Latest news with #OnlytheStrongSurvive
Otago Daily Times
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Obituary: Jerry Butler, musician
Jerry Butler on 10 August, 1980 in Chicago. Soul star Jerry Butler's musical talents eclipsed those of many of his contemporaries, musicians who he spent much of his latter life helping. The son of Mississippi sharecroppers, Butler was raised in Chicago and worshipped at the Travelling Souls Spiritualist Church, presided over by the Rev A.B. Mayfield. The preacher's grandson, Curtis Mayfield, and Butler, were part of The Impressions, a vocal group which had a big local hit with For Your Precious Love, but who fell out because the record company renamed the group Jerry Butler and the Impressions. Butler, still regularly working with Mayfield, went solo: hits included I've Been Loving You Too Long (with Otis Redding) and Only the Strong Survive, later covered by Elvis Presley. As his music career faded out Butler went into local politics and served more than 30 years on the Cook County Board. He also chaired the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which offers assistance to musicians, and pushed the industry to provide medical and retirement benefits. Jerry "The Ice Man" Butler died on February 20 aged 85. — APL/agencies
Daily Tribune
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Tribune
New Bruce Springsteen music set for June 27 release
Bruce Springsteen announced Thursday he will release a boxed set of new music this summer spanning 83 songs. 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums' is slated to drop June 27, seven complete albums recorded between 1983 and 2018, The Boss said. ''The Lost Albums' were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,' said Springsteen in a statement on his website. 'I've played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I'm glad you'll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.' The 75-year-old released a preview in the form of the track 'Rain In The River,' an electrified arena-rock anthem. In a video clip accompanying the announcement, he said he took advantage of the pandemic to finish 'everything I had in my vault.' Springsteen last released a studio album in 2022, a collection of covers of classics by the likes of the Four Tops and the Supremes entitled 'Only the Strong Survive.'
Chicago Tribune
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Jerry ‘Iceman' Butler, former Cook County commissioner and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, dies at 85
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.
CNN
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Jerry ‘Ice Man' Butler, soul singer whose hits included ‘Only the Strong Survive,' dead at 85
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, the Associated Press reported Friday. 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 & 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 group 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. 'Things just seem to fall into place,' Butler told 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 1980s, Butler's career had faded and he was becoming increasingly interested in politics. Encouraged by the 1983 election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor, he ran successfully for the Cook County Board in 1985 and was re-elected repeatedly, even after supporting a controversial 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 with her had twin sons. Many of his generational peers had struggled financially and he worked to help them. He chaired the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which provides a wide range of assistance to musicians, and pushed the industry to provide medical and retirement benefits. Butler considered himself relatively lucky, even if he did pass on the chance to own a part 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 told 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.''
Voice of America
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Voice of America
Soul singer Jerry 'Iceman' Butler dies at 85
Jerry Butler, a premier soul singer of the 1960s and '70s 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 — whose show business nickname, "The Iceman," was given to him for his understated style — died Thursday at his home in Chicago. 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 age 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 also a songwriter, collaborating 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." Link to Mayfield Butler was the son of Mississippi sharecroppers who moved north to Chicago when he 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 Reverend 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, eager to promote an individual star, advertised the song as sung 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 from the film '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 hits, some recorded with Mayfield, included "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. "Things just seem to fall into place," Butler told 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 1980s, Butler's career had faded, and he was becoming increasingly interested in politics. Encouraged by the 1983 election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor, he ran successfully for the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 1985 and was re-elected repeatedly, even after supporting a controversial 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 with her had twin sons. Many of his generational peers had struggled financially and he worked to help them. He chaired the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, which provides a wide range of assistance to musicians, and pushed the industry to provide medical and retirement benefits. Butler considered himself relatively lucky, even if he did pass on the chance to own a part 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 told 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.' "
