12/15/2023 0 Comments Jerry butler greatest hits albumFor a short spell, Patti LaBelle also recorded for the label, but she enjoyed her biggest hits on Epic with the group Labelle, or with her solo work on MCA. At the same time, the women of Philly Soul – including Carn, Dee Dee Sharp, Phyllis Hyman, the Jones Girls and the Three Degrees - created many of the label’s most adventurous recordings. Otherwise, Philly’s female artists enjoyed far more success on the American R&B charts than on the broader pop list. The only time they scored a top-five pop hit for a female act came when the Three Degrees cooed When Will I See You Again. Lacking a distaff act with the enormous popularity of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Gladys Knight or Martha Reeves, the label scored most of their biggest hits with male acts like the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Billy Paul and the solo Teddy Pendergrass. Unlike Berry Gordy’s company, Gamble and Huff’s venture enjoyed far more success with their male stars than their female ones. Still, not everything worked by the Motown plan. In its most successful ventures, Philly International erased music’s color line with songs everybody could dance to and hum while at the same time including enough socially aware lyrics to make sure everybody understood exactly who made these records and where they came from. As a black-owned and -operated music company, the label picked up the gauntlet from Motown, applying its crossover strategy to a new decade, with a lush new sound to herald it. Fifty years ago, music industry veterans Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff pulled that off by producing a plethora of classic albums on the imprint they started, Philadelphia International Records.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |