk at once] Holland-Dozier-Holland stuck out.

Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Smokey Robinson. They stuck out. And uh, and uh ... There was so much great music coming out of there. You know, Norman Whitfield and, he was making some hot records.

Of course, Motown was like a, was like a role model for us here, Philly International. Because Motown really set up a system that, um, that was kind of new in the music business. And by it being, you know, a black company, it gave us encouragement that we could actually do the same thing also too. So Motown was, and Berry Gordy and that whole Motown sound it was like, um, it was like a role model for us. And we, everybody loved Motown. And you know, I can remember days when we used to listen to, we used to wait for the next Supremes record or the next Four Tops or the Temptations. And not only were they good songwriters and producers, but they had great artists, and they were great performers. They used to perform here at the Philadelphia, at the Uptown. So Motown was like a phenomenon.

As songwriters, what was it about the way they put those songs together that made them so great?

I think, uh, they were creatively free. They had a free spirit going on in that, in that, in that house. It's like we had here. Got here, still here. It was people that had a free, they had freedom in that house to go and experiment and create different songs, the sounds, and Berry Gordy's burning desire to make it work. I think it was just a total freedom like me and Gamble have when we go in that room and write songs, we are free from everything.

I think the Motown --

The concentration was unbelievable.

Well, I don't think this equates with me and Huff, I know that Philly International was like a release. When you write songs like that, just like a release and it's fun. And that's what hit records and hit music is all about is people being able to release themselves. And when you have great musicians, great songwriters, great artists, a great studio and the time is right, then you have that kind of a musical explosion, just like Motown, just like Philly International.

Stax.

Mm-hmm.

How did you learn to really craft your songs? You have the best opening hooks to the songs, there's an introduction that's always identifiable. Were there any particular people. I know you worked for a while with Lieber and Stoller, you did backup, you did piano.

Studio work, yeah, mm-hmm. That was, working with Lieber and Stoller was exciting time for me as a hired musician. You know playing on big name artist records. That was a thrill for me. You know, uh, Phil Spector, that was a thrill for me to be a musician on some of those great records he produced. So I was pumped up as a musician. And Gamble is, uh, a hell of a singer. So those two forces joined together as a talent. And it just happened the first time we ever got together, it just flew like that. You know, it wasn't nothing forced, it was just a natural coming together of talents.

Yeah, the first time we got together I think we must have wrote four or five songs the first time we sat down and wrote, and we've been writing ever since. And it's just like, um, it's natural, that's all it is.

When the two of you sit down to write a song, how does that, how does it happen. I mean let's use, oh let's say, "Bad Luck." I understand that you're the rhythm man.

Being a musician, yeah.

I just wondered if you could just give me a little demonstration about how you might pull that together.

Pull a song together? Well, sometimes Huff will just play chords, and the words will just come, the words come. You know, we'll, we'll talk about different circumstances, you know, that people we know, certain things that we're going through, people we know are going through, what the world is going through. You know, you just pull from your environment and the music sort of like dictates the mood. Then when you put the words to it, it just flows, it just flows together. And basically how we wrote our songs would be, we'd have a piano and we'd put a tape recorder on top of the piano and we'd just run the tape. And eventually we would get it, we would get the song. I mean it would take us a while. Sometimes, sometimes we get it, we write it real quick, we write a song real quick. But most of the time we would really stop and, you know, start all over again and perfect the songs, and make them, you know, but even then, even then we were writing, once we started writing, we would write five or six songs in a day. And it's an enjoyable, very enjoyable experience.

Well, after 400 gold and platinum albums, I'd say it was a lot of fun.

Lot of fun.