Chuck Jackson was a matinee idol among his generation of soul singers in the early 1960s, displaying the looks and the bearing to match the elegance of his singing. He shared with such contemporaries as Ben E King, Jerry Butler and Lou Johnson an understated masculinity that would be lost in the subsequent decade, with the arrival of grunting sex machines and smooth “love men”.
Jackson, who has died aged 85, infused the songs he recorded with deep emotions made all the more powerful by the restraint of his delivery. Among his hits were Any Day Now, composed by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard, and I Keep Forgettin’, by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (both 1962), as well as Chris Kenner’s Something You Got (1965), which he recorded as a duet with Maxine Brown.
