KRLX mix #21 (10/29/2018)

“Bad things happen in Philadelphia. Bad things,” our president* tells us. If he’s talking about sick grooves, wicked horns, sinful strings, and the occasional nasty falsetto, then I guess I’d have to agree.

Philly soul, which makes up the bulk of this playlist, was known as a producer’s genre, relying as it did on lush, proto-disco arrangements and studio craft. But slick doesn’t mean lacking in character — not by a long shot. Songwriter/producers Leon Huff and Kenneth Gamble of Philadelphia International Records married glossy sounds with socially conscious lyrics, yielding such aspirational Black anthems as McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” and Billy Paul’s “Am I Black Enough for You?”

The Philadelphia scene also drew admirers from elsewhere, such as Wilson Pickett and David Bowie, who both recorded in the City of Brotherly Love. And Elton John conceived the episode’s title track, in part, as an homage to Philly soul. So make like the Rocket Man and prepare to live and breathe some “Philadelphia Freedom.”

*Typically, WTAW is a blessedly Trump-free zone, but our 45th chief executive did garner an on-air mention when the DJ dedicated the episode’s second track, The Three Degrees’ “Dirty Old Man,” to the groper in chief.