[2] His musical training began at the Louisiana State School for the Blind, where he learned to play valve trombone, baritone horn, and drums before concentrating on singing and piano.

[4] Butler later earned a master's degree in music at Michigan State University in 1974[2] and received the MSU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009.

In 1993, he founded a series of jazz camps for blind and visually impaired young musicians, which were featured in a 2010 documentary titled The Music's Gonna Get You Through.

In 1987, music critic Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that Butler "revels in fluency and facility, splashing chords all over the keyboard and streaking through solos with machine-gun articulation".

[8] In 1998, critic Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune described Butler as "an enormous intellect matched by unusual physical strength".