Philadelphia had many new and unique record companies taking advantage of new and surprising talent on the streets of Philadelphia.

Bernie Lowe & Kal Mann were two native Philadelphian's who played a major role developing many of these new artists at their Cameo Parkway Records and Studios on Broad Street in Philadelphia. In fact Broad Street was lined with recording studios and record distributors at the time.



There were so many of these new artists that they would have to record in one or two takes during sessions that were generally limited by the constant demands of the studio time as they were always continually booked and testing and recording new artists.



I remember Hy telling me how he got a call from Bernie Lowe early in Cameo Parkway's history, and that they were just about to release a new song by the group called "The Ray's", a song called "Silhouettes". It wasn't but less than an hour later that Bernie showed up at the station with an acetate of the recording and five one hundred dollar bills. After Hy played it on the cue monitor and liked it, he played it on the air. In fact he played it 3 times in a row. The phones lit up, and the song was an instant smash.

In fact practically everything that was recorded at Cameo Parkway usually arrived at the station in the same fashion. However, Hy did not accept everything as being air worthy and was very select at what he played. His ratings bear that out. But what he did play usually became an instant overnight smash. And all the record companies knew that.

Hy was very popular and dominated AM radio in the 50's and 60's, so naturally if you were involved in recording music and you got Hy Lit to play it, you probably had a hit on your hands. Needless to say when Hy was on the air it was a venerable circus of promotion men at the radio station each trying to top one another with prods and perks to entice Hy to play their record first. There was always new music coming out and such was the dawn of Rock n Roll.

Len Barry is my uncle and was the lead singer of "The Dovells" on the Cameo Parkway label recorded at the famous Cameo Parkway Studios on Broad Street.. Needless to say he had the inside track to my father.

Many years later after Len Barry left the Dovells and went solo he began producing. In 1969 time was booked at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia and he began writing, producing, recording and arranging a session under the name 'The Electric Indian'. This was an all instrumental musical album composition with the 45 release to be a song called "Keem-O-Sabe".

When the session was complete after two weeks or so, Lenny was handing out the checks to the musicians that he had hand picked from throughout Philadelphia for his recording session. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff were kicking around and walking the halls at Sigma Sound Studios at the time. They witnessed Lenny's entire Electric Indian recording session.

Practically before the musicians got up and left to cash their checks Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff signed most of those musicians to a recording contract to be the house band for a new record company that they wanted to form. They named their house band MFSB. They named their record company Philadelphia International Records. Less than a year later they were picked up in a distribution deal with CBS Records. The rest is history.



Darryl Hall was one of those musicians Lenny picked for the Electric Indian, but he declined to sign and formed his own group instead.



Bernie Binnick of Swan Records and Hy Lit, formed a label called Marmaduke Inc. Records to back the Electric Indian sessions under a shell company Ben Sam Inc. (this stood for Benna, my sister, and Sam, me) (Marmaduke was the affectionate term my father called my mother).

Lenny is credited as writer/publisher under the name Len Borisoff, his real name, as well as the name Uniman, on the album (My mother's maiden name). Hy couldn't have his name on records because of his broadcast influence on the air.

Keem-O-Sabe reached the top 20 nationally. The flip side of the 45 was called Broad Street. Marmaduke Records was quickly bought by United Artists when Keem-O-Sabe charted.