‘Jealous Kind of Fella’ Singer Garland Green Dead at 83

The cover art for Garland Green's 1969 debut album, "Jealous Kind of Fella," features the singer in his prime. Green, whose title track became a defining anthem of the Chicago soul era, died over the weekend at the age of 83. (Courtesy of Uni Records)

Chicago soul lost one of its essential voices this week.

Garland Green, the Mississippi-born, Chicago-bred singer whose 1969 hit “Jealous Kind of Fellow” became a defining anthem of romantic vulnerability in the late-’60s soul era, has died. He was 83.

The news was confirmed Monday in a public Facebook post by Marshall Thompson, founding member of The Chi-Lites, who wrote that Green “has passed away this morning” and described him as a Chicago hero who “will never be forgotten.” Additional details were not immediately available.

Born Garfield Green Jr. in Dunleith, Mississippi, in 1942, Green was the tenth of 11 children. He relocated to Chicago in 1958 during the latter wave of the Great Migration, arriving at 16 and immersing himself in the city’s rapidly evolving soul scene.

According to multiple biographical accounts, Green was discovered while singing in a pool hall, where local entrepreneur Argia B. Collins heard his voice and helped finance his musical training at the Chicago Conservatory of Music — a formative investment that refined his raw gospel-blues delivery into something both streetwise and orchestral.

 

His breakthrough came in 1969 with “Jealous Kind of Fellow,” released on Uni Records. The song climbed to No. 5 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, establishing Green as a prominent voice in Chicago’s lush, string-driven soul movement. The record’s restrained anguish — equal parts pleading and pride — made it a staple of dance floors and stepper culture for decades.

While the single remains his most widely recognized recording, Green maintained a steady presence in soul throughout the 1970s. He later recorded for Cotillion Records and worked alongside notable musicians of the era, including Donny Hathaway, further cementing his place within Chicago’s interconnected soul network.

 

Though his commercial visibility waned as disco and later R&B trends shifted, Green continued performing. He relocated to California in 1979 and recorded intermittently for independent labels before stepping away from the studio for an extended period.

He returned in 2012 with the album “I Should’ve Been the One,” a late-career project that demonstrated his voice retained its grit and emotional clarity. In recent years, he continued making select appearances, including performances well into his 80s.

Green’s passing marks another loss in the lineage of Chicago soul architects whose contributions often ran parallel to — but distinct from — Motown’s more heavily mythologized narrative. His catalog may not have been vast, but his signature record remains embedded in the city’s musical DNA.