Short Takes : Survivors Win ‘Express’ Award

PHILADELPHIA — The 1960s rock group the Soul Survivors, best known for the hit “Expressway to Your Heart,” deserves $51,164 in royalties from a record company, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Broderick decided Friday that Collectables Inc. of Ardmore failed to pay the group $204,347 since 1969, but since the members didn’t sue until last year, the statute of limitations eliminated all but four years’ worth of royalties.

The company and its predecessors “unquestionably have ignored their ongoing contractual obligations,” Broderick said. It broke “its most fundamental promise to the former members of the Soul Survivors.”

The band, which broke up in 1969, consisted of Joseph Forgione of New York and Paul Venturini, Charles Ingui and Kenneth Jeremiah, all of New Jersey.

From 1980 through 1984, songs by the group appeared on at least six albums, and the foreign market for such music “is vast,” the judge said.