YEAR
1991
INDUCTED BY
Tracy Chapman
CATEGORY
Performers
A bridge in more ways than one.
The Impressions traversed the sounds of the Fifties and Sixties as well as old and new social attitudes. Their music was the sound of the civil rights movement.
Arthur "Pop" Brooks, Sr.
Curtis Mayfield
Fred Cash
Jerry Butler
Richard A. Brooks
Sam Gooden
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Joe McEwan
The impressions formed from the union of two friends, Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield of Chicago, Illinois. The two had sung together in church as adolescents, and had traveled with the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers and the Traveling Souls Spiritual Church.
It was Butler who convinced his friend Mayfield to leave his own struggling group, the Alfatones, and join him, Sam Gooden, and brothers Richard and Arthur Brooks— the remnants of another struggling vocal group called the Roosters.
