Great post as always, and this about an especially great song that did not get the respect it deserved. Interesting to theorize why not, and you have done your best. Given that I wrote a book about the man, I have listened a lot to Wilson Pickett's album In Philadelphia. It contained two of his very biggest hits (certainly by gold disc accreditation), "ENgine ENgine Number 9" and "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You." BTW, have you ever read my book about NYC, All Hopped Up and Ready To Go: Music From The Streets of New York, 1927-77"? Lots in there about the birth of disco and how it grew and influenced both punk and hip-hop... CHeers. Are you still in Benelux, Pe?
Love that you mentioned Wilson! I played drums with Wilson when I was 12 in Englewood NJ (Clyde Otis' house) along with Bobby Hebb (Sonny) it was truly the highlight of my now very long music career. The thing I learned was you're only as good as your last hit record! I have a podcast on Substack detailing my story and his incredible run. FAME through SIGMA he had many, many hit records in a row in many different illustrious studios. Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You should be in every soul band's go to bag for a sure thing. I met him later on at the Lone Star in '82 and it didn't go well, "You played with me when I was 12!" and he screamed "I don't know you! Someone call security!" But I still got a decent bootleg w/Sugar, Sugar out of it in there for posterity.
The Day I Played Drums with Wilson Pickett and Bobby Hebb one of my first “pods” I've got a bunch of those but as IDGAF either check out my “books” Lost in Austin and California Dreams. And my latest track Sailing on the San Frsncisco Bay on http://soundcloud.com/stevegabe
Mostly living the life… live singing in a big band Sinatra / Darin style, acting, and now Recique in a samba drum band gigs in all three this June! Bye Bye Birdie! So back back on top in June! With all the nonsense let justice ⚖️ prevail while I entertain the troops. Make life fun again! Thanks for the interest.
To start with your last question: yes, I’m still based in Belgium. I had actually come across All Hopped Up, but I hadn’t realised you were the author, Tony.
At the moment I’m reading Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes. It focuses on a shorter period, mainly mid-seventies New York, but it’s the first book that really gives me a proper helicopter view of what was happening at the time and how all those scenes connected. Brilliant stuff for a nerd like me.
Your book clearly covers a much broader scope, so I just ordered it and I’m really looking forward to reading it.
While preparing this week’s episode, and diving deeper into PIR in general, I also read about Wilson Pickett and how his career was revitalised by the Philly team. Fascinating story.
Thanks for the compliments, Tony, and thanks for the recommendation as well. Have a great weekend!
This was a really fascinating and provocative post about a song I've never heard. What a great song! Absolutely love it.
I have to echo Paul Dann in thinking the image of the girl had been off-putting to white audiences, especially in the U.S. I had some jobs involving working in impoverished communities, and I found my fellow Americans did not want to hear or talk about the ghetto, poverty, or anything like that. The garbage crisis and NY's bankruptcy were also a source of derision and frustration, like NY why can't you get your act together? Americans had enough trouble after the gas crisis, and now this. Maybe it was one reminder too many of how many problems there were in the 70s.
Another thing that occurs is that entertainment that crossed over from R&B into the pop space tended to involve charming and charismatic entertainers who were willing to appear on the mainstream dance, variety, and talk shows (like Lou Rawls, for instance, who was very smooth and charming), but I can't say how/if that worked for disco and dance music. Although I can say that one of the reasons SNF was huge was not just the great music but John Travolta already being a big star from Welcome Back, Kotter, which was incredibly popular, and being such an incredible dancer. So you may be right in another comment that SNF crowded other disco songs off the turntables and charts.
Who knows, but great post. And lucky Benelux folks who had someone like Ferry Maat spin this for them!
You might be onto something here, Ellen. I listen to a lot of podcasts, many of them American, people like Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Part of the reason is that I genuinely want to understand what’s happening in the US and make sense of it all.
And time and again, I notice one of the biggest differences between Europe and the US is the way we look at society and the role government should play in organising it. In Europe, we tend to see government as a more active driver in society, while in the US the emphasis is far more on individual responsibility and the self-made ideal.
