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Only the Strong Survive - Jerry Butler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPkd9ZQOtbI Jerry Butler's biggest hit was "Only the Strong Survive" from his one classic album "The Ice Man Cometh". In 1967 he teamed up with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, soon-to-be major movers behind the TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia) sound of the 1970's. Ostensibly a parental advice song, for many it became one of those hidden black emancipation anthems, although this subtext is harder to envisage than, say, Joe Tex's "The Love You Save (

He Will Break Your Heart - Jerry Butler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAohwPAFTLk After Butler's departure from the Impressions in 1959, he struggled to maintain the success he had with the Impressions - his first few solo singles were US R&B Chart hits but didn't make the US Hot 100 - until his old schoolmate and fellow Impression, Curtis Mayfield, teamed up with him as songwriter, guitarist and harmony singer. Mayfield was the only Impression that hadn't held Vee Jay's singling out of Butler as the group's lead

For Your Precious Love - Jerry Butler and the Impressions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3N7v2AhO5E There are many examples of groups suddenly suddenly discovering that one of their number is now being credited as the leader with the rest consigned to the nominal role of backing singers or band: Diana Ross and the Supremes, Eric Burden and the Animals, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and so on. And there are often many different reasons for this, not always the ones that Ross, Burden, Harley and co give. While groups such as Tommy

Friday on My Mind - the Easybeats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSowZcvoqr4 I confess that I had never heard of Snowy Fleet (real name Gordon Henry Fleet) until he died on February 17th of this year. He was drummer for the Australian band the Easybeats which had one huge hit in the UK and the US in 1966, and pretty much nothing else in either country. But what a hit: "Friday on My Mind" is one of those anthemic songs that sums up a state of mind recognised by ordinary people that is universal. As much as an

The Gypsy Faerie Queen - Marianne Faithfull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwbCZ5mDZWM Marianne Faithfull's 1978 album "Broken English" (see last post) included three tracks co-written by her and on her next album after that all 9 tracks bar one were co-written by her. Thereafter Faithfull's next thirteen studio albums consisted mainly of tracks in which she was cowriter, providing the words with others composing the music, with the exception of four LPs deliberately dedicated to recording covers: "Rich Kid Blues", "

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan - Marianne Faithfull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0NxhFn0szc It's curious, that while the UK had its fair share of female pop stars in the 1960's and...

Sister Morphine - Marianne Faithfull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8oWXbGB-7o One day I will do a series of posts on the greatest "B sides" of singles. Marianne...

As Tears Go By - Marianne Faithfull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_phZZgkT1Jk People often think that the reason why Marianne Faithfull became a successful pop star and actress in the sixties, was because she was a girlfriend of Mick Jagger. This is not the case. The truth is that she was a folk singer performing in coffee houses around London in April 1964 when she met the Stones' manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, at what all sources call "a Rolling Stones launch party". Maybe it was a Rolling Stones lunch party: