One of the guys was talking animatedly about a recent show by The Temptations.
One day a couple of years ago, I joined up with a group of fellows I did not know half way through my round. Nowadays, it retains its blue collar feel, and accepts members who don’t work at the utility, which is how I ended up there It was built in the 1920s by the local electric utility as a place for its employees to play the newly popular game. McCall Field Golf Club is a private club outside Philadelphia, but it is anything but a posh enclave for the upper classes.
“House Party” is a perfect pick for leading off the compilation, as it was recorded shortly before the opening of Sigma Sound, but with the involvement of many of the key players who created the Philly Sound.īeing a Philadelphia native of that era, and an R&B devotee, I had the 45 releases of the song on the Showtime and Heritage labels in my collection but never knew the full story of the song’s origin and history – until an unexpected meeting with the producer of the song on, of all places, a golf course, led me on a journey into the history of this soul classic. In 2017, the song was featured as the lead cut on Kent Soul’s excellent compilation, Nothing But a House Party – The Birth of the Philly Sound 1967-1971, a Compilation of the Year pick by London-based Soul Brother Records.Īs Tony Rounce of Kent Soul explains in his excellent liner note to the release, “In the same way the Motown Sound really came together after the company started recording almost exclusively in its own premises, the Philly Sound quickly took shape once Joe Tarsia, the former chief engineer at Cameo-Parkway Studios, opened Sigma Sound in 1968.”
Frequenters of the Soul Source website may be familiar with the song from its release on Beacon in 1968 (more on that below). Anyone who grew up listening to pop or R&B radio in Philadelphia (as I did) in the late 1960’s is familiar with The Show Stoppers’ raucous hit, “Ain’t Nothin’ But a House Party”.
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