BAKER HARRIS & YOUNG: RHYTHM LOVE & SOUL (article by Kimberly Roberts - Philly Tribune 2011) As I conclude my Black Music Month series, “Legends of Philly Soul,” I would have to say that if Gamble & Huff were the backbone of “The Sound of Philadelphia,” the legendary rhythm section of bassist Ronald Baker, guitarist Norman Harris and drummer Earl Young was undeniably its heartbeat. Anyone who has ever gotten buck-wild on the dance floor to hot tracks such as “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” “Backstabbers,” “Mighty Love” and “Disco Inferno” or has fallen in love to romantic melodies such as “Yes, I’m Ready,” “Hey There, Lonely Girl,” “La La Means I Love You,” “You’re the Reason Why,” “You Got Your Hooks in Me,” or “You Make Me Feel Brand New” is already intimately acquainted with Baker, Harris & Young, who were not only the rhythmic anchor for Gamble & Huff’s peerless studio band M.F.S.B., but also the driving force behind the disco phenomenon The Trammps, founded by Young. From the sensuous bump and grind of the Delfonics’ “I Gave to You,” to the unbridled rhythmic joy of the O’Jays’ “Love Train,” to the unrelenting groove of “The Love I Lost” by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and the sheer abandon of “Macho Man” by you-know-who, these talented homeboys could handle it all with equal aplomb. Dominating an era when live musicians still played real instruments, Baker, Harris & Young not only accompanied the artists of Gamble & Huff’s Philadelphia International Records (PIR), they played for “whoever came through the door,” as Young so aptly put it. Aside from local acts like the Futures, the Ambassadors and the Continental Four, major artists who found themselves on the business end of a Baker, Harris & Young session at the iconic Sigma Sound Studios include B.B. King, Joe Simon, Dusty Springfield, the Manhattans, the Spinners, Wilson Pickett, and even the Village People. (I still get tickled over that last one.) Having played a number of local club gigs as young musicians, and also in The Sam Reed Orchestra at the Uptown Theater, Baker, Harris & Young officially came together as a unit when producer Weldon Mc Dougal hired them as studio musicians for his independent label, Harthon Records. “Baker, Harris & Young, that was my band. I put them together,” McDougal said proudly. “I found Norman Harris sitting on his steps playing the guitar. Earl Young had a vocal group and I had my group, and we had the same guy that was representing us. So that’s how I knew Earl, and when I started my record company, Earl used to come up from time to time. One time the drummer we had couldn’t make it, so Earl said he could play drums, and I said, ‘OK.’” That left the final piece of the puzzle — Ronnie Baker. “I was over Universal Distributors, and they had a recording studio,” McDougal continued. “Ronnie Baker was sitting there grumbling, and all mad ‘cause nobody never used him. He said, ‘Hey, man. I play just as good as the rest of them guys!’ So I said, ‘Why don’t you come over to Frank Virtue [recording studios]? We record.’ So he came over and he sat there, and I said. ‘OK, let’s try Ronnie.’ We tried him and he did well.” During the ‘60s, while recording for Harthon, news of the rock-solid young rhythm section began to spread, and soon their services were contracted by innovative producer/composer Thom Bell, who at the time was looking to replace guitarist Roland Chambers, drummer Karl Chambers and bassist Winfred Wilford. “We changed rhythm sections because Roland, he was trying to go out on the road with the Orlons, and Karl was going out on the road with the Impressions, I think it was, and Fred was modeling. He was moving to New York, so I had to find a new rhythm section, and Weldon is the one that turned me on to Baker, Harris & Young,” said Bell, producer of the classic soul group The Delfonics, and the first person ever to receive the prestigious Grammy Award for Producer of the Year (“Mighty Love” by the Spinners — 1975). “We were at 309 S. Broad, and they were up on North Broad, working at Jamie/Guydon Studios. “[McDougal] said, ‘Man, I got some fantastic cats for you that will work real good with what you’re trying to do.’ I said, ‘Yeah?’ He said, ‘Come on down to the studio.’ In fact, the day I went down there, they were doing ‘The Horse,’ and I said, ‘Yeah! These guys — I like their sound!’” Before long, the talented trio came to the attention of Gamble & Huff, and with that, Baker, Harris & Young essentially had the Philadelphia music scene on lockdown. “Gamble got them because I brought them up to the studio to work with me, and he liked them, and they started working with him,” Bell recalled. “Most people don’t even know that they’re the same musicians. They’re working on the O’Jays, the Stylistics, Johnny Mathis, Elton John and the Spinners.” “They are crucial, and I think the fact that they played together so long was really important because you saw they were a real unit, and they would be so tight,” said Lauren Onkey, vice president of education and public programs at the prestigious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. “Even if you hear one of the Philadelphia soul tracks that are very complicated with string arrangements and different parts, you’re always hearing that great bottom and rhythm throughout the whole thing, and I think they were also such great players that they were up to Thom Bell’s arrangements. They could take on those things and move between those parts really smoothly. I think that musicians that weren’t as accomplished as those guys — it wouldn’t have worked together. All those parts had to work. You can’t come in with these new kinds of arrangements and classically influenced arrangements if you don’t have the players that can take them on. But at the same time, they could take them on but still groove, which I think was a kind of unique match that they had — and they could play with The Philadelphia Orchestra! So that house band was so crucial to that sound. Philly Soul has such fantastic vocalists, but in some ways, the story is the band!” An extraordinarily gifted, self-taught musician who honed