So problems like the ones seen in the seventies are much more often viewed in America as personal fate rather than societal failure. In that sense, what you’re saying makes complete sense. It’s definitely something I’m going to keep in mind, because I need to look at this through American eyes, not European ones.
From that perspective, the image of the child sitting on the stairs of a dilapidated building next to the word “Ghetto” may indeed have put people off. We can all agree it certainly wasn’t the quality of the song. Saturday Night Fever was obviously part of the story, but I knew there had to be something more behind it. And this might very well be it. Thanks for this.
Glad that helps. Yes, you're right on the money with the difference that distinguishes American society, where there's been much more of a 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' mentality and a belief that if government got out of the way people should and would be able to make it on their own. Ignore the fact that society is structured in such a way to reward certain groups and people at the expense of others (which is now been taken to the extreme and affects almost everyone rather than being confined as it was in the past to certain demographics).
But I suspect there's also a desire to ignore social problems because then you might be expected to do something about them or give up some of your hard-earned money to help solve them.
There's also people not wanting to admit that society was structured to give them privileges. That was an era in which many disadvantaged groups were bringing up all the wrongs and demanding changes. I remember my aunt saying about civil rights and slavery, "Why don't they just get over it?"
Having lived in the UK, yep, Americans are very different!
What I find most fascinating is that so many people still genuinely believe the American Dream is open to everyone. Scott Galloway repeats it often on his podcasts, the idea that there’s no other country where a nobody can become a somebody quite like the US.
But as you rightly point out, it’s not accessible to everyone. And in the current climate, probably even less so. In many ways it resembles playing the lottery. We all know there’s eventually a winner, but there are also millions, if not billions, of losers. The latter are rarely talked about, while the winner gets all the attention and becomes proof that the system works.
In Europe, even if many secretly hope they’ll be the next success story, most people are also realistic enough to know it probably won’t happen. In the US, there still seems to be a much stronger belief that anyone really can be next.
What fascinates me about the current situation, though, is that I think the MAGA vote is also a sign that there are serious cracks appearing in that belief. Young men voting for Trump partly because they want to blow the whole thing up is, in itself, a signal that they no longer fully believe the system works for them either. Galloway himself has acknowledged that point as well.
So yes, there are clear differences between Europe and the US, but in other ways, maybe not as many as we sometimes think 😁
I found a half page record company press ad for the Philadelphia All Stars album from a September 1977 issue of the the UK weekly Record Mirror. It highlights the inclusion of the Let's Clean Up The Ghetto single which is described as a "unique hit...that's already setting the discos alight", but it's a messy design dominated by the album title and a list of participating artists against a crude illustrated outline of an urban skyline; there's a small reproduction of the album cover in one corner.
Many British single releases of the time still didn't have picture sleeves, so the public face of the project boiled down to that cover, which you reproduce above. Although the girl is not actively engaged in protest, she's staring down the lens in a determined and accusatory manner that makes the viewer uncomfortable. White audiences need to be made to feel like the saviour to get behind projects like this, whereas that look implicates them in the injustice. It's a commendable image, but it shuts out any possibility of crossover success, especially as all the Philly acts, aside from the Three Degrees, were already struggling to sell albums in the UK at the time.
Interesting take Paul, and one I hadn’t considered. It might indeed have been a factor. I also think the record may simply have been a bit too slow for the Northern Soul dancefloors. Or, as you mentioned, perhaps PIR just wasn’t as dominant in the UK at that point.
It remains fascinating to see how certain records catch on in some countries and not in others, especially when those markets usually move somewhat in tandem.
Thanks for reading and reacting, Paul. Have a great Sunday!
I grew up in New York in the 70s (not too far from “the ghetto,” in fact) and never heard this song until I came across a used copy of the album a few years ago. It’s a fantastic song that I assumed fell through the cracks everywhere, so it’s fascinating to learn about its success so far away. Great piece!
