The Roosters caught the attention of a man named Eddie Thomas - who, Butler writes in his 2004 autobiography, Only the Strong Survive: Memoirs of a Soul Survivor, showed up one night, “like out of nowhere. “There was big jazz in this town and big blues, so we had all that converging.” When the local R&B stations would go off the air at midnight, he’d switch over to WLS AM for the country and western show, Prairie Farmer on the Air. In those days, Butler listened to everything. Mayfield, who had another group going, was enticed by Butler to join in short-term and see which act had a better chance of making it. “Because that’s one place you can be good or bad and somebody’s gonna say, ‘Amen.’” He gravitated through friends to the Traveling Souls Spiritualist Church, where he formed a group called the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers, including a younger singer-guitarist named Curtis Mayfield, who would go on to be as essential to the development of Chicago soul, and to Butler’s music, as Butler himself.īy the time he was 17, Butler committed himself fully to rhythm and blues, hooking up with a trio of Tennessee transplants who had a group called The Roosters: Sam Gooden and brothers Arthur and Richard Brooks.
“All people who sing probably started in church,” Butler said. Like many a soul singer, Butler first got serious with gospel. “My mother used to sing, bouncing me on her knee,singing, and I think I picked it up from that.” It was what I wanted to do for fun.” Butler said that as far back as he can remember, he sang. “I was looking to find a safe landing,” he said, to eventually open a place of his own or, at very least, ship out on a boat as a cook and see the world. Butler had worked in an uncle’s restaurant on Orleans called Pearl’s Kitchen, and he loved the bustling milieu and the clientele, ranging from police to prostitutes. As a student at the now-long-gone Washburne Vocational High School at Division and Sedgwick, Butler already had a plan for a better life - thanks to the school’s cooking class which also instructed adults under the G.I.
It was not then the notorious housing project it would become, but it was still public housing and a place to escape to from somewhere else. They settled in what would become the Cabrini-Green projects. Butler’s dignified carriage and unflappable demeanor are what earned him the nickname “The Ice Man.” Coined 50 years ago by WDAS Philadelphia DJ George Woods and later shortened to simply “Iceman,” the name is a product of a 1959 performance in Philadelphia where the public address system went out and Butler kept singing, holding the audience and filling the theater with his big baritone.īorn in Sunflower, Mississippi, in 1939, Butler was brought to Chicago by his parents three years later as they sought wartime jobs as part of the Great Migration. Yet today Butler is more of a connoisseur’s choice, not heard on the radio, even on oldies and dusties stations, as often as those other artists. There was a time, back in the late 60s, when Jerry Butler was one of the biggest stars in soul music, a creative collaborator to icons including Curtis Mayfield and Otis Redding in an era that also found Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Diana Ross and The Supremes, and The Temptations at or near the peak of their careers. Today, he mulls taxes and healthcare as the longest-serving member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Jerry “Iceman” Butler was an A-list soul singer, playing with Curtis Mayfield and Otis Redding. At the center will be Jag Quarterly, a collection of releases and creative endeavours, each marked by a different Jagjaguwar slogan that informs the Jag mindset: Dilate Your Heart This is a Mindfulness Drill Join the Ritual and the original, Sentimental Noise.Senior Spotlight: Jerry Butler - Soul Survivor Jag25 will feature unique works and collaborations from a sprawling list of artists both inside and outside Jagjaguwar’s known family of artist partners, as well as many from other mediums. They not only reshape their genres, they put iconoclastic thumbs on the scale of popular music, defying their canons and bending the tides toward them: Bon Iver, Jamila Woods, Lonnie Holley, Sharon Van Etten, Moses Sumney, Angel Olsen, and on and on. With tracks from Linda Scott, Jerry Butler, Arthur Alexander, The Tams and more.Ĭelebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Jagjaguwar is known and celebrated as a home for seemingly mythical artists. Cut Worms with his takeover show, as part of the Jagjaguwar 25th anniversary celebrations on Soho Radio.
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