CEAC-2020-04-April

A historical marker for Sigma Sound Studios across the street from its former home in Philadelphia. Philadelphia has a rich musical legacy: It’s the birthplace
of the lush acoustic style known as The Sound of Philadelphia and the hometown of "American Bandstand" and Chubby Checker’s "Twist." But
there’s no major museum or other place of pilgrimage for music fans that encompasses the city’s music history. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
has been home to Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, Eugene
Ormandy, Hall & Oates, Schoolly D, and the War on Drugs.
Speakers at the Sigma summit, held at the Spring Arts
Building in Callowhill, included David Ivory, who engineered
Erykah Badu’s 1997 album Baduizm at Sigma, as well as several
by an up-and-coming Philly band called The Roots.
Ivory is a member of the Philadelphia Music Industry Task
Force started by City Councilman David Oh in 2017, which
was to hold a public meeting at City Hall at 1 p.m. March 12.
A subject that will come up: opening an official city Music
Office.
Along with the Uptown Theater in North Philly, where
James Brown and Aretha Franklin once performed, Sigma is
the city’s single most important music landmark in need of
safeguarding, Ivory said. “It’s Sigma and the Uptown, to be
honest.”
Ochester rued the reality that so many of Philadelphia’s vintage
recording facilities are gone. Among them: 309 S. Broad
Street, which housed the Cameo Parkway label, where Tarsia
gained technical expertise working on records by Chubby
Checker and the Orlons.
Gamble, Huff, and Bell bought that property in 1973, and located
the Philadelphia International Records office there, as
well as a studio operated by Sigma. A fire in 2010 damaged
the building, though, and it was sold and razed in 2015.
“The only one that’s left is Sigma,” said Ochester.
On March 4, Patrick Grossi of the Preservation Alliance of
Greater Philadelphia schooled two dozen avidly interested
attendees about applying to the city for a status that could
preserve the facade. (The marker, awarded by the Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission, doesn’t protect the
building.)
Ideas were batted around the room — about fund-raising,
about programming, about the need to turn a proposed
museum into a destination with interactive attractions and a
performance venue.
At the moment, there are no active demolition or building
permits for the property, Grossi said. But if the building is
destined for development as a consequence of Philadelphia’s
real estate boom, someone suggested, maybe apartments
or condos could be built on top of Sigma, with the studio’s
original two stories remaining intact.
Challenges lie ahead, everyone agreed after the meeting ran
past its planned two hours.
The building itself “is nothing special,” said Toby Seay, a
music industry professor at Drexel University, where over
7,000 Sigma tapes are housed. “But when you walk by it,
you think, ‘Wow, on this spot, this happened here.’ There’s
something magical about that.
“It’s not a cheap proposition,” he said. “But it would be
a shame if it were to go away, because every place else is
already gone.”
Volume 85 · Number 4 | 67