Soul Train

People all over the world, join hands. Start a Love Train, Love Train.

You might be humming that tune as you read those words. The iconic release from one of Black Music’s most revered labels – Philadelphia International Records (or PIR to many of us) – belies a stable every bit as rich as Motown; every bit as soulful as Stax and every bit as layered and rich as any Symphony Orchestra.

Kenny Gamble – a small-time recording artist who cut some of his own tracks for the Arctic label in Philadelphia in the 1960s was destined for greater things as a songwriter, producer and arranger and label chief with his partner in rhyme, Leon Huff.

If the 1960s were owned by Detroit and in a close second and third place Chicago and Memphis, the 1970s was owned by Philadelphia. The city of Brotherly Love.

It was a big shift from gritty R&B to more sophisticated soul in more than simply arrangement and recording technology.

It was the height of socio-political awareness in song. Mixed with the fizzle of love songs, were urges to “Clean Up The Ghetto”, “Let ‘Em In” and the ironic “For The Love Of Money”.

Kenny and Leon were blessed with the right time, the right sound and the right roster but more so with the right producing genius to add to their business sense and belief in their vibe by the now-legendary Thom Bell.

What Sigma Sound Studios – their version of Hitsville/Soulsville – reverberated was sophistication. Plush string arrangements, deeply powerful vocals and tight rhythms that gave us Lou Rawls, Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes, The O’Jays (whose Love Train kicks off this post), Patti Labelle, Jean Carn, The Three Degrees (famously HRH Prince Charles’s favourite artist of the 1970s), Billy Paul, The Intruders, Archie Bell & The Drells, Dexter Wansel, MFSB (Mother Father
Sister Brother obviously!), and of course McFadden & Whitehead.

Is there any more anthemic a song than “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”? I doubt it.

It reads like a who’s who of the classy side of the disco era. And for around 20 years, this sound was everywhere.

How did it become so omnipresent? What was the magic that Gamble & Huff had that others found more elusive?

Brotherly (and of course Sisterly) Love.

There was something in the air in Philadelphia that decreed peace, love and unity – the offshoots of the hippy end to the 1960s would permeate into the flamboyance of the 1970s.

But it wasn’t just that, Gamble & Huff (with Thom Bell of course) believed in the richness of sounds available through not just the construct of the songs but the exploitation of new technology now being used in the production of music.

It was like the dot.com boom of its day. Coded, synthesized and replicable, but unique, masterful and clean. Accessible, realistic, conscious.

It was their quiet success that made not huge crashing waves like Spector’s Wall of Sound or Motown’s thumping four-on-the-floor beats, it was enduring, classic elegance and much of the House and Dance music scene of today can be traced back to disco and yes, the Philly Sound.

We may not see it as iconically as the Motown era, but we only have to look at the footprint that Kenny and Leon had through to the 1990s to prove how lasting this specific genre of soul music was to the world.

We may not talk of Gamble & Huff as we do Holland-Dozier-Holland or Smokey Robinson at Motown or even Bernard Edwards & Nile Rodgers of Chic, but the Philly Sound prevails to this day and the fanaticism, loyalty and joy this music brings lives on.

And as The O’Jays sang later in the song Love Train

Cos if you miss it, I feel sorry, sorry for you….

Until #2 – let this train keep on riding, riding on through.

Perry Timms

Perry is Founder and Chief Energy Officer of People and Transformational HR Ltd (PTHR) and is a Chartered Member of the CIPD, a fellow of the RSA and Visiting Professor at 4x Business Schools in the UK. Perry is a 3x published author; a 2x TEDx Speaker and 3x Member of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers List.

Perry’s musical heritage is in the music of black origin and particularly 1960s American R&B and British Soul & Funk from the 1980s-date.