Remembering Linda Creed

I was listening to some music from a genre I have always enjoyed, R&B, and from a period for which I am fond, the early-1970s, and came across particular songs which were co-written by Linda Creed.

I was aware Creed died April 10, 1986, at age 37, from breast cancer. But, as I was looking her up on Wikipedia, I found that Thursday [December 6, 2018] would have been her 70th birthday.

According to the April 13, 1986 New York Times, with its obituary on Linda Creed, “Working with her songwriting partner, Thom Bell, [Linda] Creed was known throughout the recording industry but turned down offers to appear on The Tonight Show and other television programs, preferring to maintain a quiet family life.” (Link: Linda Creed, Songwriter, 37; Known for the ‘Philly Sound’.)

Creed co-wrote music for The Stylistics, during the first half of the 1970s, with Thom Bell. This included “Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart),” from the group’s self-titled debut album of 1971. (It was later recorded in a duo by Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye and, a personal favorite of mine, Patti Austin.) More tracks for the group for which Creed had written included “People Make the World Go Round,” “Break Up to Make Up,” and “You Make Me Feel Brand New.”

(Thom Bell, who turned 75 this past January 26, was the first-ever winner of the [1974] Grammy for Producer of the Year [Non Classical]. This was for recordings not only by The Stylistics but especially The Spinners, with their LP Mighty Love, which included the title track, as well as the group’s No. 1 Billboard hit collaboration with Dionne Warwick, “Then Came You.” A Seattle Times interview, with Bell, from February 2018, is here: A Hall of Fame hitmaker finds happiness and harmony in Bellingham.)

With her background in Philadelphia soul, and that she joined Bell to work for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records, the launch of Linda Creed’s career began in 1970. This was with Dusty Springfield, one year after that singer’s legendary Dusty in Memphis album (which included the supreme “Son of a Preacher Man”), who recorded Creed’s song “Free Girl.” (Side note: Just to show that you can connect many things to politics—Gamble, Huff, and Anthony Jackson wrote The O’Jays’s 1974 hit “For the Love of Money,” which was used a good 30 years later as the opening theme music for then-future U.S. president Donald Trump’s NBC reality–competition series The Apprentice.)

Creed co-wrote, with Michael Masser, “The Greatest Love of All,” which was featured in the 1977 biopic movie on boxer Muhammad Ali, The Greatest. According to Wikipedia, “The lyrics of the song were written in the midst of [Creed’s] struggle with breast cancer. The words describe her feelings about coping with great challenges that one must face in life, being strong during those challenges whether you succeed or fail, and passing that strength on to children to carry with them into their adult lives.” 

Linda Creed was survived by her husband, music promoter Stephen Epstein, and their two daughters.

In 1987, family and friends established the Linda Creed Breast Cancer Foundation. (Link: http://lindacreed.org.)

In 1992, six years after her death, Linda Creed was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. (Link: https://www.songhall.org and https://www.songhall.org/profile/Linda_Creed.)

Below are some of Creed’s songs. They include the separate recordings of “Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)” by The Stylistics and Patti Austin and “The Greatest Love of All” by George Benson and Whitney Houston (whose version garnered her a 1986 Grammy nomination for the top award, Record of the Year).