Grammy winner key to ’70s ‘Sound of Philadelphia’ soul
NEW YORK — Thom Bell, the Grammy-winning producer, writer and arranger who helped perfect the “Sound of Philadelphia” of the 1970s with the inventive, orchestral settings of such hits as the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around” and the Stylistics’ “Betcha by Golly, Wow,” has died at age 79.
Bell’s wife, Vanessa Bell, said that he died Thursday at his home in Bellingham, Washington, after a lengthy illness. She declined to give additional details.
A native of Jamaica who moved to Philadelphia as a child, Thom Bell drew upon the classical influences of his youth and such favorite composers as Oscar-winner Ennio Morricone in adding a kind of cinematic scale and grandeur to the gospel-styled harmonies of the Spinners, Stylistics, Delfonics and other groups.
Few producer-arrangers compared to Bell in setting a mood — whether the celebratory strings and horns kicking off the Spinners’ “Mighty Love,” the deadly piano roll at the start of the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” or the blissful oboe of “Betcha by Golly, Wow,” a soulful dreamland suggesting a Walt Disney film scored by Smokey Robinson.
“Nobody else is in my brain but me, which is why some of the things I think about are crazy — I hear oboes and bassoons and English horns,” he told recordcollectormag.com in 2020.
“An arranger told me ‘Thom Bell, Black people don’t listen to that.’ I said, ‘Why limit yourself to Black people? I make music for people.’ ”
Bell, often collaborating with lyricist Linda Creed, worked on more than 30
gold records from 1968-78 as Philadelphia became as much a center of soul music as Detroit and Motown Records were in the 1960s. He was an independent producer but so vital to the Philadelphia International Records empire built by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff that the publishing company they formed together was called Mighty Three Music.
Bell’s other hits included the Delfonics’ “La-La (Means I Love You),” the Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” Joe Simon’s “Drowning in the Sea of Love” and Elton John’s “Mama Can’t Buy You Love.”
He is widely credited with reviving the Spinners, a former Motown act that hadn’t had a hit in years. Bell took them on in the early 1970s and helped create such hits as “I’ll Be Around,” “Ghetto Child” and “The Rubberband Man.”
Bell won a Grammy in 1975 for best producer, but within a few years, the
Philadelphia sound had been overtaken by other trends. He had just a handful of hits in the 1980s and after, including Deniece Williams’ “Gonna Take a Miracle” and James Ingram’s “I Don’t Have the Heart.”
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006, and received an honorary Grammy in 2017. Three years later, his work was highlighted in the anthology “Ready or Not: Philly Soul Arrangements & Productions, 1965-1978.”
One of 10 siblings, Thomas Randolph Bell was born Jan. 26, 1943, and grew up in a household where both parents were accomplished musicians and only classical works were heard.
He was taking piano lessons by age 5 and thought of becoming a conductor, but he could not ignore the sounds he was imagining in his head — high notes keyed to his own tenor — or discovering on the radio, notably Little Anthony and the Imperials’ mournful “Tears On My Pillow.”