Songwriter, Producer. Born Linda Creed in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she started singing while attending Germantown High School. After graduation, she started singing on the Philadelphia night-club scene and eventually went to New York to get her "big break," according to her obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer. When that didn't happen, she called her father for help in coming back home and she composed "I'm Coming Home" based on that experience. After being in a self-described "blue funk," Thom Bell, who worked at Philadelphia International Records in various writing and producing positions, suggested a songwriting partnership with Creed and she quickly found her role in the music business as a songwriter and producer. Their first composition, "Free Girl," was reportedly written a week after Bell's suggestion. The Creed-Bell team went on to become a song factory, cranking out hit after hit for more than a decade. They also became pillars of the Philadelphia Sound - a Philadelphia-inspired brand of soul music that began in the city in the late-1960s and produced numerous hits worldwide in the 1970s. Their songwriting collaboration yielded such hits as "Living a Little, Laughing a Little," "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love?" "You Make Me Feel Brand New," "You Are Everything," "Stop, Look Listen (To Your Heart)," "Betcha By Golly, Wow," "I'm Stone in Love With You," and "The Rubberband Man," among many others. The roster of stars who recorded their songs and who they produced reads like a Who's Who of popular music: Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Teddy Pendergrass, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Dusty Springfield, Johnny Mathis, the Stylistics, the Spinners, the Intruders, and Connie Stevens, to name just a few. By 1975, Creed had amassed a catalog of 125 songs and her partnership with Bell was well-acknowledged by the recording industry with 23 gold and platinum records at the time of her death. But success never overtook Creed. According to the Inquirer, she was quoted as saying she was "still a Jewish, middle-class housewife and mother, and I happen to write songs." Creed was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 26, but she continued working hard. Her most-well known composition with Bell, "Greatest Love of All," was originally written for the 1977 film, "The Greatest" about the life of Muhammed Ali, who played himself in the film. The song became a worldwide hit in the spring of 1986 when Whitney Houston's version topped the charts. Sadly, Creed would not see her song reach number one, as her battle with cancer ended on April 10 - a few weeks prior to its topping the charts. In 1987, her family and friends established the Linda Creed Breast Cancer Foundation and, in 1992, she was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.