Thanks, Jeremy. Compliments from people who were actually there at the time always mean a little extra to me, especially because I’m trying, as a European, to get as close as possible to the atmosphere and reality of that era.
Like I wrote in the piece, I absolutely love New York. If time travel ever becomes possible, seventies NYC would probably be my first destination 😁
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to comment. Have a great weekend!
There was lots of info about Gamble & Huff at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum when I visited last week! But honestly? You make their work much more interesting. I didn’t know this song but now I’m intrigued!
Well, it really is a fascinating catalogue, Max. It’s almost uncanny how many classic songs they helped create. Their importance stretches far beyond dance music history alone and reaches deep into popular music as a whole.
I'm thinking the fact that this song wasn't an American hit says something about our rejection of true "message" songs in our disco music of the era. People wanted to dance to music as a form of escapism. Maybe this one, as good as it is, was too much for people to think about. Also was it catchy enough? "Back Stabbers" had a better hook.
I love that you uncover some of these songs I've never heard!
Well, most of their other message songs actually did break through, Dan. A large part of the PIR catalogue falls into that category, so I don’t think that was the issue here.
There isn’t always a clear explanation for why one song takes off and another doesn’t. Just as success can come from a combination of a few lucky breaks, failure can sometimes come from missing one or two of them. I think that’s probably what happened here, rather than anything to do with the quality of the song or its message.
For whatever reason, it simply wasn’t picked up by the radio stations and DJs that mattered at that particular moment.
Thanks for reading and reacting, Dan. Really appreciate it. Have a great weekend!
Groovy song. And the painting of the time and what was going on. Art reflects life. This approach to music very much influence on the great hip hop to come and extension of what has been laid decades earlier. Song writing is pretty amazing stuff. Just added to my Apple Music so I can remember to do some more exploring.
Thanks, Chad. The PIR catalogue is actually quite accessible, so you should be able to find a lot of it on Apple Music. And honestly, there are far worse rabbit holes to disappear into 😁
Happy hunting, and enjoy the beautiful music.
Thanks for reading and reacting. Have a great weekend!
Fantastic deep dive into a fantastic record. You were not kidding when you mentioned that bass 🔥 Sublime.
I found both the backstory — this “metaphorical” and “literal” clean-up — and the cultural considerations particularly interesting, especially how one influential Dutch DJ might have played a bigger role than probably he himself initially thought.
One reason that could perhaps explain why it didn’t smash the charts in the US might be because of competition — I often find chart success in America is really difficult even for established Amarican artists because of the sheer amount of good music competing for airplay. Just an uninformed guess on my part. Look forward to Side B!
That’s probably exactly the reason, Andy. It was released right in the middle of full-on SNF madness, so there was only limited room for records that weren’t either directly connected to that sound or cut from the exact same cloth.
And judging by what particularly appealed to you in the A-side piece, I’m pretty sure you’re going to find this week’s B-side very, very interesting 😁 I go much deeper into that whole aspect there.
Thanks for reading and for your support, Andy. I really appreciate it a lot. Have a great weekend!
This one wasn't big where I live, Pé, but the Philadelphia sound was all over the radio, so I not only associate it with disco but also R&B. If anything, it was and remains what I think of as the cream of the crop.
Gamble & Huff would be very happy to read your comment, Emm 😁
I’ve always found the relationship many African Americans had with disco quite fascinating. They created it, shaped huge parts of it, and yet, for the most part, they often didn’t want their music to be labelled as disco or associated with the term.
One of the things I enjoy most about all the research and reading I do is getting a little closer to the mindset of the people behind the records. This particular subject, though, remains a difficult one to fully grasp for a white European who didn’t visit the US until much later in life. But that’s also what makes it so fascinating.
Great post as always, and this about an especially great song that did not get the respect it deserved. Interesting to theorize why not, and you have done your best. Given that I wrote a book about the man, I have listened a lot to Wilson Pickett's album In Philadelphia. It contained two of his very biggest hits (certainly by gold disc accreditation), "ENgine ENgine Number 9" and "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You." BTW, have you ever read my book about NYC, All Hopped Up and Ready To Go: Music From The Streets of New York, 1927-77"? Lots in there about the birth of disco and how it grew and influenced both punk and hip-hop... CHeers. Are you still in Benelux, Pe?
