Only the Strong Survive - Jerry Butler
- unclestylus
- Nov 21
- 2 min read
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 (May Be Your Own)" George Perkins' "Cryin' in the Street" or even Sam and Dave's "Soul Man". Butler's old band, the Impressions had cut the greatest exemplar of this just two year's before with "People Get Ready", hard on the heels of their "Keep on Pushing'". *(see links to posts below)
I remember my mother packing my suitcase the day I was sent away to school in another country far from home, trying to hide her tears, and chucking in the book I was reading. We'd just got back to the London flat she'd hired for a week like a 1960's Airbnb, and I'd got halfway through a hardback I'd found on the shelf there, Dickens' "Great Expectations", illustrated by Osbert Lancaster. Perhaps because she could see no other way of lifting me from my abject misery at my impending departure, she slipped the book in between my shirts, thereby stealing it. The previous night she'd taken my, as a treat, to see the latest "Carry On" film, "Carry On Screaming", which had the opposite effect than she had hoped, with me up half the night, sobbing endlessly, and imagining the eyes of the people in all the pictures on the wall watching me malevolently.
Ade Edmondson, on BBC's "Desert Island Discs", said that boarding schools were places where there was "no love". "Only the Strong Survive" is an expression of motherly love, classically warning her son not to be put off by the failure of his first love. To set it up as a rule for life is Darwinian to say the least, but it would hardly be the same if the chorus were amended to the slightly more realistic "only the strong survive INTACT".
The real message is the way Butler sings the song, with a mix of finely balanced humility and authority, that of a man who's been through the mill and is better for it. The track is bolstered further by the very funky top-chords chopped out by Philly session guitarist Norman Harris intertwining with Laura Nyro's apt piano, set against Bobby Martin's vigorous and seminal string arrangement.
Others have covered this song including Elvis, Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen, but Butler's original version is far and away the best. Which figures.
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