E-mail a friendKenneth Gamble, Leon Huff
airdate February 12, 2008
Leon Huff was a session pianist and composer. Kenneth Gamble was a singer-songwriter, who also ran a record store. They combined forces to become pioneers of the Philly soul sound. Separately and together, the Grammy-winning songwriting and production team—and co-founders of Philadelphia International Records—has written more than 3,000 songs, written/produced over 170 gold and platinum records and worked with some of the biggest acts in music. Next month, the duo will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Pioneer of Philly soul discusses the music industry today. (1:05)
Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff
Tavis: Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff are legendary songwriters and music producers who are credited with making Philadelphia soul much of the soundtrack of a generation. Together they had 70 - have had, I should say; they ain't done yet - 70 number one pop and R&B singles, a slew of Grammy awards, and a catalogue now of more than 3,000 songs.
Next month, Gamble and Huff will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Here now a small sample - I mean a small sample - of some of their classic stuff.
[Musical montage]
Tavis: See, 28 seconds just doesn't do justice to the songs, does it?
Leon Huff: (Laughs) No.
Tavis: It's hard to put into context, hard to contextualize what y'all have been able to do over these years.
Kenneth Gamble: Yeah.
Tavis: Yeah.
Gamble: It's hard to put, in 28 seconds, 45 years Huff and I have been working together.
Tavis: Yeah.
Gamble: It's unbelievable.
Tavis: I know the story, but for those who don't, the two of you came together 45 years ago how?
Huff: Meeting on an elevator. Gamble was working on the sixth floor, and I was working on the fourth floor, and we was the only Black guys coming in and out of that building, so we had to say something.
Gamble: So when I seen him in there, I said, "What you doing in here?"
Huff: Yeah. (Laughter) I said, "Well, I'm a musician." I was a studio musician at the time, but I had gotten a songwriting job, so then Gamble hired me to play on one of his first records, and it was a swinging session. And that's how we met and started. Gamble said, "Well, (unintelligible)?" I said, "Well, come over my house." He came over my house over in Camden, New Jersey, and in our first sitting we wrote about six, seven songs.
Tavis: That's amazing.
Gamble: It was magic, it really was.
Tavis: You meet on an elevator and produce anything but elevator music.
Gamble: No question about it. But some of our songs are being played in elevators.
Tavis: Yeah, I hear them from time to time.
Gamble: Yeah, orchestra's playing them.
Tavis: How has, over these 45 years, the partnership worked? You're a songwriting duo, but practically speaking how does that work when you're actually working on a project?
Gamble: Well, Huff is a master musician, a keyboard player.
Tavis: Right, keyboard player, okay.
Gamble: And I'm basically a lyricist. And so the inspiration that we give to each other is like Huff will play a chord or something like that, and we'll have, like, legal pads. And we'll have maybe 50, 75 titles. And so there might be a title I there called "If You Don't Know Me by Now." And so me and Huff would say, "Wow, that's a good one, you know what I mean?"
Then Huff will start playing and then the lyrics just - it's like freestyling, like the rappers do today, they freestyle?
Tavis: Sure, sure.
Gamble: That's basically what we were doing back then with the lyrics. And we had a tape recorder on top of the piano so that we would be able to listen back, because sometimes when we would write a song we didn't remember it. So we would have to listen to the tape and learn the song ourselves.
Tavis: Every songwriter or songwriting duo, songwriting collaboration, has a moment in history where their stuff is just on. Everything they write basically turns to gold. But nobody can do that over the course of an 80, 90-year career - it just doesn't quite work that way in the songwriting business. What is it that allows a particular sound - since I'm talking to you two, your sound - what is it in the atmosphere, the universe, that allows your sound to work when it did the way that it did?
Gamble: Boy.
Huff: The timing.
Gamble: Yeah.
Huff: It's the timing of it. Well at the time, Philadelphia was on fire with music. It had all kinds of musicians. Well, Gamble had a band called Kenny Gamble and the Romeos, and Tommy Bell was the original keyboard player, and when Tommy changed careers and became a ranger, I stepped in. And I guess Gamble - our style of writing started being recognized. I guess we had a certain sound. (Unintelligible) used the same musicians, same arrangers.
Gamble: And great artists. We had great artists, the O'Jays, Teddy, Patty. And plus Motown was a great blueprint for us, so Motown was really the business model that we used because we had gone to Motown, me and Huff had gone to Motown at one point and we were trying to get with Motown. And this was in the mid-sixties.
And unfortunately, we would have to move our families to Detroit, so we decided to stay in Philadelphia and try it on our own. And we had some great songwriters with us like McFadden and Whitehead; we had Bunny Siegler; we had Tom Bell, Linda Creed, Sherman Marshall - we had teams of writers, the same formula that Motown used, we used that same formula and we were able to be a part of the stereo age because Motown was basically 45s, if you remember, and it was a mono business because AM radio was mono.
But when Gamble and Huff came along, the African American and Black music stations had gone FM, and so our music was a little bit different because it was stereo. And so you know there's a big difference between stereo and mono.
Tavis: Sure, absolutely.
Gamble: Yeah.
Tavis: How would you describe what your catalogue is? It's diverse, to be sure. You work with a variety of artists, to be sure. But if one were asking who were not informed of who Gamble and Huff were what their catalogue was about, what the catalogue was, what was in the catalogue, how would you describe your catalogue?
Gamble: Hm.
Huff: Well, all kinds of different kinds of music. Female artists, male artists - in fact, we recorded our orchestra, the MFSV Orchestra. We had so much diverse - all different kinds of music. So it's hard to really pinpoint it, because we - and none of it sounds alike, and all different kinds of music.
Tavis: I ask that question because you got all this diversity, Kenny -
Gamble: Well, I will tell you this -
Tavis: - and yet it's referred to as the Philadelphia sound, the Philly sound.
Gamble: I'll tell you this - I think the Philly sound was - our music was composed of maybe a lot of social messages, where we tried to inspire people. We wrote anthems, like "For the Love of Money" and "Love Train" and McFadden-Whitehead's "Ain't No Stopping Us Now." And we also had a lot of great love songs, like "Close the Door and Turn Off the Lights" and all those kind of songs, and we also had great arrangements.
The arrangements were basically - we had an orchestra, so I look at our catalogue as that it's so diverse because it covers from jazz to rhythm and blues and now today, the young hip-hop artists are sampling all of our music, which we are very pleased about because they keeping us current.
Tavis: I was about to ask, you already went there. I was about to ask how pleased about it you really are, because there's a different take on that. Some people are happy to have their stuff sampled by this generation; others have an issue with sampling. To your point now, apparently you don't mind it.
Gamble: No, I love it.
Huff: No.
Gamble: I love it, yeah. In fact, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Tupac, all of these guys have sampled our music and it's really creative, what they're doing. What they're doing is a technological - it's a miracle to be able to take those old tracks and write new songs to them. So we're glad to be back in the business again, (laughter) taking songs that's like 30, 35 years old, and also being able to keep them current.
Huff: Right.
Tavis: So this induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame means what?
Huff: Oh, well.
Tavis: (Laughs) Oh, wow.
Huff: The thrill of a lifetime?
Tavis: Yeah.
Huff: Songwriters. Plus that award is, like, to me it sort of signifies the hard work me and Gamble put into creating this music, and what makes this really so special is the Ahmet Ertegun award, which we are the first recipients of this particular award, and Ahmet is a pioneer, well respected in the industry, so it's a very exciting time for me and Gamble.
Tavis: I see some hardcore fans are having trouble, I'm sure, Kenny, trying to juxtapose rock and roll, Philly sound.
Gamble: Right. Well, Little Richard made a statement years ago. He said, "Rhythm and blues had a baby, and they call it rock and roll."
Tavis: Yeah.
Gamble: So actually, that kind of like explains the whole thing, and we're really rhythm and blues. I think rock and roll is a derivative of African American music and I think it's marketing, promotion, whatever it is, they always have these categories, and I think rhythm and blues, we're rhythm and blues and -
Huff: Well, if you want to call it rock - well, we was rocking and rolling.
Gamble: Well, like Little Richard said, (laughing) rhythm and blues had a baby, and they called it rock and roll.
Huff: We was rocking and rolling in the seventies.
Gamble: Yeah, it's wonderful.
Tavis: You guys put this project out last year, 2007, "The Lost Soul of Philadelphia," International Records, PR, conquered the world. It's an LP that features artists that we really didn't get to know or appreciate when the Philly sound was the sound. Tell me about this project.
Gamble: Well I have to give the credit to some guys up at Sony-BMG, which we've just signed a new licensing arrangement with. And Leo Sachs and Steve Berkowitz and these guys, they went and got all of these old records. These are artists who might have had just one record or maybe the records weren't hits at all, but they're putting out - they called it a rarities album, and I think that they're going to put a series of those out.
And we tried to encourage them to put it out on CD, so it just came out on CD because a lot of people don't even have turntables anymore. So it's an interesting concept, and in fact a couple of those records on there I hadn't heard them in God knows - maybe 35 years.
Tavis: Since you did them.
Gamble: Unbelievable. So they shocked us, too, with - so we're working with them and they have a lot of great ideas, and so it's a great marriage.
Tavis: So let me ask the obligatory question as the exit question. So what do you make of the music business today, specifically the R&B sound?
Gamble: Well, I think the industry's going through a transition period with technology. I think that the Internet and the downloading and whatever is going to eventually be a great asset to the music industry. I was really pleased and I think the whole industry was shocked when Herbie Hancock won the album of the year.
So I think that shows you something, that the musicians and the root of all of this music, which is jazz, is now in the forefront. And I think you're going to find a lot of the record companies and people in the industry moving towards jazz and actually musicians that play instruments, because basically, over the last few years, it's been machines doing most of the work and I think you really need to come back to musicians and the art of making music.
Tavis: Soon to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that they absolutely deserve, Gamble and Huff. Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, songwriters extraordinaire. An honor to have you both on the program.
Huff: My pleasure.
Gamble: Thanks, Tavis.
Huff: Thanks a lot.
Gamble: Appreciate it.
Tavis: Always good to see you guys.
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