Gamble: Like a Motown sound. [ sings, picking up where Huff leaves off ]
there, you don’t know whether they’re good or not. But once me and Huff were able to get our songs out, and the responses told us that we’re on the right track, that’s when we were on the right track. You did a lot of work for many different labels, but what was the first company you were affiliated with as a duo, and in what capacity?
Huff: It’s not easy to get a hit with a shuffle groove, unless you’ve got the right ingredients.
Gamble: I don’t know where those girls are, Candy and the Kisses, but they were a nice, young group, and beautiful singers.
Huff: As independent producers?
Huff: They were from Brooklyn. Wasn’t that a top-twenty record?
Yes.
Gamble: Yeah. Once you get a record like that, you knew you had something. Huff had a record called “Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl” [performed by Patty and the Emblems] that was cracking those charts and got up there.
Gamble: It probably was…[ to Huff ] What was the name of that label? With the swans…with Gene and them?
Huff: Larry Uttal…
Huff: We were confident.
Gamble: With Larry Uttal and Bell Records, we had a record. I forget the name of it. But it was a good one. One was called “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Hurt?” [featuring the Mellow Moods]. [ to Huff ] Remember that one?
Gamble: Yeah, it started building our confidence, and you’re looking to get that big one.
Huff: My feeling was, when “Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl” started getting international recognition, because Leroy [Lovett] had sold the masters to Heritage Records—that’s when people were selling masters—and I heard that record on [W] DAS for the first time, I said, “Boy, to write a song that goes top twenty, if I could write one that goes that far, I could write a hit.” That was my mindset. If I could do that, then I could do something bigger, and that’s what happened. If you can get one, then you can get another one. Gamble: In the midst of all of this that we’re talking about, with me and Huff, our number one thing was, “How can we make a living off all of this here?” Because I was working—I had a job working at Jefferson Hospital—and I was saying that I’d like to wake up every day and do nothing but write music. I was coming over to the Schubert Building after work, and then working with the band on weekends and all that kind of stuff. But that was our number one thing—how do we get into the business of this whole thing? How do we figure this out? And during that time, Jerry Ross had gotten quite a few hits…
Huff: Yeah, I remember that.
Gamble: And we had a song called “Tell Love Hello (If You See Him).” Now that’s a great song. Someone needs to do that today. And that was Excel Records. Then we met Benny Krass from Krass Brothers clothing store and we started Gamble Records, and what else was there…
Excel Records didn’t last very long, did it?
Gamble: We couldn’t use that name because it was already registered.
What did you do for Cameo-Parkway?
Gamble: Candy and the Kisses were on Cameo-Parkway.
Huff: But you know what, going back to that, that Candy and the Kisses session laid the groundwork for a lot of talent.
Gamble: You wrote the other side of that too—“Two Happy People.” [ both start to sing “Two happy people…” ] That was a good one, man. Huff: Yeah, that was a good session. It was a session that had a hell of a groove to it, the way the song [“The 81”] was structured. [ sings start of song ]
Huff: He was hot.
Gamble: Yeah, he was doing good, so he moved to New York, and me and Huff merged together. We had to start eliminating people and joining forces as a business. It wasn’t just the music, but how do we get the business of this thing together?
Huff: Even joining forces wasn’t easy.
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( opposite ) Photo courtesy of Philadelphia International Records.
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