Jerry “The Iceman” Butler went from street-corner singing and belting out gospel songs in church to co-founding the popular vocal R&B group the Impressions, which was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
Although Butler’s time in the Impressions only lasted a few years, he enjoyed many years of success afterward as a songwriter and as a solo singer with a rich, creamy smooth baritone voice, penning and performing numerous tunes that found success including “He Will Break Your Heart,” “Hey, Western Union Man” and “Only the Strong Survive.”
While Butler never fully abandoned music, he had a full life outside of it, running a beverage distribution business and serving as a Cook County Board member for 32 years, stepping down in 2018.
Butler, 85, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease on Feb. 20 at his home in the South Side’s Douglas neighborhood, according to his assistant.
Born in Sunflower, Mississippi, Butler moved to Chicago as a toddler and grew up in the Near North Side area that would later be the site for the Cabrini-Green Homes. From a young age he sang both in church and in street-corner doo-wop groups. One of his closest companions was Curtis Mayfield, who went on to become an influential soul musician known as the “Gentle Genius.”
“I met Curtis when he was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I must have been all of 11 or 12,” Butler told the Tribune in 1992. “We sang gospel music together in his grandmother’s church. And when the group that later became the Impressions was formed, when I thought about who we should have in this group, he was the only person that I thought about.”
Butler trained to be a chef at Washburne Trade School for a few years, but music wouldn’t let him go and in 1957, he got together with Mayfield, Sam Gooden and brothers Arthur and Richard Brooks to create the Impressions.
The group auditioned for Calvin Carter at the Black-owned independent label Vee-Jay Records. One of the songs they auditioned was “For Your Precious Love” — originally written by Butler as a poem for school — and Carter urged Butler to sing it, rather than recite it.
Vee-Jay signed the group, and made the song its first single, and it became an immediate hit, selling 150,000 copies within the first two weeks of its release in 1958. Former Tribune critic Greg Kot in 1991 wrote that “many regard ‘For Your Precious Love’ as the first true ‘soul’ record, forging a new style out of the blues, doo-wop and gospel music.”
The band was short-lived, in part because its first record identified the act — incorrectly — as “Jerry Butler and the Impressions.”
“Well, the Impressions were madder than all get-out and wanted to do terrible things to my head,” Butler later said. “And I said, ‘Fellas, I’m innocent. I don’t know anything more about this than you do.’ So we went and confronted (Vivian Carter, Vee-Jay’s co-owner) with the question, and she said, ‘We’re not going to change it because we’ve already pressed up 50,000 records, and I’m not going to go back and reprint 50,000 label copies just to keep a bunch of little snot-nosed kids happy.’”
Ultimately, Butler figured out that Carter’s plan had been to spin off Butler as a solo artist and have two hitmakers: Butler on his own and the Impressions.
Amid dissension, Butler left the Impressions in 1960 and embarked on a solo career, though not all feelings were bruised. He worked closely with Mayfield, co-writing songs such as Butler’s first No. 1 R&B hit, “He Will Break Your Heart.” On the Vee-Jay label, Butler recorded other Top 10 hits, such as “Find Another Girl,” “I’m a Telling You” and, with Betty Everett, “Let It Be Me.” He also had a hit with “Moon River,” before the late crooner Andy Williams made it his theme song.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Butler worked with two young Philadelphia songwriters and producers, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and the result was a string of his hits including “Never Give You Up,” “Hey, Western Union Man,” “What’s the Use of Breaking Up,” “Ain’t Understanding Mellow” and “Only the Strong Survive.”
Butler’s vocals stood out — including a moan that lingered and dragged a step or two behind the beat — and rendered him so cool that a Philadelphia disc jockey nicknamed him “The Iceman.”
In 1985, he was featured with Aretha Franklin in a commercial for McDonald’s McDLT — she liked it hot, he liked it cool.
Butler was a partner in two beer-distribution companies, starting in the 1970s. His interest in politics, which led him to seek a Cook County Board seat in 1985, stemmed in part from the racism that he and his bandmates had encountered.
“Here we were young performers who really thought we had arrived. Our records were being played on Black and white radio stations all over the United States. And still we were being treated as second-class citizens,” he told the Tribune in 1992. “That was one of the things that really said to me and the others (in the Impressions) that this is terribly wrong, and what can we do with all of this fame and notoriety that’s going at us this early in life to try and change some things?
“So we got involved in the political process. We got involved in helping to attract audiences for other political people to speak. We got involved in movements, and we participated even in the sit-ins in the South. We became spokesmen for the people. So I think that kind of gives you an idea of why I’m so political.”
In seeking the Democratic nomination for a Cook County Board seat, Butler told supporters that he wanted to see the county award more contracts to minority businesses.
“I know needing and I know wanting, but I also know caring and sharing, and that is what I intend to take to the Cook County Board as a commissioner,” he told supporters in November 1985.
Butler, who continued to occasionally perform while on the board, chaired the Law Enforcement and Corrections Committee and later the Health and Hospitals Committee. A longtime ally of then-Cook County Board President John Stroger and later of Stroger’s son, Todd, Butler emerged early on as a proponent of changing the way board members were elected, from at-large berths to single-member districts. He also endorsed building a new Cook County Hospital and was an early promoter of the county’s eventual decision to buy the troubled Provident Medical Center.
Initially, Butler rejected the idea of renovating the old Cook County Hospital building for other uses.
“I came to this board 16 years ago and the building on Harrison Street was an old raggedy piece of junk,” he told the Tribune in 2003. “In the last few minutes it has been uplifted to the point of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.”
The old hospital building now is a mixed-use development, including a Hyatt Hotel.
“Jerry Butler was more than a musical icon — he was a dedicated public servant who gave over three decades of his life to the residents of Cook County,” County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said in a statement. “As a Cook County Commissioner from 1985 to 2018, he worked tirelessly to expand healthcare access, improve infrastructure and advocate for policies that strengthened our communities.”
Butler earned a degree in political science in 1993 from Governors State University. He also was active in the Rhythm and Blues Foundation as it worked to provide assistance to musicians, as well as serving as the lead plaintiff in a battle the foundation waged with the record industry over health and retirement benefits previously denied to long-ago recording artists.
Butler stepped down from the Cook County Board in 2018.
Butler published autobiography, “Only the Strong Survive: Memoirs of a Soul Survivor,” in 2000. He made clear he had no regrets about a music career that was successful but never reached the the heights of better-known names.
“That’s like saying if I was born rich I’d be so much better off,” he told the Tribune in 1991. “I never regretted who I am. I’ve been so greatly blessed that it’s hard to say I’ve been cheated. It’s like Frank Sinatra said a few weeks ago at an awards ceremony I attended. He got a standing ovation and then he said, ‘That was more than I expected…’ then he winked… ‘but not as much as I deserve.’ That’s how I feel about my life: More than I expected, but maybe not as much as I deserve. Because who really gets all that they think they deserve?”
Butler’s wife of 60 years, Annette, died in 2019. Survivors include twin sons Anthony and Randall. Information on other survivors was not immediately available.
A service tentatively is planned for March 8 at Fellowship Chicago Church, 4543 S. Princeton Ave.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
