The 1970s were the heyday of the Philly Sound in soul and R&B music, a soft, orchestrated, close-harmony vocal group style that sold millions of records. One of the main purveyors of the Philly Sound was the five-man Spinners group, whose long-serving bass singer, Pervis Jackson, has died of cancer aged 70.
The group had its origins among a gang of high school students in Detroit, although Jackson had been born in New Orleans. A few years later, his family joined the vast exodus of African-Americans from the southern states, drawn to the industrial north by the demand for labour of the wartime economy.
At school in the suburb of Ferndale, Jackson began to harmonise with other boys, eventually forming a group they called the Domingoes in 1954. Over the next few years they gave occasional concerts and changed both personnel and group name until, in 1961, they settled on the Spinners, with Bobbie Smith as the high tenor lead singer, the tenor George Dixon and the baritones Henry Fambrough and Billy Henderson. "Spinners" was the colloquial name for the large hub-caps of Cadillac cars.
At this point, they were signed to a recording contract by the local songwriter and performer Harvey Fuqua. That's What Girls Are Made For was an immediate hit, and when Fuqua sold his Tri-Phi record company to his Detroit rival Berry Gordy, the Spinners became part of Gordy's Motown empire.
While Gordy and his team built such artists as the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and the Temptations into international stars during the Sixties, Jackson and the Spinners remained among Motown's second division acts. They generally opened the show for other Motown artists.
Although they had several R&B successes, their only pop hit was It's a Shame in 1970, written and produced by Wonder. It was also a Top 20 hit in Britain, where the group was renamed the Motown Spinners to avoid confusion with the Liverpudlian folk group the Spinners.
In 1971, Philippé Wynne joined as an additional lead singer and, on Aretha Franklin's advice, the group switched record companies to the New York-based Atlantic. The label offered the leading Philly Sound producer Thom Bell the opportunity to work with any of its artists and Bell chose the Spinners. Bell and his songwriters created a series of big hits on which Jackson's deep vocal lines supported Smith's light tenor and Wynne's more gospel-inspired sound. In an interview, Bell paid tribute to the often unnoticed contribution of Jackson: "It's so low and so deep that most people never want to hear a bass, or so they think. Being kept in the background, you don't feel that you're a real asset to a group."
Bell therefore gave Jackson a key line to sing ("12.45") on the 1975 hit They Just Can't Stop It (Games People Play). "From the moment I gave him that part, his whole personality changed," Bell claimed, and Jackson was subsequently known as "Mr 12.45".
That record was one of five million-sellers produced by Bell during the seventies, starting with I'll Be Around, in 1972, and Could it Be I'm Falling in Love, a Top 20 hit in Britain, where the group was now known as the Detroit Spinners. The other hits included One of a Kind (Love Affair), The Rubberband Man and Ghetto Child. The group's only No 1 hit in America was Then Came You, a duet between Wynne and Dionne Warwick.
In 1977 Wynne left for a solo career and was replaced by John Edwards. His departure coincided with the Philly Sound's loss of popularity to disco and, in 1980, the group switched producers from Bell to Michael Zager. He created two best-selling medleys for the Spinners. The first combined the old Four Seasons hit Working My Way Back to You with Zager's own composition Forgive Me Girl. The second used the same formula with Sam Cooke's Cupid and I've Loved You for a Long Time. The first medley was the group's final million-selling record and their only No 1 hit in Britain.
By the mid-1980s, Jackson and the group were playing "oldies" concerts with such groups as the Four Seasons and the Righteous Brothers. The final album for Atlantic was Cross Fire, in 1984, although the group was featured in the record company's 40th anniversary concert in New York in 1988.
Over the past two decades, the Spinners made a good living singing their repertoire of hits, averaging 200 concerts a year. Besides Jackson, two original members, Fambrough and Smith, were still with the group after over half a century.
Jackson is survived by his wife Claudreen, two sons, two daughters and eight grandchildren.
· Pervis Jackson, singer, born May 17 1938; died August 18 2008