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It is still an irksome fact that pop music history is essentially rock-dominated. Thus, according to most of last year's anniversary celebrations of punk, musical life in England in the early '70s was pretty dire. If you weren't buying Yes or Rick Wakeman triple albums you were stuck with glam rock or Abba. It also seems that punk saved us from the twin evils of prog rock and disco. Well, perhaps. Those of us who were into what was then simply termed "black music" remember things rather differently.

The early part of that decade was, from my perspective, little short of magical. I was working in a record shop for most of that time and I can honestly say that I don't think a day passed that I didn't take home a tune that I still regard as essential. Any period that included What's Going On and Talking Book can hardly be written off, but there was more to it than just the full flowering of the big guns of soul. Even without Curtis, Donny, Marvin and Stevie (a mere recitation of which mantra now confers neo-soul gravitas to current music) the pickings were indeed rich.

Without pausing to think, one can cite the wave of James Brown/Blaxploitation-inspired funk, the work of Willie Mitchell in Memphis, the emerging Miami Sound, early jazz-funk that was truly both jazzy and funky, the glorious final phase of classic post-war vocal group harmony (The Montclairs, anyone?), not to mention Bobby Womack at his peak -- to be a soul fan then was to be truly spoiled. As a distinct bonus, reggae was in its most political and innovative phase (and I'm not talking about Bob Marley).

Club culture then was also not as glitter-ball naff as it is often made out to be. Jamaican clubs and their unlicensed allies, the blues and the shebeens, were in full Sound System frenzy and kept you up to date on the best that Kingston had to offer. Hardcore '60s soul boys were busy forging that most closed-off and misunderstood sub-culture, Northern Soul. In the South East, the still-influential Essex Soul Mafia were in their (already exuberant) embryonic phase, while London was the place for hard-core funk. More to the point, soul music was the main dance form for all nightclubs and, if you weren't old enough, your local youth club let you hear what was the big tune at the more legendary venues within days.

Rock and soul divided largely on class lines. And while there were plenty of working-class rock fans, I hardly ever met any middle-class soul or reggae fans. Rock fans hated soul and reggae, which despite the increasing corporatism of Pink Floyd et al they dismissed as "commercial" and, worse still, "girly". Why the hardest kids in any town tended to follow such "soft" forms of music was never fully explained but the chief object of derision in this charge was the sound coming from one label, Bell and Huff's "Philadelphia International".

The Philly Sound was the era's touchstone. It divided rock from soul, and the '70s from the '60s. It carried the banner for black music in the popular imagination and received most of the flak. Like all innovatory styles its true importance was only apparent much later. When Danny Tenaglia and other superstar DJs cite "Love Is the Message" as the greatest record of all time they are being more than just nostalgic for the Loft or the Paradise Garage. They are paying homage to the centrality of Gamble and Huff to all club music that followed. They are also obliquely pointing to the fact that dancefloors were never again to be graced with music of such texture and beauty.

"Philly" was instantly popular in English clubs, where it became the logical next step on from the devotion to Tamla Motown that had begun in early Mod days and had seen a revival between 1969 and 1971, as a resurgent soul boy and Soul Girl scene developed in reaction to an increasingly pretentious (and dance-resistant) progressive scene. Here the rock lobby got one thing right. The first and most enthusiastic devotees of Philly were young and female. Where they led, the boys followed and within months Philly was the dominant fare at discos throughout the land. The sound was helped by the new equipment available to clubs. If '60s soul was mono, Philly was most definitely stereo. Those who only heard the music on a transistor radio could not imagine the effect of those orchestral sweeps, elaborate bass lines and hi-hat rhythms coming at your (probably amphetamine enhanced) senses from all directions on newly-installed and newly-powerful club systems. Chart success followed and unlike Motown, which remained underground (gay and Mod) for longer than the historians recognize, the label's distinctive ingredients quickly became the most recognizable aspect of the new black music.

And, though the boys at NME and Melody Maker could not hear what their proletarian sisters could, what remarkable music it was. Often pop-oriented and always commercially astute, no doubt, but had "pop" music ever been so carefully and lusciously constructed? Was there ever a better, more inventive house band than MFSB? Listening to Philly records today it is easy to hear past the strings and the sweetness, but few then recognized how strong were the music's foundations and how far reaching those arrangements would prove to be. Philly brought to the charts and the clubs all the virtuosity of jazz, all the glorious traditions of doo-wop and gospel, a social consciousness normally reserved for protest albums and a unique and never again matched amalgamation of funk and smoothness. Almost incidentally, they invented disco in the process.

