‘The Philly Sound’ has finally made it to the big screen

It’s been 10 years since Bill Nicoletti began work on The Philly Sound…Heard ‘Round the World, his documentary about the sophisticated soul music made at Sigma Sound Studios that ruled the charts in the late 1960s and 1970s and which will now screen at the Philadelphia Film Festival this week.

But the spark of inspiration for the long-time-in-the-making film, which tells the story of the lushly orchestrated R&B sound by conceived by songwriter-producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, goes back another two decades.

Nicoletti’s film opens with a clip of a TV interview with Joe Tarsia, the engineer who founded Sigma in 1968, and Michael Jackson when The Jacksons recorded their album Goin’ Places at Sigma in 1977.

The brothers came, Jackson explains, “because the Gamble and Huff organization is here, and they’re two of the best producers in the world. And Sigma Sound is a good studio, also.”

Back in the early 1990s, Nicoletti — whose doc will screen at the PFF on Wednesday and Friday — was a young video editor with an office in the Sigma building on North 12th Street.

In those years, Gamble, Huff, and Bell, and the musicians collectively known as MFSB — for “Mother, Father, Sister, Brother” — routinely scored hits like the O’Jays’ “Backstabbers” and “Love Train,” Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones,” and the Three Degrees’ “When Will I See You Again.”

MFSB’s “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)” was the Soul Train theme and artists like Lou Rawls, B.B. King, and Dusty Springfield came to Philly to record at Sigma.

When artists like Patti LaBelle and Phyllis Hyman recorded, Nicoletti would sit in on sessions, and afterward he and Tarsia would share a post-session meal. Tarsia, along with Gamble, Huff, and Bell, is one of the four pillars of what became known as the Sound of Philadelphia.

“We would go to the Melrose, or the Penrose, or Ponzio’s in Cherry Hill,” remembered Nicoletti, 60, sitting for an interview on the campus of his St. Joseph’s University alma mater, where he teaches courses on ethics and entrepreneurship.

“Joe would tell me story upon story,” said Nicoletti, who lives in Ocean City. There were many, of the glory days of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the Stylistics, Delfonics, Intruders, and others defining the silky, dance floor-directed sound which Tarsia — who died in 2022 — called “Black music in a tuxedo.”

Amid the Tarsia tales, one grabbed Nicoletti’s attention.

“One night we’re at Ponzio’s, and Joe says to me, “Did you know that David Bowie recorded at Sigma?”

Nicoletti didn’t. So Tarsia told him about the 1974 Young Americans sessions, when the British glam-rock star came to town and young fans known as the “Sigma Kids” slept outside the studio, whose building was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in 2020.

“That’s when I told him, ‘Joe, we need to tell this story.’”

Tarsia sold the business in 2002 — a few months after a 12-year-old from Berks County named Taylor Swift cut a demo — but the studio still operated under the Sigma name until it closed for good in 2014.

That year, Nicoletti — who spent 12 years as a director for NFL Films and runs his own production company, Going the Distance Films — got started on his Philly music movie.

Since then, he’s hit roadblocks and taken unplanned detours. “High highs, and low lows,” he said.

His debut film turned out to be not The Philly Sound, but another project he jumped into when production had stalled: 2019’s Emmy-winning Once in a Hundred Years: The Life & Legacy of Marian Anderson.

The Philly Sound has been through many previous titles. Every Kinda People was inspired by Robert Palmer’s 1978 song, recorded at Sigma. Wake Up Everybody was taken from the 1975 Teddy Pendergrass-sung hit, which was also the inspiration for Wake Up!, the 2010 album by John Legend and The Roots.

Legend, who rhapsodizes about the Philly Sound’s lush orchestration and message-oriented music in the movie — came on as an executive producer in 2018, a credit he shares with Today Show weatherman and TSOP stan Al Roker.

The pandemic delayed production, and then in 2022, Gamble, Huff, and Bell announced their own movie, The Sound of Philadelphia, to be produced by documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney and directed by Sam Pollard.

For Nicoletti, it meant that the music released on Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International Records, which he had not yet secured the rights to, would be used exclusively in The Sound of Philadelphia, and not available for his movie.

Chuck Gamble, Kenny Gamble’s nephew who manages the duo and is an executive at their publishing company, Warner Chappell Music, said last week that the Gamble-Huff-Bell Sound of Philadelphia doc “is still being developed” with no scheduled release date.

Meanwhile, Nicoletti’s deal with Comcast’s Peacock streaming service fell through.

“If we couldn’t use a song, there was an associated story that we filmed that we couldn’t use anymore. This happened with about 15 songs and 15 stories. This was my bad,” he said, because he assumed he would have permission to use the music but hadn’t actually secured the rights.

As a result, a 12-minute segment on the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money” had to go. But Nicoletti still had interviews with Gamble and Huff, the O’Jays, Patti LaBelle, Daryl Hall, Christian McBride, Jerry “The Geator” Blavat, Bell (who died in 2022), and many more. “I have enough footage for three films,” he said.

So Nicoletti got to work reshaping his movie, using the music he was able to secure the rights to.

The first song heard in the film is the Trammps’ unstoppable 1976 hit “Disco Inferno,” followed by William DeVaughan’s Sigma-recorded 1974 hit “Be Thankful for What You Got,” which replaced the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around.” A new section now focused on Linda Creed, the lyricist who wrote hits like the Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New” with Bell, and who died at 38 in 1996.

He included a segment on the 1970s Sigma period in which concerts on WMMR-FM (93.3) broadcast from the studio boosted the careers of Billy Joel, Bonnie Raitt, and Todd Rundgren.

Theater distributors AMC, Regal, and Landmark have committed to showing the remade film, but to get to that stage, Nicoletti needs $1 million more. Half of that, he said, will go for approved musical licenses for the 60 songs in the film, and the rest for archival photos, video footage, and promotion.

Being presented by the PFF, Nicoletti hopes, will attract investors to the film, which tells its story with such verve that it’s easy to forget that you don’t actually get to hear many of the great songs you hear about.

“I honestly believe it’s made our film better,” Nicoletti said. “This is where the rising-from-the-ashes part happened. Because I spent 10 years filming. And some of it was really rough. Crazy stuff happens when you’re making an independent film.

“But if I could only be given one thing to start this movie, the music, or the interviews and the stories, 10 out of 10 times I would take the stories. Because not everyone loves the same music, but everyone loves a great story.”

‘The Philly Sound…Heard ‘Round the World’ screens at the Philadelphia Film Festival at 1:15 p.m. on Oct. 23 at Film Society Bourse and at 9 p.m. Oct. 25 at Film Society Center. Q&As with director Bill Nicoletti and editor Dexter Grash follow both screenings. filmadelphia.org.