Legendary Soul Singer Was 85

Jerry Butler has died at the age of 85.

Per the Chicago Sun-Times, Butler died on Thursday, Feb. 20 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a family friend told the publication. “He was very important to both music and to the community, and he will be missed,” his niece Yolanda Goff told the publication on Feb. 21.

“We hope the city of Chicago recognizes the legacy he leaves behind.”

Nicknamed “The Ice Man,” Butler began his music career with the R&B group the Impressions. After two years with them, he embarked on a successful solo career, with hit songs like “He Will Break Your Heart,” “Only the Strong Survive,” “Ain’t Understanding Mellow” and many more.

Butler was born in Sunflower, Miss., in 1939. His family moved to Chicago when he was 3 years old. He first discovered music in church. “I was the guy that never expected to be in show business. Show business was an avocation,” he told NPR in 2005. “It was something that I did as a hobby. I enjoyed it. I would have sang free if I couldn’t have gotten paid. And once I found out I could get paid, I took it a little more seriously, and got into it a little bit more.”

He and his future Impressions bandmate Curtis Mayfield sang with the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers. When they left the group, they joined the Roosters. In 1958, the group got a new manager and a new name: Jerry Butler & the Impressions.

Their first hit single was 1958’s “For Your Precious Love,” which hit No. 3 on the R&B chart and No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Butler’s favorite of all his songs, he told NPR. “ ‘For Your Precious Love’ is the one song that if I go and perform someplace and don’t sing it, people want their money back. They think they’ve been cheated,” he said.

After the song’s success, “all of a sudden I had money,” Butler told the Chicago Reader in 1990. “I could buy clothes. I could buy a car. I was on the Dick Clark show [American Bandstand]. I was doing all the kind of stuff that folks dream about. But I don’t think it ever really affected me the way it does other people. I never saw it as I’m a star.”

Butler left the group in 1960. He would continue to collaborate with Mayfield, however, and Mayfield wrote and sang background on some of Butler’s hits. Mayfield died in 1999.

Butler’s 1960 single, “He Will Break Your Heart,” hit No. 7 on the pop chart. Some of his other successful singles included “Find Another Girl”, “I’m A-Telling You,” “Only the Strong Survive,” “Let It Be Me,” “Hey, Western Union Man,” “Never Give You Up” and “Ain’t Understanding Mellow.” “He Will Break Your Heart” also charted in the ‘70s when it was re-recorded as “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)” by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Butler was also one of the first artists to record the song “Moon River.”

Butler was also a songwriter, and he and Otis Redding co-wrote the latter’s hit “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”  

Philadelphia DJ Georgie Woods gave Butler the nickname “Ice Man.” “While performing one night in Philadelphia, the sound system went down, and from my days in the church, we just kept on singing,” Butler told KPBS in 2011. “So we sang the song a cappella. And when we finished it, the people jumped up outta their seats and hooped and hollered and George ran on stage and said. ‘That was the coolest thing I ever saw. So cool, we’re gonna call you the Ice Man.'” Butler later used the nickname for the 1968 album The Ice Man Cometh and the 1969 album Ice on Ice.

Butler continued to tour and collaborate with other R&B artists. “You know, we are at the point now where we are masters of our craft, and we just go out there and have a real good time,” he told NPR. In all, he released more than 50 albums.

Butler was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Impressions in 1991. But he didn’t care much for accolades. “The work is more important than the completion of the work,” he told the Chicago Reader. “I enjoy doing it more than I enjoy having done it and being rewarded for it or being awarded for it or getting a plaque for it or a gold record for it. That’s the after-effect of the work. The work’s more important.” In 2004, he released a memoir, Only the Strong Survive: Memoirs of a Soul Survivor.

Butler served on the Cook County Board Commissioner in the greater Chicago area from 1986 to 2018. He took a break from recording once he was elected. He decided to enter politics, he told the Reader, at the encouragement of a friend.

Butler married Annette Butler in 1959. In later years, she worked as one of his background singers. “She just had a multitude of talent, but I think she let it all get swallowed up by me,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2019 when she died. “She told me I took her to places she never thought she’d go. Two young people from the West Side of Chicago, going to England and Portugal and all those places.” The couple shared twin sons, Anthony and Randy.

“We were two young kids having a heckuva time,” Butler told the Sun-Times, “doing what we loved.”

Butler is survived by his sons, four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.