Love that you mentioned Wilson! I played drums with Wilson when I was 12 in Englewood NJ (Clyde Otis' house) along with Bobby Hebb (Sonny) it was truly the highlight of my now very long music career. The thing I learned was you're only as good as your last hit record! I have a podcast on Substack detailing my story and his incredible run. FAME through SIGMA he had many, many hit records in a row in many different illustrious studios. Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You should be in every soul band's go to bag for a sure thing. I met him later on at the Lone Star in '82 and it didn't go well, "You played with me when I was 12!" and he screamed "I don't know you! Someone call security!" But I still got a decent bootleg w/Sugar, Sugar out of it in there for posterity.
That's a funny story at the end. Which of your Substacks should I be looking for?
The Day I Played Drums with Wilson Pickett and Bobby Hebb one of my first “pods” I've got a bunch of those but as IDGAF either check out my “books” Lost in Austin and California Dreams. And my latest track Sailing on the San Frsncisco Bay on http://soundcloud.com/stevegabe
Mostly living the life… live singing in a big band Sinatra / Darin style, acting, and now Recique in a samba drum band gigs in all three this June! Bye Bye Birdie! So back back on top in June! With all the nonsense let justice ⚖️ prevail while I entertain the troops. Make life fun again! Thanks for the interest.
Thank you Steve. Wishing you a sunny & relaxing weekend ahead!
To start with your last question: yes, I’m still based in Belgium. I had actually come across All Hopped Up, but I hadn’t realised you were the author, Tony.
At the moment I’m reading Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes. It focuses on a shorter period, mainly mid-seventies New York, but it’s the first book that really gives me a proper helicopter view of what was happening at the time and how all those scenes connected. Brilliant stuff for a nerd like me.
Your book clearly covers a much broader scope, so I just ordered it and I’m really looking forward to reading it.
While preparing this week’s episode, and diving deeper into PIR in general, I also read about Wilson Pickett and how his career was revitalised by the Philly team. Fascinating story.
Thanks for the compliments, Tony, and thanks for the recommendation as well. Have a great weekend!
This was a really fascinating and provocative post about a song I've never heard. What a great song! Absolutely love it.
I have to echo Paul Dann in thinking the image of the girl had been off-putting to white audiences, especially in the U.S. I had some jobs involving working in impoverished communities, and I found my fellow Americans did not want to hear or talk about the ghetto, poverty, or anything like that. The garbage crisis and NY's bankruptcy were also a source of derision and frustration, like NY why can't you get your act together? Americans had enough trouble after the gas crisis, and now this. Maybe it was one reminder too many of how many problems there were in the 70s.
Another thing that occurs is that entertainment that crossed over from R&B into the pop space tended to involve charming and charismatic entertainers who were willing to appear on the mainstream dance, variety, and talk shows (like Lou Rawls, for instance, who was very smooth and charming), but I can't say how/if that worked for disco and dance music. Although I can say that one of the reasons SNF was huge was not just the great music but John Travolta already being a big star from Welcome Back, Kotter, which was incredibly popular, and being such an incredible dancer. So you may be right in another comment that SNF crowded other disco songs off the turntables and charts.
Who knows, but great post. And lucky Benelux folks who had someone like Ferry Maat spin this for them!
You might be onto something here, Ellen. I listen to a lot of podcasts, many of them American, people like Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Part of the reason is that I genuinely want to understand what’s happening in the US and make sense of it all.
And time and again, I notice one of the biggest differences between Europe and the US is the way we look at society and the role government should play in organising it. In Europe, we tend to see government as a more active driver in society, while in the US the emphasis is far more on individual responsibility and the self-made ideal.
So problems like the ones seen in the seventies are much more often viewed in America as personal fate rather than societal failure. In that sense, what you’re saying makes complete sense. It’s definitely something I’m going to keep in mind, because I need to look at this through American eyes, not European ones.