his legendary “chops” by studying instruction books and drumming on telephone books, Earl Young, an extremely modest North Philly native who once toured Japan with Stevie Wonder, developed an innovative, intricate and inimitable style that consistently confounded the competing percussionists of the day, and continues to challenge aspiring young drummers. Depending on the artist and the track, Young could make a basic set of drums sound like anything from a ticking clock to a steam locomotive to a hissing rattlesnake to booming thunder or machine gun fire, all while keeping the steady tempo of a metronome. “Earl was a strong, powerful drummer!” said Leon Huff, who can be heard playing piano on most, if not all of the PIR hits. “He was a show drummer first, with the Trammps. He had the hands. He had the chops, as musicians call it. He had that feel. He was great!” “Earl Young was like a machine,” Kenny Gamble added. “The tempo is very important, and he kept a steady tempo.” Young, a two-time Grammy winner, says the key to the talented trio’s success was the harmony that existed among them, both in and out of the studio. “We got along good. There wasn’t any jealousy, there wasn’t any animosity,” he said. “Nobody had any more than anybody, and we could just have fun playing together. That was the good thing. “Also, we had three different personalities. I was always the wild, crazy one with the cars, and Baker, he was a guy that liked to go fishing and liked to stay up in the mountains. He was an outdoor guy, and Norman was like a Kenny Gamble. He always liked to wear suits. So we had all three personalities. I guess that’s why we never really clashed. “The three of us, we never really hung out and partied together. We would meet and do our thing, and then we’d go our separate ways, because we had different personalities. I’d go run the streets, Baker would go off in the mountains, and Norman would go do his thing, and we’d call each other all the time. We all liked different things, and that made it good, because we didn’t ever step on each other’s foot and try to make one person like somebody else. We all had respect for each other for what each other did.” From doo-wop to disco, Young’s creativity, mad skills and career accomplishments have earned him legendary status, making it interesting to note that, initially, he could not read music. However, his partners were quick to come to his aid. “Norman taught me how to follow a chart,” Young said. “They taught me in the studio while recording, really. I learned in the studio how to read.” For the most part, however, the magic of Baker, Harris & Young was spontaneous, and Young said, “We never, ever practiced together. When we’d go in the studio, I might strike up a groove. We’d just jam before the session starts, like a basketball team would warm up. That’s like a thing to do to get ourselves in tune and make sure everything was cool. Sometimes the groove was so hot that they would turn the tape on and record it and make a song out of it.” “The best thing about it was, we let them have freedom to improvise,” Huff said recently, with Gamble adding “We all created together. We were experimenting. If they had an idea or something, it wouldn’t be like we would say, ‘No, no! We don’t want to hear that.’ We’d say, ‘Let’s hear it!’” Because of their rare versatility, the three amigos never missed a beat when disco began to take over the airwaves. They continued to produce, write and record projects for The Trammps, in addition to recording and performing with the Salsoul Orchestra and the Ritchie Family. In fact, Young is credited with creating the disco style of drumming, in which his extensive and distinctive use of the Hi-Hat cymbal allowed the DJ to easily hear the cymbal in his headphones as he “cued up” records to be mixed. Sadly, Norman Harris died in 1987 and Ronald Baker passed away in 1990, and for several years, Young, who had worked in tandem with his partners for 20 years, found it far too painful to play without them. However, in 1995, Baker, Harris & Young were inducted into the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame at Broad and Locust streets, and with mixed emotions, Young accepted the honor from soul balladeer Jerry Butler, on behalf of his fallen brothers. “This was the first time I had gotten an award, so I wasn’t as sharp as I should have been,” Young said of the bittersweet moment. “Jerry Butler came in and he gave me a big hug, because I had played for Jerry on all his records — all of Gamble’s stuff. I’ve always felt like they left me. It’s like losing your kid. I’ve always felt like Norman and Baker left me behind. I always felt like we should have always been together, because we’ve always been together doing everything. It was a pretty sad moment for me, because I could imagine if they were there — how much they would appreciate that. It wasn’t the same as if we had all three, or even two of us. I was there by myself.” Fortunately, on that important occasion, Young had the full support of his family. Young and Weldon McDougal are being featured in the documentary “Dmitri from Paris Presents — Get Down with the Philly Sound,” which can be viewed online. It’s interesting to note that although Motown’s celebrated Funk Brothers were inducted into the “Sidemen” category of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, there are those who argue that Baker, Harris & Young surpassed them in musicianship, versatility and pure soul, making a strong case for the talented trio to be considered for induction. “I certainly believe so,” said Onkey. “And I think Philly Soul is interesting, in that it’s Gamble & Huff who are inducted. For example, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes are not inducted. We don’t have a lot of those performers — whatever reason, over the years — whether they were nominated or not, I don’t know, but I think maybe that tells us one of the key things there really was the production and the band. So I think those players there would certainly be worthy.”
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:52:48 +0000
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