Clarence Carter Dies at 90 After Hits With Patches and Strokin
Clarence Carter died on Thursday, May 14, at age 90. clarence carter’s death closes a run that put two songs into the Top 10, carried his name through Southern soul, and later sent “Strokin'” back into circulation as a cult favorite.
FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals
Rodney Hall, president of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, said the news to Rolling Stone. A spokesperson for Candi Staton said Carter was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Born on Jan. 14, 1936, in Montgomery, Alabama, Carter attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega and graduated from Alabama State College in 1960. He and Calvin Scott formed Clarence & Calvin, later the C&C Boys, and in 1965 they traveled to Muscle Shoals and cut several songs at FAME Studios. One of them, “Step By Step,” was released on Atco by Jerry Wexler.
Two Top 10 hits
Carter reached the pop charts with “Slip Away” and “Patches,” the two Top 10 records that did the most to fix his name in the mainstream. “Slip Away” peaked at Number Six in 1968, while “Patches” reached Number Four in 1970 and won the Grammy for Best R&B Song.
He also scored a novelty Christmas hit with “Back Door Santa” in 1968, which kept him in rotation beyond the usual soul-radio lane. That mix of chart records and specialty tracks made him a recurring presence on R&B during the late 1960s and 1970s, rather than a singer tied to a single cycle.
Strokin' and later reach
“Strokin'” became a cult favorite in 1986 and later appeared in The Nutty Professor and Killer Joe. Carter said in 2010, “I think ‘Patches’ really etched me into the music world” and added, “Where people are probably going to remember me for a long time to come.”
He also said of the song’s chorus, “Patches, I’m depending on you son/To pull the family through/My son, it’s all left up to you.” In a 2011 radio interview, he said, “But you could also sing the blues about something happy” and “But I don’t.” That is the line that defines him best: a singer who could turn pain, humor and swagger into records that lasted well beyond their original chart runs.
