Gamble, Huff and Bell needed a really big base of support by the early seventies. They were making a lot of musical magic and wanted to be sure it would reach the largest possible audience. At the same time, Columbia Records, under the leadership of Clive Davis, was looking to expand its presence in the black-music market. The two parties worked out a deal, which led to the founding of Philadelphia International Records.
Now the architects of Philly soul could proceed full-tilt. They took the O’Jays to a new level of success with “Back Stabbers” in 1971 and “Love Train” in the fall of 1972. The Spinners, a former Motown act, got on board with “I’ll Be There.” A great jazz singer named Billy Paul melded his masterful voice with some sparklingly bittersweet strings for the cheating classic “Me and Mrs. Jones,” which Gamble and Huff Wrote after observing a surreptitious couple lunch together every day in a local eatery. A Philadelphia vocal group that had started out singing doo-wop in 1954 called Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes had just hired a new drummer named Teddy Pendergrass in the early seventies. Once all involved got a taste of his vocal chops, he switched to the frontman position and became a national heartthrob through such performances as “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and “The Love I Lost.”
The house band at Philadelphia International was actually an expansion of the old Romeos lineup. Guitarist Roland Chambers and others kept adding brass and strings and became MFSB, which had some hits in its own right.
Two white background singers on many of these sessions were Darryl Hall and John Oates. They had met as students at Temple University in 1967. In the early seventies, they were lured away by Atlantic and eventually became pop stars. Their first hit, “She’s Gone” is their most truly Philly-sounding effort; subsequent songs and albums took them rather far afield.
