Jerry Butler, the graceful singer and songwriter who served as the first leader of the Impressions before launching a long, hit-heavy solo career, died on Thursday at his home in Chicago. He was 85.
His death was confirmed by his assistant, who said that Mr. Butler had Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Butler’s resounding baritone voice, though gritty in timbre, was animated by gentility and charm; he approached a lyric with an almost courtly level of sensitivity. His poise explained, in part, how he came to be known as the Iceman.
Mr. Butler scored his first hit in 1958 with “For Your Precious Love,” a song he recorded with the Impressions and wrote with two other members of the group. It reached No. 11 on Billboard’s pop chart. Its lyrics stressed perseverance and loyalty, themes Mr. Butler would revisit throughout his career.
Immediately after leaving the group in 1960, he reached the Billboard Top 10 with “He Will Break Your Heart,” which he wrote with his bandmate Curtis Mayfield and Calvin Carter. The song proved durable: A reworked version by Tony Orlando and Dawn, “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You),” would become a No. 1 hit more than a decade later.
Mr. Butler’s version of “Moon River,” the Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer song from the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” climbed to No. 11 on the pop chart in 1961. The next year, his interpretation of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Make It Easy on Yourself” reached No. 20.
Two years later, he reached the Top 10 again with “Let It Be Me,” a duet with Betty Everett. It performed even better than the Everly Brothers’ version, widely considered a classic: The Butler-Everett version reached No. 5, two points higher than the Everlys had reached in 1960.
Mr. Butler enjoyed his highest pop chart position in 1968 with “Only the Strong Survive,” which reached No. 4 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the R&B list. In all, more than a dozen of his songs reached Billboard’s R&B Top 10 (three of which went all the way to No. 1). Just as many made it to Billboard’s Top 40 pop list.
Mr. Butler also made a splash, although a smaller one, in politics. In 1985, he was elected as a Democrat to the board of commissioners for Cook County, which encompasses Chicago. He would hold that position for more than three decades before retiring in 2018.
Clashes with Mr. Mayfield led to Mr. Butler’s early exit from the Impressions. Mr. Mayfield went on to have numerous hit songs, both with the Impressions (“People Get Ready,” “It’s All Right”) and as a solo artist (“Super Fly”).
Shortly after leaving the Impressions, Mr. Butler was given the Iceman nickname by the Philadelphia disc jockey Georgie Woods. “It was because I wasn’t like the other guys — Joe Tex, James Brown and the Isleys — jumping around,” Mr. Butler told the music critic David Nathan in 1975. “I just used to stand there and sing and Georgie said I was cool. Hence, the Iceman.”
Mr. Butler shared writing credits on many of his records. He also wrote the wrenching ballad “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” with Otis Redding, whose recording of the song was a hit in 1965.
“My approach to recording is somewhat different to what most artists adopt,” Mr. Butler told Mr. Nathan. “I am more involved creatively. While a lot of other artists lean on the producers, I work more with the producers.”
Among the honors Mr. Butler received were an N.A.A.C.P. Image Award and a Rhythm and Blues Pioneer Award. He was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2015. Along with the other members of the Impressions, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. He also served for a time as chairman of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation.
Jerry Butler Jr. was born on Dec. 8, 1939, in Sunflower, Miss., in the northwestern part of the state, to Jerry and Arvelia Butler. When he was 3, his family moved to Chicago, where they lived in the Cabrini-Green housing development.
He learned about music in church, where he met Mr. Mayfield when they were teenagers.
“In church, someone’s going to say ‘Amen,’ whether you’re good or bad,” Mr. Butler said in a 2011 interview with KPBS Radio in San Diego.
Mr. Butler and Mr. Mayfield soon formed a quartet, the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers. In 1957, they joined a doo-wop group, the Roosters, which eventually became the Impressions. The next year, as Jerry Butler and the Impressions, the group was signed by a local label, Vee-Jay Records.
“For Your Precious Love,” which reached No. 3 on the R&B chart, was based on a poem Mr. Butler wrote when he was 16.
“We were trying to find a new sound,” he told the weekly newspaper The Chicago Reader in 2011. “We didn’t want to be doo-wop. We wanted to have a different and lasting impression.”
“For Your Precious Love” “can almost be considered the first soul record,” Joe McEwen wrote in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.”
In 1961, Mr. Butler became the first singer to put “Moon River” on the charts, and the only one whose version made the Top 40, reaching No. 11 in Billboard. (Andy Williams’s more celebrated version, which became his theme song, was never released as a single.) The song, originally sung by Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” won the Oscar for best song in 1962.
Mr. Butler’s smooth vocal on “Moon River” was a nod to Nat King Cole, an early influence. He pivoted to his harder soul side when he collaborated with the writing and producing team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff for two of his most highly regarded albums, “The Iceman Cometh” in 1968 and “Ice on Ice” the next year.
Even after his departure from the Impressions, Mr. Butler continued to work with Mr. Mayfield, who sang backup on “He Will Break Your Heart,” and co-wrote the songs “Find Another Girl” and “I’m A-Telling You.”
Mr. Butler reunited with Mr. Mayfield and the Impressions for a national tour in 1983, and he continued to perform as a solo act even after he entered politics. Late in his career, he hosted a series of popular PBS specials celebrating the vintage stars of doo-wop, R&B and soul.
Mr. Butler did not flaunt his star status as a Cook County official; rather, The Chicago Tribune reported in 1995, he won praise from colleagues for his “studious nature” and the way he “immersed himself in the nuts and bolts of county government.” He was “a main proponent in changing the way board members are elected, from at-large berths to single-member districts,” The Tribune added.
Mr. Butler studied political science and music history at Governors State University in University Park, Ill., earning a bachelor’s degree in 1993 and a master’s degree in 1998. His autobiography, “Only the Strong Survive,” written with Earl Smith, was published in 2004.
Mr. Butler’s wife of 60 years, Annette, who occasionally sang backup for him, died in 2019. His survivors include two sons, Randy and Tony; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
Speaking to The Chicago Reader, Mr. Butler’s sister, Mattie, summed up his dedication to romantic music. “He loves to talk about love and the feeling of love,” she said. “He really does love a lot of people — genuinely.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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