The Recording Academy Honors Gamble and Huff, Philadelphia Orchestra, Other Philly Faves - Page 2

Leon Huff was born April 8, 1942 in Camden, NJ, and grew up in the Centerville section of town where he played piano at home and drums in the school band. An eclectic music lover from the beginning, Huff listened to doo wop, jazz, country and classical on the radio; as well as his father's blues guitar and mother's gospel piano.

Huff perennially made the Camden All-City Orchestra on drums, and accompanied many of the local street corner vocal groups on piano; the latter led Huff into local recording studios after he graduated from high school in 1960. Huff's eclecticism and accompanying abilities led him to New York and the Brill Building which housed, per Huff, "musical gods Burt Bacharach, Leiber and Stoller, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector."

Huff became a favored studio pianist for Spector in particular, playing on hits for the Ronettes, Darlene Love and many others in the early '60s. Huff gravitated to Philadelphia's (Brill-equivalent) Shubert Building in 1964, and played on "The 81" for Candy and the Kisses, co-written by one Kenny Gamble.

One day in 1964 the pair shared the Shubert Building elevator; the outgoing Gamble asked the reticent piano-wiz Huff if he wrote songs. Recalls Huff, "I said 'Yeah, why don't you come over to my house.' I lived in the projects in Camden. That's when it really started. He came over to my house that night, and we sat down in my little music room and it sounded good from the beginning. We just started writing songs every day after that."

The first song they wrote together, "I'm Sorry Baby," was the B-side of the Sapphires hit "Who Do You Love" for Swan in '64, and then Huff joined Gamble in the Romeos, hitting the road for Checker and Little Anthony tours.

Writing together in earnest and tired of the road, Gamble and Huff formed a writing/production company and had their first hit with Soul Survivors' "Expressway to Your Heart" - a confident, soul-rock workout of indeterminate racial origin (the band was white) which set the tone for things to come by hitting the Top 5 on both the R&B and pop charts in 1967. The flawless production evokes the Rascals with a stomping bass/piano rhythm line, an organ interlude, sound effects, driving drum break, and clever lyrics drawing upon the twin urban concerns of traffic and love.

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