The first line in the opening verse of one of Gamble and Huff’s most famous songs, the O’Jays’ Love Train, came true last month.
‘The next stop that we make will be England,’ it went, and on 25 May these giants of soul music did indeed grace the 51st Ivor Novello Award ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House, to collect their special international award, jointly presented by PRS and the British Academy of Songwriters & Composers.
Remembering how the song continued, Leon Huff chuckles: ‘We haven’t been to Russia and China yet!’ Nevertheless, the influence of these timeless songwriters and producers has literally taken the sound of Philadelphia around the planet. According to one average, a Gamble and Huff song is played somewhere in the world every 13.5 minutes, and their songs have featured on 175 gold and platinum albums.
'We didn’t just write songs – we tailor-made them for people'
After several years of building their reputation as record men, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff created Philadelphia International Records in 1971 and, with the financial and distribution muscle of Clive Davis’ CBS Records, turned it into a creative powerhouse throughout the decade to rival what Motown had achieved in the 1960s.
During that process, the pair worked tirelessly and inextricably with such great names as the aforementioned O’Jays, Lou Rawls, Billy Paul, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass and the Three Degrees, marrying memorable songs with lush, sophisticated arrangements. The music, in our heads and hearts ever since, has had an indelible influence on British songwriters and performers in particular, and the pair speak warmly of their lasting relationship with the UK.
‘We came (to the UK) first in the early 70s,’ remembers Gamble, ‘and even at that time we had a real good relationship with the media. In fact me and Huff, we were shocked that they knew so much about us, from our first record, back in the early 60s.’
Britain’s lasting love affair with such songs as If You Don’t Know Me By Now, Don’t Leave Me This Way, The Love I Lost, Backstabbers, When Will I See You Again and You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine is deeply appreciated by the great team.
‘I really feel good about being accepted as a creative person over in England,’ says Huff. ‘This award sort of rounds out our careers, internationally. It’s a wonderful thing.’
The pair, who always refer to each other affectionately by surname, have known each other for more than 40 years; Gamble a native Philadelphian and Huff from Camden, New Jersey, where they first wrote together. ‘We sat down at his house, and we haven’t stopped since,’ says Gamble.
Adds Huff: ‘We were trying to get our songs recorded so hard, we would be happy to get a “B-side”. Gamble, you remember you hired me to play on your Candy & the Kisses session? I don’t think you knew my skills until you hired me for that session. It was great. I saw Gamble in action and he saw me in action, I think that’s when those two minds started to come together.’
Gamble and Huff spent half a dozen years creating hits on numerous labels for such artists as Wilson Pickett, Jerry Butler, the Intruders, Archie Bell and the Drells and Joe Simon. During that time, they formed an early link with British talent when they recorded Dusty Springfield’s version of A Brand New Me.
‘Dusty was great, a real professional,’ says Huff. ‘Me and Gamble always had an aura about ourselves that could make people comfortable. Dusty was relaxed, she was in a creative atmosphere and she respected us as songwriters. I think the relationship flowed really well.’
But it was the creation of their own record outlet in the early 1970s that turned the duo into the global representatives of Philly soul. Their creative hot streak lasted for years and created a catalogue of superb soul singles and albums, made with house band MFSB and, unlike the Motown production line, each one matching a Gamble & Huff original to a specific artist.
These may once have been songwriting secrets, but Huff is happy to share them now. ‘Our writing sessions were amazing,’ he says. ‘Gamble would sing, I’d be at the piano playing, and there was so much spontaneity in those ideas. He would just be singing stuff off the top of his head, and I’d be playing music off the top of my head, and we knew exactly what each other was doing.’
‘We followed each other,’ Gamble adds. ‘If Huff would go to a chord, I’d go right with him, and the beautiful part of it is that we had a tape recorder running. It taped everything, and we were able to go back and listen to it and really learn these songs ourselves. We didn’t just write, we tailor-made songs for people. If the O’Jays were coming in, we wrote for the O’Jays. Same thing with Teddy and Lou and all the rest of them.
