Our final classic Philly Soul song of the day this week is that sultry ode to adultery, “Me and Mrs. Jones” by Philly Soul legend Billy Paul. It was released in September of 1972 and peaked at #1 simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard R&B, and Cash Box Top 100 charts. It doesn’t get much better than that.
“Me and Mrs. Jones” was written by Philly Soulmeisters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, with an assist by friend Cary Gilbert, and produced by Gamble and Huff for their Philadelphia International Records label. Interestingly, on the Billboard Hot 100 it displaced Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” for the #1 slot and was subsequently replaced by Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” It couldn’t have been more different than either of those tracks.
I was 14 years old, in ninth grade, when “Me and Mrs. Jones” was all over the radio. I remember sitting at our living room piano playing that chord progression over and over with my left hand, improvising new melodies with my right. It’s an infinitely playable chord progression, going EbMaj7 – Fm7/Bb – Gm7/Eb – Fm7/Bb, very slowly, just in the first two measures. You can play that progression over and over and never get tired of it. But then it moves into a Gm7 – F#m7 – Fm7 in the third measure (“…thing going on…”). Damn, that’s good stuff.
The song, of course, is about an otherwise engaged gentleman who meets his paramour, with her own obligations, every day at the same cafe, six thirty on the dot, “holding hands, making all kinds of plans, while the juke box plays our favorite song.” I can only imagine that the favorite song is a sexy slow jam like this one. It would have to be.
Of course, the two lovers should know better, and they do. As the lyrics make clear:
Me and Mrs. Jones
We got a thing goin’ on
We both know that it’s wrong
But it’s much too strong
To let it go now
“Me and Mrs. Jones” was Billy Paul’s only #1 hit and the biggest song of his career. It won him a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance, and justly so. His performance is smooth and silky, the definition of sweet soul that defined Gamble and Huff’s Philly Sound. He was the perfect singer for this song. No one could do it better.
Billy Paul, born Paul Williams, was a son of North Philadelphia. He began by singing along to his mother’s record collection:
“That’s how I really got indoctrinated into music. My mother was always…collecting records and she would buy everything from Jazz at Philharmonic Hall to Nat King Cole. I always liked Nat King Cole. I always wanted to go my own way, but I always favored other singers like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald – I loved Ella Fitzgerald. There are so many of them. Nina Simone was one of my favorites – Johnny Mathis, They all had a style, a silkiness about them…. I wanted to sing silky, like butter – mellow. I wanted to sing mellow you know what I mean.”
And sing mellow he did. One of his first professional appearances was at age 11 on local radio station WPEN. By the time he turned 16 he was singing at Philly’s Club Harlem, on the same bill as saxophone great Charlie Parker. He made his first recording in 1952 and kept going from there. After a short stint in the Army, where he was stationed with some Memphis kid named Presley, he formed a jazz trio and later filled in with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. He hooked up with Kenny Gamble in 1968 and was one of the first artists signed to Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International label in 1971. The album 360 Degrees of Billy Paul followed in 1972, with its monster cut, “Me and Mrs. Jones.” You know the rest.
Billy Paul kept recording for PIR through 1980. He recorded two more albums in the ’80s for smaller labels but never regained the heights he hit with Gamble and Huff. He officially “retired” in 1989 but kept playing small jazz clubs for several years after that. He passed away in 2016 from pancreatic cancer, aged 81.
And that ends our week-long look at the Philadelphia Soul Sound of the 1970s. It was definitely a producer’s genre, led by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, Thom Bell, and others, but produced lasting hits for artists like Billy Paul, the Delfonics, the Stylistics, the Spinners, the O’Jays, the Three Degrees, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls, and Patti Labelle. It’s hard to imagine the 1970s without it.
