Jackson — A House on Fire

Author: John A. Jackson
Title: A House on Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul
Year: 2004
Type: Book (Oxford University Press)

A House on Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul is a book by John A. Jackson, published by Oxford University Press in 2004. Jackson, a former public-school teacher on Long Island, had written earlier books on Alan Freed and Dick Clark. It is a history of Philadelphia International Records and of Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell, the three men behind the Philadelphia soul of the 1970s, built from Jackson’s own interviews, most of them conducted by telephone. Its jacket description presents it as showing how the three built “a black recording empire second only to Berry Gordy’s Motown” after the racism of the music business kept them out of the major record companies in Philadelphia, and as tracing the company’s failure to payola, competition, a tough economy and changing tastes. In Publishers Weekly’s summary, the label joined Motown’s smooth harmonies to the funk of Stax and, as a business, mirrored Motown’s “almost dictatorial” machine while seeking Stax’s family feel. The review called the book “meticulously detailed,” a Wax Poetics article on Gamble and Huff said it tells the stories of disputes over royalties among those who worked with the pair “in great detail,” and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections gave it a Certificate of Merit in 2005.

Jackson, born in Queens in 1943, taught public school on Long Island and wrote two books while teaching, Big Beat Heat (1991), on the disc jockey Alan Freed, and American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Empire (1997). Each won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections’ award for best research.¹ While he was researching the Bandstand book in Philadelphia, several people told him about a group of young Black singers and writers in the city, among them Gamble, Huff and Bell, who they believed had been kept out of the music business in the early 1960s by Bandstand’s dominance and the city’s racist attitudes. He began A House on Fire in 1998, after retiring from teaching.¹ Oxford University Press published it in 2004.²

The book’s jacket description, as carried on Goodreads, calls Gamble, Huff and Bell the three men who “put Philadelphia Soul on the map,” a music it says dominated the pop charts in the 1970s, and says that Jackson shows how they “developed a black recording empire second only to Berry Gordy’s Motown,” with hits by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the Spinners, the O’Jays, the Stylistics and others. It says the book shows the racism of the music business at the time, which blocked the three from the major record companies and outlets in Philadelphia because they were Black and forced them to found their own label, sign their own artists and create their own sound. The description characterizes that sound by its “crisp, melodious harmonies backed by lush, string-laden orchestration and a hard-driving rhythm section,” and credits it with at least twenty-eight gold or platinum albums and thirty-one gold or platinum singles. It attributes the company’s failure to “payola, competition, a tough economy, and changing popular tastes.”²

Publishers Weekly’s review summarized the book’s account of the label at two levels. Musically, Philadelphia International combined the smooth harmonies and sophistication of Motown with the funk of Stax in Memphis. As a business, the Black-owned label “mirrored the almost dictatorial Motown machine” while seeking the family feel of the smaller Stax. The review describes Gamble and Huff as a producing and writing team who made stars of Teddy Pendergrass and the O’Jays, and Bell as a producer whose work brought success to the Spinners and the Stylistics. By 1983, in the book’s words as the review quotes them, the label was “a shell of what it once had been.”³

Ronnie Reese, in a Wax Poetics article on Gamble and Huff, wrote that stories of dissent, questionable business practices and unfair distribution of royalties among those who worked with the pair are “told in great detail” in the book. In Reese’s account, Jackson writes that much has been made of how white record-company owners treated Black artists, treats the question as one of power, and cites Berry Gordy’s Motown as an example Gamble, Huff and Bell may have followed.⁴ Jackson’s interviews for the book, conducted mostly by telephone, make up most of the 47 audiocassettes he donated in June 2007 to Indiana University’s Archives of African American Music and Culture, which holds them with partial transcripts, subject files and drafts.⁵

Publishers Weekly called the book Jackson’s “latest meticulously detailed slice of pop music history.”³ In 2005 the Association for Recorded Sound Collections gave it a Certificate of Merit in its category for the best research in recorded rhythm & blues, soul or gospel music, in which the award went to Robert Darden’s People Get Ready!.⁶

Key contributions

• A history of Philadelphia International Records told through the careers of Gamble, Huff and Bell and built from Jackson’s interviews.
• An account of the label as a combination of Motown and Stax, in its music and as a business, in Publishers Weekly’s summary.
• The racism that kept the three out of Philadelphia’s major record companies, given in the publisher’s description as the reason they founded their own.
• The stories of royalty and business disputes among those who worked with Gamble and Huff.

See also

• The Death of Rhythm and Blues — Nelson George’s 1988 history of rhythm and blues and the record business
• Dancing in the Street — Suzanne E. Smith’s 1999 history of Motown and Black Detroit