From that perspective, the image of the child sitting on the stairs of a dilapidated building next to the word “Ghetto” may indeed have put people off. We can all agree it certainly wasn’t the quality of the song. Saturday Night Fever was obviously part of the story, but I knew there had to be something more behind it. And this might very well be it. Thanks for this.
Glad that helps. Yes, you're right on the money with the difference that distinguishes American society, where there's been much more of a 'pull yourself up by your own bootstraps' mentality and a belief that if government got out of the way people should and would be able to make it on their own. Ignore the fact that society is structured in such a way to reward certain groups and people at the expense of others (which is now been taken to the extreme and affects almost everyone rather than being confined as it was in the past to certain demographics).
But I suspect there's also a desire to ignore social problems because then you might be expected to do something about them or give up some of your hard-earned money to help solve them.
There's also people not wanting to admit that society was structured to give them privileges. That was an era in which many disadvantaged groups were bringing up all the wrongs and demanding changes. I remember my aunt saying about civil rights and slavery, "Why don't they just get over it?"
Having lived in the UK, yep, Americans are very different!
What I find most fascinating is that so many people still genuinely believe the American Dream is open to everyone. Scott Galloway repeats it often on his podcasts, the idea that there’s no other country where a nobody can become a somebody quite like the US.
But as you rightly point out, it’s not accessible to everyone. And in the current climate, probably even less so. In many ways it resembles playing the lottery. We all know there’s eventually a winner, but there are also millions, if not billions, of losers. The latter are rarely talked about, while the winner gets all the attention and becomes proof that the system works.
In Europe, even if many secretly hope they’ll be the next success story, most people are also realistic enough to know it probably won’t happen. In the US, there still seems to be a much stronger belief that anyone really can be next.
What fascinates me about the current situation, though, is that I think the MAGA vote is also a sign that there are serious cracks appearing in that belief. Young men voting for Trump partly because they want to blow the whole thing up is, in itself, a signal that they no longer fully believe the system works for them either. Galloway himself has acknowledged that point as well.
So yes, there are clear differences between Europe and the US, but in other ways, maybe not as many as we sometimes think 😁
Yes, all good points. I just read something this morning that speaks to the current situation. You may find it interesting because the disenchantment appears to have spread quite widely here -- https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-rage-of-the?publication_id=11524&post_id=197915733&isFreemail=true&r=3jsiyo&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I found a half page record company press ad for the Philadelphia All Stars album from a September 1977 issue of the the UK weekly Record Mirror. It highlights the inclusion of the Let's Clean Up The Ghetto single which is described as a "unique hit...that's already setting the discos alight", but it's a messy design dominated by the album title and a list of participating artists against a crude illustrated outline of an urban skyline; there's a small reproduction of the album cover in one corner.
Many British single releases of the time still didn't have picture sleeves, so the public face of the project boiled down to that cover, which you reproduce above. Although the girl is not actively engaged in protest, she's staring down the lens in a determined and accusatory manner that makes the viewer uncomfortable. White audiences need to be made to feel like the saviour to get behind projects like this, whereas that look implicates them in the injustice. It's a commendable image, but it shuts out any possibility of crossover success, especially as all the Philly acts, aside from the Three Degrees, were already struggling to sell albums in the UK at the time.
Interesting take Paul, and one I hadn’t considered. It might indeed have been a factor. I also think the record may simply have been a bit too slow for the Northern Soul dancefloors. Or, as you mentioned, perhaps PIR just wasn’t as dominant in the UK at that point.
It remains fascinating to see how certain records catch on in some countries and not in others, especially when those markets usually move somewhat in tandem.
Thanks for reading and reacting, Paul. Have a great Sunday!
I grew up in New York in the 70s (not too far from “the ghetto,” in fact) and never heard this song until I came across a used copy of the album a few years ago. It’s a fantastic song that I assumed fell through the cracks everywhere, so it’s fascinating to learn about its success so far away. Great piece!
