Conquer The World Together. Bunny Sigler and Dee Dee Sharpe. 1970. Philadelphia International Records.

 If, out of the great American R&B record labels, Motown represented the hope-filled, sanguine possibilities of racial integration, and Stax the inner strength of black—and thus, human—consciousness, then Philadelphia International Records conveyed a fantasy of our easy surrender to sensual imperatives against an urban backdrop. Before the label could find its voice, however, there came a brief period of emulation of commercially proven models, and the mid-late sixties model for intersex, R&B duets was Motown’s Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Ersatz beauty is a common enough occurrence in rock and roll, so when it appears to us without guise, it’s as a sui generis aberration, and we never fully recover from its initial shock. The harmonies of Gaye and Terrell, though ubiquitous in the collective memory, have never been normalized to the extent that their appearance inspires fatigue in the manner of some overly familiar Motown mainstays. In a similar style, Bunny Sigler and Dee Dee Sharpe effortlessly pledge themselves to the lovers’ pact with a shared vocal performance that only slightly lags behind Gaye and Terrell’s pitch perfect depiction of our highest romantic ideals. The trouble with Conquer The World Together is what is taking place behind those superlative vocals. Announced, rather bizarrely, with a gong introduction, the song then proceeds into a string section—not the magisterial strings for which TSOP will soon come to be known, but a hastily arranged, sentimental swirl of romantic signifiers that reveal the creative limitations of regional talents; there’s no transcendent, unifying voice to declare itself a national presence. Philadelphia International Records would go on to redefine the R&B genre for the nineteen-seventies, maybe the most demanding decade of the rock and roll experience. Rock gave us punk, country gave us outlaws, R&B gave us funk; rock and roll continued its struggle against commercial investment to accommodate working class energies and human bravado. But PIR did something else entirely; it was the label that correctly identified the sensual  urban experience as a shared phenomenon across radio demographics, injecting the commercial fantasy with enough biorealism  that its appeal hardened into archetype. The radio was instructing us that our most elemental needs could find resolution in innovative rhythm and melody. The beauty of a national secular prayer somewhere just beyond the reach of the American language.





 

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