Jerry ‘Ice Man’ Butler, soul singer of ‘Only the…
Jerry Butler, a premier soul singer of the Nineteen Sixties and after whose wealthy, intimate baritone graced such hits as “For Your Precious Love,” “Only the Strong Survive” and “Make It Easy On Yourself,” has died at age 85.
Butler’s niece, Yolanda Goff, advised The Associated Press that Butler died Thursday of Parkinson’s illness at his home in Chicago. A longtime Chicago resident, Butler was a former Cook County board commissioner who would nonetheless carry out on weekends and determine himself as Jerry “Ice Man” Butler, a show business nickname given for his understated model.
Butler, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a three-time Grammy Award nominee, was a voice for 2 main soul music hubs: Chicago and Philadelphia. Along with childhood buddy Curtis Mayfield, he helped discovered the Chicago-based Impressions and sang lead on the breakthrough hit “For Your Precious Love,” a deeply emotional, gospel-influenced ballad that made Butler a star earlier than the age of 20. A decade later, in the late ‘60s, he joined the Philadelphia-based manufacturing workforce of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, who labored with him on “Only the Strong Survive,” “Hey Western Union Man” and different hits. His albums “Ice on Ice” and “The Ice Man Cometh” are thought to be early fashions for the danceable, string-powered productions that turned the basic “Sound of Philadelphia.”
Butler additionally was an impressed songwriter who collaborated with Otis Redding on “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” a signature ballad for Redding; and with Gamble and Huff on “Only the Strong Survive,” later coated by Elvis Presley amongst others. His different credit included “For Your Precious Love,” “Never Give You Up” (with Gamble and Huff) and “He Will Break Your Heart,” which Butler helped write after he started excited about the boyfriends of the groupies he met on the highway.
Jerry Butler, Nineteen Sixties soul singer and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, has died at age 85. WireImage
“You go into a town; you’re only going to be there for one night; you want some company; you find a girl; you blow her mind,” Butler advised Rolling Stone in 1969. “Now you know that girl hasn’t been sitting in town waiting for you to come in. She probably has another fellow and the other fellow’s probably in love with her; they’re probably planning to go through the whole thing, right? But you never take that into consideration on that particular night.”
The son Mississippi sharecroppers, Butler and his household moved moved north to Chicago when he was 3, half of the period’s “Great Migration” of Black people out of the South. He liked every kind of music as a baby and was a good enough singer that a buddy instructed he come to a native place of worship, the Traveling Souls Spiritualist Church, presided over by the Rev. A.B. Mayfield. Her grandson, Curtis Mayfield, quickly turned a longtime collaborator. (Mayfield died in 1999.)
In 1958, Mayfield and Butler together with Sam Gooden and brothers Arthur and Richard Brooks recorded “For Your Precious Love” for Vee-Jay Records. The group known as itself the Impressions, however Vee-Jay, anxious to advertise an particular person star, marketed the music as by Jerry Butler and the Impressions, resulting in estrangement between Butler and the different performers and to an sudden solo profession.
“Fame didn’t change me as much as it changed the people around me,” Butler wrote in his memoir “Only the Strong Survive,” printed in 2000.
One of his early solo performances was a 1961 cowl of “Moon River,” the theme to “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Butler was the first performer to hit the charts with what turned a pop customary, however “Moon River” could be related to Andy Williams after the singer was chosen to carry out it at the Academy Awards, a snub Butler long resented. His different solo hits, some recorded with Mayfield, included “He Will Break Your Heart”, “Find Another Girl” and “I’m A-Telling You.”
The Grammy nominee sang lead on the breakthrough hit “For Your Precious Love,” that made him a star earlier than the age of 20. Getty Images
By 1967, his formal model appeared out of fashion, however Butler was impressed by the new music popping out of Philadelphia and obtained permission from his file label (Mercury) to work with Gamble and Huff. The chemistry, Butler recalled, was so “fierce” they wrote hits comparable to “Only the Strong Survive” in much less than an hour.
“Things just seem to fall into place,” Butler advised Ebony magazine in 1969. “We lock ourselves in a room, create stories about lovers, compose the music, then write the lyrics to match the music.”
By the Nineteen Eighties, Butler’s profession had pale and he was turning into more and more all in favour of politics. Encouraged by the 1983 election of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, he ran efficiently for the Cook County Board in 1985 and was re-elected repeatedly, even after supporting a controversial gross sales tax increase in 2009. He retired from the board in 2018.
Butler was married for 60 years to Annette Smith, who died in 2019, and together with her had twin sons. Many of his generational friends had struggled financially and he labored to help them, whereas additionally supporting varied members of the family. He chaired the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which presents a wide selection of help to musicians, and pushed the industry to offer medical and retirement advantages. Butler thought of himself fortunate, even when he did move on the probability to own a half of Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International recording company.
“You know, I have lived well. My wife probably would say I could’ve lived better,” Butler advised the Chicago Reader in 2011. “Did I make 40, 50 million dollars? No. Did I keep one or two? Yes. The old guys on the street used to say, ‘It’s not how much you make. It’s how much you keep.’”
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