Keyboardist/arranger/producer/recording artist Dexter Wansel can be heard throughout the catalog of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records. You can hear his skills on non-PIR side like Jermaine’s “Where Are You Now?” from his gold album Let’s Get Serious, and “Tonight,” from Junior’s Acquired taste LP. T. Life, Bunny Sigler and Cynthia Biggs were his frequent songwriting partners. Wansel was a pioneer in synths. His first LP arranging assignment was to arrange several tracks on Carl Carlton’s 1975 LP, “I Wanna Be With You”, which Bunny Sigler produced. A Biggs/Wansel song is “The Sweetest Pain”, a duet featuring Jean Carn and Wansel. It was originally a 1979 single on Wansel’s Time Is Slipping Away LP. This LP was a radio-aired LP of Loose Ends’ Zagora LP. Two of Carn’s albums, When I Find You Love (entirely created by Wansel), and Sweet and Wonderful, as well as Jean Carn and Happily Be With You, were released on a single-CD by U.K. label Westside Records. Wansel started working as a gofer at Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater when he was twelve years old. He would get food and clean clothes for various artists who performed there, such as Stevie Wonder or Patti Labelle. Wansel would write a number one R song many years later.
