Mention of Jerry's He Will Break Your Heat in another thread caused me to  reminisce about this.  I saw The Impressions' 25th Anniversary tour show.  Quite a spectacular.  Jerry Butler, the original Impressions (including Curtis Mayfield) and whoever were the usurpers who were touring as the Impressions at that time.  25th Anniversary is silver, and they had the most beautiful silver suits - not the gaudy metallic silver, but a very elegant muted silver.  Quite a show.  But I had a revelation that day, the kind of thing that makes you go "I should have known that, but...."  To sing this song, Jerry walked onstage with Curtis Mayfield (co-writer of the song) and Curtis played that light, lilting intro, and he and Jerry proceeded to sing the song together.   I had always taken for granted that was Jerry harmonizing with himself.  But it wasn't, and Jerry and Curtis delivered a perfect performance.  Always nice to learn something you didn't know.

And Jerry being the elegant guy he is, it didn't take long for the folks at the PBS Doo Wop Shows to turn the hosting duties over to him.  He was so right for the  job.   Of course, if Otis Redding had lived, that could have been different. 

WLAC DJ Hoss Allen had a short-lived syndicated TV show called The!!!!Beat.  Many of the episodes are available on YouTube.  Hoss' tendency to imbibe was well known, and there is a famous episode where Hoss became so incapacitated, shall we say, that they pulled him off, and threw it to Otis to host.  Pretty weird, the whole story seems to be that the show was cancelled, so Hoss did his thing.  (But I know I've seen the full thing, not available now.  Because Hoss came on, did the introduction, and introduced Otis who sang Mr. Pitiful.  (One of my faves)   But the one they show now doesn't show Hoss on the intro, and starts with Otis in the middle of his song.  So you know there's been some creative editing.

But the point here is, they just threw this at Otis, he had no time to prepare or anything, and he did a fantastic job.  (If I had been the people from Show Biz, I would have immediately renewed the show, and made Otis the host.  That's how good and charismatic he was!)  But I did have to laugh when he referred to Garnet Mimms as "another little short fellow."  When I looked at it a second time, I could see he introduced Percy Sledge just before, and Percy looked pretty short beside Otis as well.

But to pull this all back together, I still find it surprising Jerry Butler is listed as co-writer of I've Been Loving You Too Long to Stop Now.  I would really be curious as to how that happened.  I never would have thought of the two of them collaborating.  And I don't hear anything that sounds like Jerry in the song - but there is always just so much we don't - or may never - know.