Jerry Butler (born December 8, 1939) is an American soul singer and songwriter. He is also noted as being the original lead singer of the famed R&B vocal group the Impressions, as well as a 1991 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Butler is also an American politician. He serves as a Commissioner for Cook County, Illinois, having first been elected in 1985. As a member of this 17-member county board, he chairs the Health and Hospitals Committee, and serves as Vice Chair of the Construction Committee. (More from Wikipedia)
The highest profile time for Mikki Farrow in the music business was probably on several recordings that she worked on with Jerry Butler. Butler was in the same Chicago church choir with Curtis Mayfield; the two joined three members of another band, brothers Arthur Brooks and Richard Brooks plus Sam Gooden. They modified the other band’s name slightly and called themselves the Roosters.
In 1957, the band changed its name to Jerry Butler and the Impressions; they had an unforgettable hit in 1958 with “For Your Precious Love” (Butler had written the lyrics when he was only 16). Jerry Butler and the band parted amicably later that year, and Butler launched a solo career; his 1960 single “He Will Break Your Heart” hit #1.
Although primarily based in Chicago, Jerry Butler was signed by Mercury Records in 1967 and connected with the Philadelphia production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. The result was Butler’s most successful album (and the first full-length album by Gamble and Huff), The Ice Man Cometh.
The Ice Man Cometh proved highly influential; John Bush noted in Allmusic that the album “marks an excellent collaboration, the first time R&B production techniques reached a level of maturity and elegance capable of fully complementing one of the smoothest vocalists in soul history.” In 1968, Elvis Presley recorded one of the hits from The Ice Man Cometh, “Only the Strong Survive”. The Ice Man Cometh, along with the follow-up album Ice on Ice were jointly reissued on a 2001 CD called The Philadelphia Sessions.
Mikki Farrow co-wrote one of the songs on The Ice Man Cometh, “(Strange) I Still Love You” with Jerry Butler and Norman Harris; she had previously participated in a songwriters’ workshop hosted by Jerry Butler in Chicago. According to the book A House on Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul by John A. Jackson, the uncredited female vocals on the two Jerry Butler albums, The Ice Man Cometh and Ice on Ice were by Mikki Farrow, Jean Thomas and Tina Thomas. “(Strange) I Still Love You” was later included on Margie Joseph’s 1974 album, Sweet Surrender.
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Mikki Farrow moved to Chicago in the late 1980’s; she began dating Billy Butler (the brother of her one-time mentor, Jerry Butler) and later married him. Long before they married, Mikki Farrow and Billy Butler wrote a song, “Ever Since I Can Remember” that appears on Jerry Butler’s 1973 album, The Love We Have, The Love We Had.
Though not nearly so well known as Jerry Butler, Billy Butler was also a professional musician who was mainly active in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
In 2007, Kent Records put together a CD called The Right Tracks, covering 29 of the recordings that Billy Butler made at Okeh Records. Writing for Allmusic, Richie Unterberger gives the CD 4½ stars and says: “First and foremost, [Billy] Butler, though far less celebrated than his older brother Jerry Butler, was a fine singer and songwriter in his own right, producing consistently good pop-soul discs that were rather reminiscent of the Impressions (and, at times, Major Lance, another Chicago soul artist with strong connections to Curtis Mayfield). In addition, if you are a fan of Mayfield’s mid-’60s work with the Impressions and as a songwriter/producer, this has some of his best overlooked work in the latter capacity.”
(July 2014)
