{"id":44059,"date":"2023-07-08T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=44059"},"modified":"2023-10-15T17:31:45","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T00:31:45","slug":"cover-me-hey-western-union-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/08\/cover-me-hey-western-union-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Cover Me: Hey, Western Union Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Springsteen&#8217;s <em>Only the Strong Survive<\/em> is generally considered an album of the singer&#8217;s youthful favorites, but two of its songs&#8211;including the title track&#8211;are by an artist that had flown relatively under his radar.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t super familiar with Jerry Butler until I went searching for material for this record,&#8221; Springsteen told <em>Asbury Park Press <\/em>interviewer Chris Jordan last year. &#8220;Jon Landau was the huge Jerry Butler fan and he suggested &#8216;Hey, Western Union Man&#8217; and I said I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"758\" height=\"427\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UrlCaXd49AA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Springsteen had never heard the song before, but trusting his manager he listened to it. &#8220;It was kind of complicated, and then I got into it really deeply.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It <em>is<\/em> a bit complicated. Butler wrote the song with legendary songwriters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. (The three also collaborated on &#8220;Only the Strong Survive.&#8221;) They gave the song a Philly soul groove, but its gimmick is the chorus change-up that briefly kicks the song into a staccato rhythm that sounds exactly like the musical equivalent of a Western Union\u00a0 telegram.<\/p>\n<p>(For the young&#8217;uns: telegrams were Morse code messages transmitted over long distances by electrical impulses in pre-Internet, pre-telephone days (although some 17 million telegrams are still sent annually even today).)<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"758\" height=\"427\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YPsgEdmlUf0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>The gimmick worked. &#8220;Hey, Western Union Man&#8221; cut through the radio clutter and clawed its way to #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and all the way to the top of the R&amp;B chart. It was novel and popular enough that both The Supremes and William Bell (both of whom are also represented on\u00a0<em>Only the Strong Survive<\/em>) covered the song as album tracks in the year or two after the song&#8217;s release.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"758\" height=\"427\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pODQ8JnsbxI?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Neither cover was released as a single, and &#8220;Hey, Western Union Man&#8221; went largely uncovered after that until Landau introduced it to Springsteen more than fifty years later.<\/p>\n<p>Bruce&#8217;s cover hews pretty closely to Butler&#8217;s original, preserving the arrangement and taking very few lyrical liberties. It&#8217;s a wise choice: the arrangement is a key ingredient to the song&#8217;s recipe.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"758\" height=\"427\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A-Q3NYVr1iM?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;Hey, Western Union Man&#8221; converted Springsteen into a Butler fan. He ended up covering not only the two Butler songs that grace his latest album, but (as he told NPR in a December 2022 interview) &#8220;several other of the songs&#8221; from Butler&#8217;s 1968 album,\u00a0<em>The Iceman Cometh<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Although he gave no specifics, I&#8217;m betting we&#8217;ll hear Butler&#8217;s &#8220;Never Give You Up&#8221; on Bruce&#8217;s rumored follow-up cover album&#8211;hopefully someday soon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hey, Western Union Man<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Recorded:\u00a02021<br \/>\nReleased:\u00a0<em>Only the Strong Survive\u00a0<\/em>(2022)<br \/>\nNever performed<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/roll-of-the-dice-album-by-album\/\">full index<\/a>. New entries every week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Springsteen was unfamiliar with Jerry Butler until Jon Landau brought &#8220;Hey, Western Union Man&#8221; to his attention. He ended up covering several of Butler&#8217;s songs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[3582,3583,3550],"class_list":["post-44059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover-me","category-roll-of-the-dice","tag-hey-western-union-man","tag-jerry-butler","tag-only-the-strong-survive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- All in One SEO 5.0.3 - aioseo.com -->\n\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Springsteen was unfamiliar with Jerry Butler until Jon Landau brought &quot;Hey, Western Union Man&quot; to his attention. 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