I can't do full justice to the set of albums that has now been re-issued in a near similar form to which they first appeared. Check Mark Anthony Neal's review of Philadelphia Classics or my own review of The O'Jays Greatest Hits in the PopMatters archive if you care to, here it is sufficient to say that no-one with any interest in post-War black music can afford to be without delights such as these. Like all the best popular music, they display that mystifying attribute of being absolutely redolent of their time while sounding better than ever now.

Beginners should head for Philly Super Soul Hits, which gathered all the initial charted singles and was one of the first black music compilation albums to be bought in bulk. Then, as today, dance music was a single rather than an album form. "Love Train", "Backstabbers", "The Love I Lost", "Me and Mrs. Jones", "TSOP", "For the Love of Money", "Don't Leave Me This Way", "Bad Luck" etc. etc. -- everyone a milestone in music and all released in about a two year period of serious creative intensity. Ignore the Three Degrees tracks, like the Supremes at Motown the most commercially successful group at Philly was musically the least interesting. Listen instead to Teddy Pendergrass' vocals, to the late-doo-wop of the Intruders ("I'll Always Love My Mama" -- one to really annoy the rock fans) and above all the almost faultless general musicianship.

Gamble and Huff gathered around them the cream of that jazz-oriented city's session musicians. In Bobby Martin and Norman Harris they had two of the greatest and (outside soul circles) unsung arrangers in the business and thanks to the now notorious deal with CBS they had the resources to match their imagination. MFSB was a full jazz-soul orchestra, not just hack musicians brought in to prettify a raw R&B sound -- they were the sound.

Earl Young changed the whole industry's approach to percussion, rejecting both the 4/4 Motown bombs and the Southern backbeat of Al Jackson in favour of more fluid, cymbal-driven patterns. The results were similar to Kenny Clark and Max Roach's experiments in the '40s and Philly thus stands as Modernist to Motown's Classical style in the same way bebop stands against swing. I actually believe Roach was Young's inspiration and as Young invented the disco shuffle that makes Roach its earliest antecedent (which should piss off a few jazz buffs).

With Young were the likes of Vince Montana on vibes -- still a major inspiration to dance producers and still going strong, another jazz man through and through. Norman Harris and Bobby Eli provided the cleanest of guitar licks, Anthony Jackson was a bassist who added a unique fluidity to the Larry Graham funk-bass experiments of a couple of years' earlier, while Leon Huff's electric piano is one of the best kept secrets in soul -- as divine as it is discreet. This was just the front-line, behind that were up to 50 equally talented artists. Unlike the Motown or Chess session players, they (as MFSB) did not have to hide their influences and preferences, merely make sure they harmonized with the goals of a particular piece of music. Only today do you notice how much of a jazz thing Billy Paul was into and how '50s-sounding are some of the vocal pieces. Then it all sounded, as it was meant to, coherent and fresh.

Ironically, it was the epochal Disco Mix album (Philadelphia Classics [1977]) that really brought home the quality of the playing. Although it almost marked the end of an era, it is still the most crucial album of the late '70s and only partly because people still need to be disabused of the disco-equals-Saturday Night Fever myth. Remixer Tom Moulton gave the album his all, simply because he knew he would never again get a chance at such rewarding material. In the year of punk the mainstream press may have ignored it but in places like The Highland Rooms at Blackpool, the world had never seemed a better place. DJ Colin Curtis still includes the O'Jays "I Love Music" in even his most Garagey sets and its power and message are both undiminished.

But listen again to two of the earlier sets. MFSB's self-titled debut and Billy Paul's 360 Degrees of Billy Paul were two records that provoked the most extreme hilarity from rock fans. All that saccharine, all that sentiment, all those strings. How could this really come as Billy Paul claimed (in a newly added live track from, significantly, a UK performance)"From the pool-halls and back alleys of the Philadelphia Ghetto". Because it was a music of pride and hope, that's how.

