Jerry Butler
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All on Fri Feb 21 20:04:19 2025
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.
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