‘We would sing the songs for them and want them to put their interpretation to the form that we had. We knew these guys’ voices, they were so unique that we would try to write songs that would fit them like a glove. The way Huff played the piano, he was like a whole band! You know on a piano where you have the three little pedals on the bottom? Huff had a way to work them pedals like a drum. Before they had the drum machine, Huff had the drum machine.’
As the hits started to arrive, so the writer-producers started to watch their progress both in the States and far beyond. ‘We had a wall at our first offices in the Schubert Building,’ says Huff, recalling Philadelphia’s version of New York’s legendary Brill Building. ‘We were up on the sixth floor, and we had a long wall that was nothing but Billboard, Cashbox, Record World, with charts from all over the world.
‘We knew what was going on. I got a kick out of doing it because I used to circle our successful records. I remember one time I circled about ten titles in the top 100.’
Thus Philadelphia International truly began to live up to its name, and Gamble and Huff made a number of London visits. ‘I really enjoyed myself,’ says Leon with a chuckle. ‘I went on the King’s Road and went crazy with the clothes.’ Kenny adds: ‘The shopping and the restaurants were fantastic, and the people.’
During that heyday, there was a famous royal seal of approval for one of their big new acts, when it became known that the Three Degrees were the turntable favourites of Prince Charles. ‘We got photographs,’ says Gamble proudly. ‘Princess Margaret and Prince Charles, it was their favourite group.
‘I can see why though, because [co-producer] Richard Barrett, he was and is a legend. He not only had the Three Degrees, he goes all the way back to Frankie Lymon, the Chantels, all these different people. We were fortunate to have a lot of good people working with us.
‘I look at Philadelphia International like we opened the doors for other people, other great writers. Not only was it Gamble & Huff, it was McFadden & Whitehead, Bunny Sigler, Thom Bell, Linda Creed. We were not just in a little room by ourselves. I’m proud of Gamble & Huff, but I’m more proud of opening the doors that let other people fulfil their dreams the same way we fulfilled ours.’
'The Simply Red record knocked me out – we got more songs for them'
PRS members’ association with Kenny and Leon’s catalogue reached new heights in the 1980s, when the influence of those songs of the previous decade became apparent in the hands of new hitmakers. the Communards, led by Jimmy Somerville and with lead vocals by Sarah Jane Morris, took their version of Don’t Leave Me This Way all the way to No.1 in the UK.
Then in 1989 Mick Hucknall and Simply Red achieved the ultimate accolade when their interpretation of If You Don’t Know Me By Now was welcomed with open arms in the country it came from, hitting the top of the American pop charts (and No.2 in Britain).
‘When I heard the Simply Red record, it knocked me out,’ says Gamble. ‘It was refreshing and the timing was great. They did it pretty much the same way we did it with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. I believe that probably in another few years, somebody else could do that song.’
He adds an offer which we hope Mick Hucknall will hear about via these columns. ‘We got some more songs for them, by the way. I’d like to meet that guy. He’s got a great voice.’
Gamble and Huff have written together only spasmodically in recent years, but Kenny says enticingly: ‘We could probably sit down right now, if we had a project we were working on. Me and Huff could sit down and it’d be the same thing all over again.’
Latterly, the pair have concentrated on running their publishing empire, which has benefitted greatly from the copious sampling of their work in the hip-hop arena. Enthuses Gamble: ‘All the major artists have sampled us, Kanye West, Jay-Z, and we’re very thankful to them, because it’s beautiful to be part of this new music era.’
Exploitation of the songbook is in the capable hands of Chuck Gamble, Kenny’s nephew, who is executive VP of Gamble-Huff Music and of Philadelphia International Records. Love Train was used in a US TV commercial for Coors beer, and another O’Jays classic, the endlessly-sampled For The Love Of Money, featured in the American version of The Apprentice. Earlier this year, Gamble & Huff themselves guested on American Idol.
‘The music is all over the place,’ says Leon proudly. Concludes Kenny: ‘We said we wanted to write standards, that was our intent. We wrote ‘em so they would stay around.’
This article originally appeared in M20, published June 2006.