Joe Tarsia, the Sigma Sound Studios founder who recorded the Sound of Philadelphia, has died
Along with Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell, Mr. Tarsia was an essential architect of what became known as the Sound of Philadelphia.
Joe Tarsia, 88, the innovative Philadelphia recording engineer who founded Sigma Sound Studios and shaped the sophisticated R&B and funk music that became known around the world as the Sound of Philadelphia, has died.
Mr. Tarsia died Tuesday, Nov. 1, at a retirement community in Lancaster, his daughter, Lori Rawle, said. No cause of death was given.
Along with songwriters and producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, Mr. Tarsia was a key architect of the Philly sound, in which lush arrangements on records like the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money” and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” sweetened hard-driving grooves with soaring strings.
“Black music in a tuxedo” is what Mr. Tarsia called the magic created at the studio he opened at 212 N. 12th St. in Center City in 1968.
In its 1970s heyday, Sigma Sound was the base of operations for homegrown heroes on Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International label such as Billy Paul and the Intruders, as well as silky soul acts produced by Bell like the Stylistics and Delfonics, and the disco sensations the Trammps.
In a statement, Gamble called Mr. Tarsia’s passing “a great loss to me personally, professionally and to the legacy of recorded music.”
Mr. Tarsia was “a tremendous asset in helping us create what became the legendary Sound of Philadelphia,” Gamble said. “Joe and his team were literally the architects of creating the hit making recording sound that made all of our recordings great and iconic.
“For all of the songs written and produced by me and Huff and our label and recorded by our artists, Joe Tarsia was the sound recording architect to the music we gave to the world.”
The music made at Sigma turned Philadelphia into a capital city of soul music, attracting acts such as David Bowie, who came to Sigma to record his album Young Americans in 1974, as well as Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Lou Rawls, the Jacksons, and Laura Nyro.
When pressed, Mr. Tarsia would acknowledge the significance of Sigma, which he also operated as a studio in New York from 1977 to 1988, where Madonna, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Whitney Houston, and Elton John recorded.
“If I made a contribution, it was that Philadelphia had a unique sound,” Mr. Tarsia told The Inquirer in 2018, at a gathering in South Philly to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the studio’s founding.
“I was able to attract the best technicians, the best engineers,” he said. “And the history speaks for itself. Sigma — not me — has 200 gold and platinum records. You could tell a record that came from Philly if you heard it on the radio.”
“In those days, before the computer, records had personalities. There was the Motown sound. The Memphis sound. The Muscle Shoals sound. And there was the Sigma sound.”
Mr. Tarsia grew up in South Philadelphia and was a graduate of the Bok Vocational School. He attended Temple Technical Institute before working at the electronics company Philco.
A fan of Big Band music and particularly Stan Kenton, he moonlighted fixing TVs, and got the itch to work in the music industry after repairing a tape recorder at AMS Studios in South Philly.
In 1961, he went to work at Cameo Parkway Records on South Broad Street, with artists like Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, and the Dovells. On Checker’s 1961 hit “The Fly,” he had the idea to use an electric razor to create a buzzing-fly sound effect.
In 1964, when American Bandstand moved to Los Angeles, the music industry in Philadelphia collapsed. The coming counterculture threw Mr. Tarsia for a loop.
“Before, everybody was coming to the studio with jackets and ties on, and all of a sudden the musicians were wearing sandals,” he said. “The culture changed in an instant. It was foreign to me. I was panicked.”
He adapted by teaming with Gamble and Huff, whose trust he earned when they, along with Bell, were trying to break in at Cameo, “where there weren’t too many chocolate folks in the building,” as Bell put it in a 2013 Inquirer interview.
When Mr. Tarsia opened his own studio in 1968, it was originally called Quaker Sound. But then he saw the letters of the Greek alphabet on a restaurant placemat, and was taken by the 18th. He changed the name to Sigma Sound.
The hits started coming with songs like Jerry Butler’s “Only the Strong Survive,” a Gamble and Huff production arranged by Bell and Bobby Martin (which Bruce Springsteen covers as the title track to his forthcoming album).
“Joe was very technologically oriented,” said Jay Mark, an engineer who was one of the first employees at Sigma, and later went on to work at the New York studio. “He was a great engineer.”
Mark noted that Mr. Tarsia made improvements to a studio he bought from previous owner Emil Corson.
“It was the construction of that studio and the musicians,” Mark says, citing the rhythm section of bassist Ron Baker, guitarist Norman Harris, and drummer Earl Young, the core of the PIR backing ensemble that came to be known as MFSB.
“It was a great combination of producers, songwriters, musicians, performers, time, and place. It was just the right thing at the right time.
“Joe’s technical genius and recording engineering prowess made our music sound great,” Huff said in a statement, adding that he and Gamble were “blessed to have him in the recording booth as I played on those sessions that helped us create the sound in the ‘Sound of Philadelphia.’”
Mr. Tarsia was proud of his accomplishments, “but I think he felt like, ‘This is something that happened in history that I was a part of,’” says Philadelphia record producer Aaron Luis Levinson.
“It was that kind of humility. But let’s be honest. There are four pillars to modern Black music in Philadelphia. Kenny, Leon, Thom, and Joe. Because we would not have a single PIR recording without Joe Tarsia.”
“Kenny brought in these large orchestrations,” Mr. Tarsia said in 2018. “Bell had some classical training. The strings, the horns. Then there’s the ambiance, the echo that I used. All that gave Philadelphia a signature sound. And, of course, if it wasn’t for Gamble and Huff and their music, none of it would have meant anything anyway.”
Mr. Tarsia was inducted in the Philadelphia Music Alliance’s Walk of Fame in 1995. He sold Sigma Sound in 2003. A historic-landmark sign was placed outside the building in 2015. The next year, Mr. Tarsia was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville.
In 2020, the Sigma Sound building was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, and the building is the focus of a discussion to create a museum devoted to Philadelphia music.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Tarsia is survived by his wife, Cecilia, and three grandchildren. His son, Michael, also a recording engineer, died last year.
There will be a viewing Thursday, Nov. 10, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Monti Rago Funeral Home, 2531-35 S. Broad St., Philadelphia. A second viewing will be Friday, Nov. 11, at the Church of Christ the King, 200 Windsor Ave., in Haddonfield from 11 a.m. to noon, followed by a funeral Mass at noon. Interment will be private.