Jerry Butler obituary

The Guardian

23-02-2025

When a Philadelphia radio disc jockey gave the young Jerry Butler the nickname of 'the Iceman', it was in recognition of the singer's avoidance of on-stage histrionics rather than any lack of warmth in his polished but ardent delivery.
Butler, who has died aged 85, had hits across three decades, with records that spanned the evolution of African-American popular music, from the gospel-influenced doo-wop of For Your Precious Love, aimed at the teenagers of the 1950s, through the suave balladry of Moon River and Make It Easy on Yourself in the 60s, to the sophisticated boudoir soul of I Want to Do It to You in the 70s.
There was a background to his unruffled demeanour. In his 2004 autobiography, titled Only the Strong Survive: Memoirs of a Soul Survivor, Butler gave credit to a teacher in the fifth grade at his elementary school in Chicago. Her name was Ernestine Curry and she taught 'maths, English, history, music, etiquette and how to box'.
She also told her class of 11-year-olds about such great figures from Black history as Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, the world heavyweight champion boxer Jack Johnson and the jazz composer and bandleader Duke Ellington, while getting them to read the works of the historian WEB DuBois and the poet and novelist Countee Cullen. 'Mrs Curry gave us a sense of pride and dignity that has carried me and many other of her students through life,' Butler said.
In later life Butler went into politics. He took a master's degree in political science and became a commissioner for Cook County, whose county seat is Chicago, serving on the 17-member board from 1985 to 2018.
His place in the affection of soul fans was retained long after the end of his recording career. When Bruce Springsteen released a collection of cover versions of soul classics in 2022, he included two of Butler's best known songs: Only the Strong Survive, which gave the album its title, and Hey, Western Union Man,.
Butler was born in Sunflower County, Mississippi, where his parents picked cotton as sharecroppers. He was aged three when the family became part of the Great Migration, moving to Chicago. His father, Jerry Sr, worked two jobs to feed the family, for the city's sanitation and streets department and for the Illinois Central Railroad. His mother, Arvelia (nee Agnew), took her children – two girls and two boys – to worship and sing at the Church of God in Christ.
Every Sunday morning they listened to the three-hour sermons of the Rev Annie Bell Mayfield, whose grandson Curtis was a contemporary and became a friend. Butler was soon joining Annie Bell Mayfield's Travelling Souls Spiritualist gospel caravan, touring throughout the US in his school holidays as a member of a group called the Northern Jubilee Singers and experiencing at first hand the sounds of the great gospel groups of the time, including the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Soul Stirrers, with Sam Cooke.
Butler was 14 when his father died suddenly of a heart attack, forcing him to begin taking night jobs in factories to help the family's finances while attending Washburne Trade School, where he trained to become a chef.
It was seeing Nat King Cole in a Chicago nightclub that showed the teenaged Butler the kind of performer he aspired to be. In 1956 he stopped going to church and started singing with his first R&B group, a quartet called the Quails. After they split up, he and Mayfield got together to form a group that became the Impressions.
For their first single, released on a local label, Butler and two of the other members of the group, Richard and Arthur Brooks, wrote a ballad called For Your Precious Love. Its blend of doo-wop cadences, gospel harmonies and Butler's pleading vocal not only gave them a Top 20 hit but induced the audience at the Apollo in Harlem to call the young men back for three encores of the same song.
Two years later, having been persuaded by the record company to pursue a solo career, Butler achieved even greater success – No 1 in the R&B chart, No 7 in the pop chart – with the lovelorn He Will Break Your Heart, co-written with the record's producer, Calvin Carter, and Mayfield, who also sang the distinctive high harmony part on the chorus.
Mayfield and the Impressions would go on to greater things, but Butler's subsequent career burned on an intermittent flame. He was the first to record the Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer song Moon River in 1961, but saw it become a bigger hit for Andy Williams. A year later his version of Make It Easy on Yourself, by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, was also the first to be released. In 1964 his swooning duet with Betty Everett on Gilbert Bécaud's Let It Be Me, with an English lyric by Manny Curtis, reached the top five.
In 1965 he and Otis Redding wrote I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now), a ballad that might have been the sequel to For Your Precious Love. It became one of Redding's early hits and was covered by many other artists, accruing royalties that Butler claimed outstripped all his other earnings put together.
In the late 60s he teamed up with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the gifted and ambitious Philadelphia-based songwriters and producers, for a string of heavily arranged hits that included Hey, Western Union Man, Only the Strong Survive and Moody Woman, and several albums, such as The Iceman Cometh and Ice on Ice, whose titles exploited the nickname bestowed upon him many years earlier.
He made frequent appearances as the host of oldies shows on television and served a term as the chairman of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, a charity set up to provide belated support for black artists unfairly treated by the music business. In 1991 he and the four other original Impressions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
His brother Billy, a singer and guitarist with whom Butler ran a workshop for young artists, died in 2015. His wife, Annette (nee Smith), whom he married in 1959 and who had been one of his backing singers, died in 2019. He is survived by their twin sons, Randall and Anthony, four grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.
Jerry Butler, singer and politician, born 8 December 1939; died 20 February 2025