I just found a James Brown record that has singing jazz standards, and it is the most amazing record. “That what’s cool about technology today. “When I have time, I sit in front of the computer… I can find anything I don’t think I have at home,” he noted. He also pointed out that his portable music device stays full of “everything…to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. I’m not the type of artist that likes to be pigeonholed.” It’s just the way I’ve always been - my influences are wide, from Stevie Wonder to Benson to James Taylor to Joni Mitchell. “I write the songs and I get so excited when it is a great song, a great melody and it feels good,” continued the singer-songwriter-guitarist, who over the course of his four-decade-plus musical career has been hard to peg down: “I never got stuck in an R&B place or stuck in a jazz place. He has toured the world with the likes of Kirk Whalum and Dave Koz and has several Grammy nominations. You had pop music, jazz, R&B and I grew up in that whole folk-minded kind of way.”īutler turned professional as a teenager and became the first Black artist played on White South African stations during that country’s apartheid system. Is purely a marketing and brokering medium for South African Entertainment related suppliers and related services and therefore this resource reserves the right to only respond to official booking and quote requests for corporate functions and events.“I grew up in South Africa with a taste for music that was different,” he recalled in a recent phone interview with the MSR. Will not respond to requests of a personal nature, nor offer contacts nor share intellectual property. Residing with his family in the verdant hills of Southern California for more than a decade, an area that he says reminds him of his homeland, Butler remains humble and grateful.ĭoes not claim to be an official website, the owners or management over any supplier, service or content. His self-titled debut album put him on the map internationally and garnered two Grammy nominations: one for the R&B-pop vocal statement “Lies” and the other for a poignant instrumental, “Going Home.”īutler’s albums and worldwide concert tours have afforded him fame and a lifestyle far from what he ever could have imagined as a child performer, but more importantly, it brought him the freedom to follow his passion – music – on his own terms. The single won a Sarie Award, which is the South African equivalent to a Grammy award. Afrikaans was his native tongue, but he learned English in his travels.Īfter signing his first record deal as a teenager with British record producer Clive Caulder’s Jive Records, Butler’s premier single became the first by a black artist to be played on white radio stations in South Africa. In his travels, the young entertainer could neither comprehend the extreme destitute nor the harsh treatment he endured and bared witness to under the reign of Apartheid. Traveling accommodations were dismal and atrocious. The audiences would vary from poverty-ravaged black townships to opulent halls open only to whites. Even before he reached age ten, he traveled cross-country performing in villages with a 100-member troupe making money to help support his family. He started singing and playing guitar at age seven. Butler’s tenacious, indomitable spirit and effervescent view of silver-lined clouds infuses his music like a heaven-sent harbinger of healing.īutler grew up in the townships of South Africa, the youngest of 12 children. Amidst a new album bursting with hope, joy, romance and inspiration, including eleven songs penned or co-penned by the artist, it’s the Johnny Nash cover “I Can See Clearly Now” that Jonathan Butler elected to record on the So Strong album, his 15th solo collection, that speaks volumes about his outlook after a tumultuous year wrought with immense personal loss, pain and suffering. Ride On King Jesus Gospel Goes Classical Album Version, One Night With The King Gospel Goes Classical Album Version, To Be Kept By Jesus (Psalm 121).
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