Philadelphia International Records | All That Philly Jazz

The Sahara Club was located in the Sahara Hotel which was on the same street as the Showboat.

The jazz spot featured local favorites, including Jimmy Heath and Bootsie Barnes. Billy Paul met Kenny Gamble while singing at the Sahara Club. Paul recalled:

I was singing in a jazz club called the Sahara. He had a record shop right round the corner and I was singing with a trio at the Sahara club on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He came over and said, “I am starting a record company and I would like to sign you.” Low and behold I took all the material I sung every weekend and I did an album in three and a half hours — a whole album. I had this album, and I produced it — me and my wife.

And we gave him this album called “Feelin’ Good at the Cadillac Club” to help start the record company and that was the album that helped start it up. I was singing totally jazz then, but when I heard The Beatles and heard the gospel influence and everything I just said I can make jazz with R&B.

Gamble later wrote and produced “Me and Mrs. Jones” which was Philadelphia International Records’ first #1 hit.

Located across from Philadelphia International Records, the Fantasy Lounge was a popular hangout for PIR studio musicians, movers and shakers, and the rich and famous including Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls and Diana Ross.

The Kimmel Center is in the footprint of the Fantasy Lounge.

While at the unveiling of Billie Holiday’s Walk of Fame plaque, I confirmed the location of the club with legendary DJ Jerry Blavat.

From a 1999 news story reporting on the death of Lauretta Tucker Adams, the owner of the Fantasy Lounge:

Among the most famous of her businesses was the Fantasy Lounge, a supper club at Broad and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia, where just about anyone could mingle with famous musicians, politicians and professional athletes. It was the spot where fabulous theater parties were tossed by performing casts, and Diana Ross boogied until the wee hours at a birthday party in her honor, according to a 1985 Daily News story lamenting the lounge’s closing to make room for expansion of the Philadelphia College of Art.

Walk of Fame inductee Kenny Gamble recounted:

She was a role model and mentor to many of us. She promoted us everywhere. She did things because she really cared. She didn’t care about material things, and she would help anybody who really needed help with no strings attached . . . and she was very smart in business.

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