"Jerry 'Ice Man' Butler: Celebrated Soul singer dies at 85 in Chicago

Jerry 'Ice Man' Butler, renowned soul singer of hits like "Only the Strong Survive," passed away at 85. A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Butler's impact on music was profound.

In Short

• Jerry Butler, soul singer, dies at 85 in Chicago.
• Known as 'Iceman' for his understated style.
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member; Grammy nominee.

NEW YORK: Jerry Butler, a premier soul singer of the 1960s and after whose rich, 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, told the Chicago Sun-Times that Butler died Thursday at his home in Chicago. Butler was a former Cook County board commissioner who would still perform on weekends and identify himself as Jerry “Iceman” Butler, a show business nickname given for his understated style.

A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a three-time Grammy Award nominee, Butler was a voice for two major soul music hubs: Chicago and Philadelphia. Along with childhood friend Curtis Mayfield, he helped found 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 before the age of 20. A decade later, in the late ‘60s, he joined the Philadelphia-based production team of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, who worked with him on “Only the Strong Survive,” “Hey Western Union Man” and other hits. His albums “Ice on Ice” and “The Iceman Cometh” are regarded as early models for the danceable, string-powered productions that became the classic “Sound of Philadelphia.”

Butler was an inspired 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 covered by Elvis Presley among others. His credits also 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 began thinking about the boyfriends of the groupies he met on the road.

“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 told 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.”

Butler was the son of Mississippi sharecroppers who moved north to Chicago when Butler was 3, part of the era’s “Great Migration” of Black people out of the South. He loved all kinds of music as a child and was a good enough singer that a friend suggested he come to a local place of worship, the Traveling Souls Spiritualist Church, presided over by the Rev. A.B. Mayfield. Her grandson, Curtis Mayfield, soon became a close friend. (Mayfield died in 1999).

In 1958, Mayfield and Butler along with Sam Gooden and brothers Arthur and Richard Brooks recorded “For Your Precious Love” for Vee-Jay Records. The group called itself the Impressions, but Vee-Jay, anxious to promote an individual star, advertised the song as by Jerry Butler and the Impressions, leading to estrangement between Butler and the other performers and to an unexpected solo career.

“Fame didn’t change me as much as it changed the people around me,” Butler wrote in his memoir “Only the Strong Survive,” published in 2000.

One of his early solo performances was a 1961 cover of “Moon River,” the theme to “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Butler was the first performer to hit the charts with what became a pop standard, but “Moon River” would be associated with Andy Williams after the singer was chosen to perform it at the Academy Awards, a snub Butler long resented. His other solo hits, some recorded with Mayfield, included “He Will Break Your Heart”, “Find Another Girl” and “I’m A-Telling You.” By 1967, his formal style seemed out of fashion, but Butler was impressed by the new music coming out of Philadelphia and received permission from his record label (Mercury) to work with Gamble and Huff. The chemistry, Butler recalled, was so “fierce” they wrote hits such as “Only the Strong Survive” in less than an hour.