Poor people, black people, working-class people had (and have) aspirations and more dignity than the middle-class scribes would grant them. The Philly sound celebrated that aspect of people's existence. It was not simply escapism, though that element should not be sneered at -- who would not want to escape the lives so many people are condemned to endure? "Brown Baby" and "Am I Black Enough For You" from Billy Paul are hardly escapist fare. Even the ubiquitous "Me and Mrs. Jones" has a realism not easily found on a Genesis album. As to MFSB, if you can't hear the hipness amongst all those swirls and arpeggios then there is little hope for you. It may appear too well-dressed for the Ghetto but that cloak was made of dreams and a determined assertion of worth.

In a related vein, it is often claimed that this was black music packaged and cleaned up for a mass white audience, because white audiences can't cope with the raw, rough-edged reality of "blackness". The popularity of gangsta rap among the palest and most privileged sections of society should have dented that argument but hasn't. The answers are, I believe, more complex than that. As was the whole Philly phenomenon. The issues involved have as much to do with class as race -- unfashionable as that former term is these days.

Despite Nelson George's reading of the Harvard Report (to which his relationship is rather like Oliver Stone's to the Warren Commission) Gamble and Huff's project (which brought together an Urban League business acumen with a strong Black Pride/Civil Rights programme) was and remains one of the most sophisticated, multi-layered and relatively under-explained in pop history. Ask yourself why Love, when expounded by students and hippies, is deserving of such over-analysis but when it emerges from black musical sources is seen as selling out. Those English girls connected with something more than just the commercially driven.

Buy the albums, play them (on big speakers) very loud and marvel. As you do so, please allow me a middle-aged smirk or two, as I remember a local disco in provincial England and the bass-lines to "Bad Luck" sorting out the real dancers from the also-rans. Sometimes it is nice to have been there first time around.

Til next time
Keep it soulful
Maurice

If anyone with an interest in Soul Music or English Sub-Cultures wishes to contact me about this column, e-mail me at tildawn90@hotmail.com.

Another nu-jazzy top ten from Nick at London's so-hip-it-hurts Agency

1. Phil Asher "Focus" (4 Hero remix) (Versatile)
2. Electracoustic/ Blaze "So Close" (Outer)
3. Valerie Ettienne "Sail Away" (Domu mix) (White)
4. Jazzanova "Mwella Mwella" (King Britt Mix) (Compost)
5. Kyoto Jazz Massive "Substream" (Compost)
6. M.A.W/ Roy Ayers "Our Time Is Coming" (Jazzanova mix)
7. Grant Nelson "Free" (Swing City)
8. Mark de Clive Lowe "Relax...Unwind" (2000 Black)
9. Mark Rae "Lavish" (Grand Central)
10. Raw Deal "Sky High" (Straight Ahead)

and a welcome return of Scotland's most upfront Modern Soulboy, Dennis Probert and his tasteful choices

1. Rance Allen <1>All the way (Tyscot CD)
2. Glenn Jones Feels Good (Peak CD Promo)
3. Will Roberson "Tell Me How Much" (Euro Compilation CD)
4. Cunnie Williams Nightime in Paris (Universal France CD)
5. Gary Des Etages "Dance with me/All I Wanna Do" (FER 12")
6. Danyel If Walls Could Talk ( John Winston CD)
7. Temika Moore Moment of Truth (Moore 2 Come CD)
8. Anne Nesby "Can't Stop Praising His Name" (Basement boys test press)
9. EW&F "Can't Hide Love" (MAW mix) (from Columbia CD)
10. Ce Ce Rogers "Come On and Dance" (Acid Jazz 12)

Finally 10 CDs from me

1. Tasha's World Tasha's World (Cutting Edge)
2. Blaze Spiritually Speaking (Slip'n'Slide) )
3. Various Stockholm Sessions Vol.1 (i records)
4. Various Universal Sounds of House (Universal Sounds)
5. Various Klubb Jazz 4 (Slip'n'Slide)
6. Andy Caldwell In Soul Sessions (Inspirit Music)
7. Legato/Karen Jones Wonderland (Irma)
8. Conya Doss A Poem About Ms.Doss (Orpheus)
9. Harambe Roots (White Elephant)
10. Various Modern Soul - Living For the Weekend (Irma)