Thanks, Jeremy. Compliments from people who were actually there at the time always mean a little extra to me, especially because I’m trying, as a European, to get as close as possible to the atmosphere and reality of that era.
Like I wrote in the piece, I absolutely love New York. If time travel ever becomes possible, seventies NYC would probably be my first destination 😁
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to comment. Have a great weekend!
70s NYC had its charms for sure...But I also got robbed of my bus pass on a regular basis, so maybe bring protection, LOL. Cheers!
Sounds a bit like Brussels today 😁
Then you're ready!
There was lots of info about Gamble & Huff at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum when I visited last week! But honestly? You make their work much more interesting. I didn’t know this song but now I’m intrigued!
Well, it really is a fascinating catalogue, Max. It’s almost uncanny how many classic songs they helped create. Their importance stretches far beyond dance music history alone and reaches deep into popular music as a whole.
Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!
THE Philly Sound! Happy Friday night!
Yes indeed, Steve! 😁 The real stuff.
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to react. Have a great weekend!
I'm thinking the fact that this song wasn't an American hit says something about our rejection of true "message" songs in our disco music of the era. People wanted to dance to music as a form of escapism. Maybe this one, as good as it is, was too much for people to think about. Also was it catchy enough? "Back Stabbers" had a better hook.
I love that you uncover some of these songs I've never heard!
Well, most of their other message songs actually did break through, Dan. A large part of the PIR catalogue falls into that category, so I don’t think that was the issue here.
There isn’t always a clear explanation for why one song takes off and another doesn’t. Just as success can come from a combination of a few lucky breaks, failure can sometimes come from missing one or two of them. I think that’s probably what happened here, rather than anything to do with the quality of the song or its message.
For whatever reason, it simply wasn’t picked up by the radio stations and DJs that mattered at that particular moment.
Thanks for reading and reacting, Dan. Really appreciate it. Have a great weekend!
Groovy song. And the painting of the time and what was going on. Art reflects life. This approach to music very much influence on the great hip hop to come and extension of what has been laid decades earlier. Song writing is pretty amazing stuff. Just added to my Apple Music so I can remember to do some more exploring.
Thanks, Chad. The PIR catalogue is actually quite accessible, so you should be able to find a lot of it on Apple Music. And honestly, there are far worse rabbit holes to disappear into 😁
Happy hunting, and enjoy the beautiful music.
Thanks for reading and reacting. Have a great weekend!
Fantastic deep dive into a fantastic record. You were not kidding when you mentioned that bass 🔥 Sublime.
I found both the backstory — this “metaphorical” and “literal” clean-up — and the cultural considerations particularly interesting, especially how one influential Dutch DJ might have played a bigger role than probably he himself initially thought.
One reason that could perhaps explain why it didn’t smash the charts in the US might be because of competition — I often find chart success in America is really difficult even for established Amarican artists because of the sheer amount of good music competing for airplay. Just an uninformed guess on my part. Look forward to Side B!
That’s probably exactly the reason, Andy. It was released right in the middle of full-on SNF madness, so there was only limited room for records that weren’t either directly connected to that sound or cut from the exact same cloth.
And judging by what particularly appealed to you in the A-side piece, I’m pretty sure you’re going to find this week’s B-side very, very interesting 😁 I go much deeper into that whole aspect there.
Thanks for reading and for your support, Andy. I really appreciate it a lot. Have a great weekend!
This one wasn't big where I live, Pé, but the Philadelphia sound was all over the radio, so I not only associate it with disco but also R&B. If anything, it was and remains what I think of as the cream of the crop.
Gamble & Huff would be very happy to read your comment, Emm 😁
I’ve always found the relationship many African Americans had with disco quite fascinating. They created it, shaped huge parts of it, and yet, for the most part, they often didn’t want their music to be labelled as disco or associated with the term.
One of the things I enjoy most about all the research and reading I do is getting a little closer to the mindset of the people behind the records. This particular subject, though, remains a difficult one to fully grasp for a white European who didn’t visit the US until much later in life. But that’s also what makes it so fascinating.