King Kenny

Even strolling along the sidewalk, nodding to passers-by, Kenny Gamble exudes a certain grandness. He moves with a royal manner, as though nothing on Broad Street could slow him down, or make him walk any faster.

He’s tall and broad, and wears an all-black tunic and a black crown cap called a kufi. His black horn-rimmed glasses recall Malcolm X.

We met recently at Philadelphia International Records on the corner of Broad and Spruce streets, where Gamble and his musical partner, Leon Huff, produced hit after hit in the 1970s. The music faded for a couple of decades, but it’s resurging now, unexpectedly. There’s a new souvenir shop on Broad Street, gleaming new neon signs, and music spilling out onto the sidewalk.

Gamble, 64, entered the building like a king entering his fortress. Security guards offered reverent greetings, and Gamble strode down a hallway plated in gold and platinum records. He doesn’t walk these halls as often as he once did; these days, he works more as a land developer in South Philadelphia. He once wrote this lyric:

Wake up all the builders,
Time to build a new land;
I know we can do it
If we all lend a hand. …

“I’m living the music now,” he said. “The music has inspired me so, through my life, that I don’t take it for granted.”

He pulled keys from his pocket as he approached the only nondescript feature of his office building: a cream-colored door. He opened the door, which was as thick as a bank vault’s, and revealed a second door, which swung the opposite way and was equally thick. Inside that door there was a security monitor, which displayed footage from 16 security cameras.

The first thing I saw inside Gamble’s office — the first thing that seized my eye, among many contenders — was a wall-size painting, done mostly in purple.

“I commissioned that,” Gamble said. “Took the lady four years to paint it.”

The painting is important, and so bears description: Near the bottom there is a city, small, as though seen from a great distance. It could be any city, except as I leaned closer, I saw that the artist must have used a very narrow brush for such fine detail; one of the buildings looked a lot like Independence Hall. “And look,” Gamble said, growing more animated. “There’s City Hall, and the Art Museum. All the landmarks.”

The miniature Philadelphia sits on what appears to be a roiling bed of molten lava. “The earth is rumbling, shifting around,” Gamble said. “The city is troubled.”

Up from the city — and this is where things get interesting — bubbles float skyward, each containing the face of an anguished soul. “Look at them,” Gamble said sadly. “But look — look where they’re going!”