![]() I was the president of the whole thing, but I didn’t want people to know.”īy 1971, Bell had moved on to produce another Philadelphia group, the Stylistics, for the Avco Records label. No one could control the songs or the building. If I had been stuck at that label, with only the label’s acts… that wasn’t for me. My job was to build up that production company, not only with the songs that I wrote, but the outside productions I took on. I didn’t want to be stuck in something I couldn’t get out of, like a label. “Now, I wanted to only be a partner in the building and the publishing company. “Gamble had the idea of merging our three sounds together, which was good, and we bought a building on Broad Street with a nightclub on the first floor,” said Bell. Around the same time that the brothers Hart began recording a string of Bell-written-and-produced hits on the Philly Groove label, such as “La-La (Means I Love You)” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time).” the producer-arranger reacquainted himself with Gamble and Huff for their burgeoning record production company in Philadelphia. Along with composing and arranging 1970’s “A Brand New Me” for Dusty Springfield, 1969’s “There’s Gonna Be a Showdown” for Archie Bell & the Drells and 1968’s “The Iceman Cometh” from Jerry Butler, Bell arranged tracks for the O’Jays on Gamble & Huff’s new record label, Philadelphia International Records.īell chose not to be part of the label when it was launched in 1971, but he joined Gamble and Huff in setting up a music publishing company for their songs, Mighty Three Music. In 1967, Bell was introduced to a local harmony group formed by brothers Wilbert Hart and William “Poogie” Hart: the Delfonics. “I said yes, not knowing anything about being a musical conductor,” he said. “I mean, that’s what he told me.”Īlong with doing lead sheets for copyrights and penning songs for Cameo-Parkway Records in the early 1960s, Bell went on the road with fellow Philadelphian Chubby Checker, serving as pianist and musical conductor for the man who brought “The Twist” to the world. “Kenny used to come to my house on Parrish Street in West Philadelphia so that my sister could help him with his homework,” said Bell. Instead, he met up with Kenny Gamble and formed a doo-wop vocal group, Kenny and the Romeos, in 1959. Invariably, when other producers and musicians would say that my sounds were odd for R&B, I would just tell them, ‘I don’t do R&B - I do music.’”īorn Januin Kingston, Jamaica, Bell moved to Philadelphia with his family when he was a child. He began studying classical music in his teens with the goal of becoming a conductor. Maybe you call that an obsession, I don’t know. Once I got a sound in my mind, it would grow and grow, and it would stick with me through the writing process, rehearsal and into the studio. It was all organic on my part - just what I happened to hear. “I didn’t plan it out to be different or set out to do what hadn’t been done before. “Everything I wrote and played, I heard first in my head,” he said. “I met and hung out with him too, in Milano, and he introduced me to some of his native instruments.”īell’s melodies lived within him long before he put pen to paper. ![]() Independent of Gamble and Huff, however, Bell was famed for writing and producing creamy, dreamy, harmony-laden R&B hits of the late ’60s and ’70s such as “La-La (Means I Love You)” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” for the Delfonics, “You Are Everything” and “Betcha by Golly, Wow” for the Stylistics, and “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” and “Games People Play” for the Spinners.Īlong with his love of classical instrumentation, the use of the ondioline and the ceterone in his songs came from Bell’s love of Ennio Morricone, the composer and orchestrator of Italian film themes from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “For a Few Dollars More.” “I was definitely influenced by Morricone,” said Bell. Together, the Philly trio was responsible for smashes from the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” to Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “I Miss You.” No cause of death was cited, but Bell’s publicist said he died at his home in Bellingham, Washington.īell, a Grammy-winning producer and a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, is best known as one of “the Mighty Three” - a co-creator of the richly-orchestrated “Sound of Philadelphia” brand of soul along with fellow songwriters and producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Producer, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Thom Bell died Thursday at the age of 79. ![]()
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