EVENT APPEARANCE

1. 2025: Maurice Watts Classic R&B Music Festival

BIOGRAPHY

While they weren’t a Philly soul group in the strictest sense, no overview of the greatest recordings written and produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff — or most of the scene’s other major figures, including Linda Creed, Thom Bell, and Dexter Wansel — would be complete without the Jones Girls. Like fellow Detroiters the Spinners and Ohio’s the O’Jays, the Jones sisters added Midwest flavor to the lush Philly sound, and they elevated their material with sibling harmonies as impeccable as those of the Pointer Sisters, the Emotions, and Sister Sledge. In the process, the Joneses delivered some of the finest dancefloor jams and quiet storm ballads of the late 1970s and early ’80s for Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International label. These include the Top 40, gold-certified crossover hit “You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else” (1979), the quiet storm classic “Nights Over Egypt” (1981), and beloved deep cuts such as “Who Can I Run To” (covered over a decade later by Xscape, who took it to the Top Ten). After a brief phase with RCA, the Jones Girls recorded less frequently and made their final studio statement in the early ’90s.