Kenny Jeremiah, the lead singer of the Soul Survivors, succumbed to COVID-19 a week ago. While he might not be the best-known musician to die this year, his group’s big hit represents a small piece of music history.
When we think of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff today, we associate them with Philly soul, the lushly orchestrated R&B they produced that eclipsed the Motown sound in the early ’70s and eventually gave birth to disco. But their earliest success, in the form of their first Top 5 record, came way back in 1967 with a song they wrote for a bunch of white guys.
The Soul Survivors came from New York but moved to Philly, where they had more fans, and signed with Crimson Records, partly owned by Jerry Blavat, who hooked them up with Gamble and Huff to record this tune, based on a killer bass line. The record, which Gamble and Huff also produced, reached No. 4 on the national charts.
As a kid, whenever I heard this song on WIBG or WFIL — it was a No. 1 hit in Philadelphia — I just assumed it was about Philly’s Schuykill Expressway, and I was right. Gamble, who wrote the lyrics, told NPR, “I was on my way over to see a young lady, and the expressway was backed up. This is when they just started the expressway in 1967. I was sitting there for what seemed like hours, so I started beating on the dashboard and singing, ‘Expressway to your heart, trying to get to you.’ Songs come from your imagination. You have to be quick to capture the moment.” The honking car horns were inspired by the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” released the previous year.
The original hit recording clocked in at a tidy 2:21, apparently cut down from this longer version.
