The new box set examines the early years of Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International Records, a soul-music label that defined its city the way Stax did Memphis and Motown did Detroit.
One of the biggest hits of the early 1970s was inspired by people watching. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, already titans of soul in Philadelphia, would sit at their favorite downtown bar and watch the same people order the same drinks every day. One couple stood out: The man and woman would meet at the same time, sit in the same booth, play the same songs on the jukebox, then go their separate ways.
Gamble and Huff were songwriters, and they idly devised a backstory for the man and woman, something about two married people scheduling daily trysts with the sad knowledge that their love would never be more than that hour at the bar. They set the story to a melody and gave it to an artist on their Philadelphia International label named Billy Paul, a jazz singer they were trying to transform into an R&B star. He knew “Me and Mrs. Jones” was a hit as soon as he recorded it.
Projecting a very 1970s kind of cool, with a gravelly yet agile voice, Paul plays down his usual vocal improvisations on the song in order to elongate the notes. It’s a way of drawing out the moment: When he sings, “We got a thing going on,” he holds “thing” a few beats longer than expected, giving those adulterous lovers a little more time together.
