Clarence Carter, Singer Who Scored Hit With ‘Strokin’,’ Dead at 90

Clarence Carter, the blind Southern soul star whose songs were often as emotionally profound as they were delightfully bawdy, died Thursday, May 14. He was 90.

Rodney Hall, president of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where Carter frequently recorded, confirmed the news to Rolling Stone after speaking with the family of Candi Staton, the singer and Carter’s ex-wife. A spokesperson for Staton said Carter was recently diagnosed with 4 prostate cancer diagnosis, and was also battling pneumonia and sepsis.

Carter was a constant presence on the R&B charts during his late-Sixties and 1970s heyday, and he twice crossed over into the upper echelons of the pop charts. His two Top 10 hits, “Slip Away” and “Patches,” exemplified his ability to navigate the raw and ribald.

“Slip Away,” which arrived in 1968 and peaked at Number Six, was a yearning appeal to adultery that managed to excavate some genuine vulnerability buried deep within the sin. And 1970’s “Patches” — which peaked at Number Four and won the Grammy for Best R&B Song — was a stirring saga about an Alabama boy who cares for his family amid the indignities of an indifferent world. The song’s titular hero repeatedly returns to his father’s final words for resilience, which Carter belts with world-weary resolve on the chorus: “Patches, I’m depending on you son/To pull the family through/My son, it’s all left up to you.”

“I think ‘Patches’ really etched me into the music world,” Carter said in 2010. “Where people are probably going to remember me for a long time to come. Which I always wanted — but I never knew it would happen that way.”

The same year “Slip Away” came out, Carter also scored a novelty Christmas hit with the wickedly raunchy “Back Door Santa.” His equally libidinous 1986 song “Strokin’” became a cult favorite and later featured in movies like Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor and William Friedkin’s Killer Joe. (Friedkin, an avowed fan, once called “Strokin’” “one of the great American songs,” and Carter the “Mozart of Southern Music.”) 

Carter’s sense of humor and fun was always key to his approach to music. In a 2011 radio interview, he noted the perception of blues music as focused on the solemn, somber side of life. “But you could also sing the blues about something happy,” Carter countered, adding: “In general, most people think of the blues as something sad and ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ and this kind of thing. But I don’t. Usually, when I go to my show, you’re gonna hear me sing more up-tunes that you dance by than you’re gonna hear me sing songs that you’ll cry about.”

Carter was born Jan. 14, 1936 in Montgomery, Alabama. As a kid, he was gifted a guitar for Christmas and taught himself how to play by listening to other peoples’ records and copying what he heard. Carter attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, and later studied music at Alabama State College, graduating in 1960.

For his first professional project, Carter linked up with another blind student, Calvin Scott, to form the duo Clarence & Calvin, later known as the C&C Boys. The duo released a handful of singles during the early Sixties, but failed to make any real headway. In 1965, they traveled to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where they cut several songs at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios. One, “Step By Step,” earned the attention of Jerry Wexler, who released it on the Atlantic imprint, Atco, though it too failed to chart. 

Not long after, Carter and Scott were involved in a car crash that left the latter severely injured. A dispute over medical bills led to the group’s demise, with the two embarking on separate solo careers. Carter continued to work with Hall and his FAME label, releasing his debut single, “Tell Daddy,” in 1967. It was a modest success that turned into a major one after Etta James cut a response called “Tell Mama” that peaked at Number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

Carter was soon turning out hits of his own, often backed by the celebrated session players at FAME. Carter would write all the arrangements in braille and then have them transcribed for the others. Duane Allman, a FAME player in his pre-Allman Brothers Band days, said of Carter in a 1971 Rolling Stone article, “He’s the most amazingly perceptive man I ever met.”

In 1968, Carter returned to Atlantic as a solo artist, and the success of “Slip Away” was buoyed by hits like the Gold-certified “Too Weak to Fight” and “Looking for a Fox.” Over the next two years, he placed seven songs in the Top 10 of the R&B charts, including “Snatching it Back,” “The Feeling Is Right,” “Doin’ Our Thing,” and “I Can’t Leave You Alone.” His b-sides, too, frequently became favorites, chief among them a take on James Carr’s classic, “The Dark End of the Street,” reworked in quintessential Carter fashion as, “Making Love (At the Dark End of the Street).”

After the pinnacle of “Patches,” Carter continued to work regularly, but never had the same kind of commercial appeal. He left Atlantic, returned to the Fame label, and scored a minor hit in 1973 with “Sixty Minute Man.” After that, he jumped to ABC Records, but a career revival failed to materialized.

In 1970, Carter also married one of his backing singers, Candi Staton; they had one child together before divorcing in 1973. Years later, in her memoir, Staton wrote about an incident during their relationship where Carter allegedly beat her.

In the early Eighties, Carter released several albums, and even built a studio in the basement of his Atlanta home, where he taught himself how to program keyboards and work with computers. As he told Rolling Stone in 1986, “I think I got another Top Ten record in me. With the right amount of exposure, I know I could have it.” 

A massive smash never arrived, but “Strokin’,” released that same year, did sell a 1.5 million copies, despite being too raunchy for radio (it primarily gained traction thanks to jukebox plays). The track helped anchor a late career resurgence for Carter, who released several albums on the independent Atlanta label, Ichiban Records, many of which placed on the R&B Albums Chart. 

Carter continued to write, record, and release music — as well as tour — well into his Eighties. His last record, Mr. Old School, arrived in January 2020 on his own Cee Gee Entertainment label, while in 2024, he dropped a new single, “Danger Point.”

In a 1998 interview with The New York Times, Carter spoke about the persistence that seemed to define his long and successful career. “Give me a challenge and you’ll make me work,” he said. ”I’m determined to do what folks say I can’t, and it has to do with a lot of factors, especially when you’re blind. I remember hearing a lady say to my mother one day when I was a kid, ‘I guess you’re going to have to take care of him the rest of your life.’ I never forgot that because I was determined that before the lady left this earth she’d know my mom wouldn’t have to take care of me.”