NEW YORK (AP) — Clarence Carter, the blues and soul musician and singer-songwriter with the raspy, emotional vocals whose hits included the sentimental “Patches” and the salacious “Strokin,’” has died at age 90.
Carter’s death was confirmed by Bill Carpenter, a spokesman for his former wife and fellow singer, Candi Staton. Carter died Wednesday of natural causes, according to Carpenter.
Carter, a self-taught guitarist who was born blind in Montgomery, Alabama, and majored in music at Alabama State College, had his biggest hit in 1970 with “Patches,” a plaintive tale about a poor country boy who must become a man and run his family’s farm after his father dies.
But he specialized in exuberantly raunchy songs like “Slip Away,” “Back Door Santa” and “Strokin’” a funky, talking ode to sex (“Have you ever made love just before breakfast?” he asks) that was too explicit for commercial radio but became a standard on nightclub jukeboxes and was featured in Eddie Murphy’s 1996 remake of “The Nutty Professor.”
Another favorite was “Making Love on the Dark End of the Street,” in which Carter narrates a long, cheerful account of how humans and other creatures will go to extremes in the pursuit of passion. His other songs about illicit love included “Slip Away” and “Back Door Santa.”
On his bluesy “The Road of Love,” Carter was backed by Duane Allman, then a little-known rocker and session musician who went on to cofound The Allman Brothers Band and make memorable contributions to records by Eric Clapton and Wilson Pickett among others. His hard-hitting “Tell Daddy” was the basis for an Etta James standard, “Tell Mama.”
Carter recorded some of his biggest hits at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where Pickett, Aretha Franklin and other soul greats recorded. In later years, he recorded for the now-defunct Ichiban Records and his own Cee Gee Entertainment.
Carter and Staton were married briefly the 1970s before they divorced. They had a son, Clarence Carter Jr.
In a 2012 interview with The Montgomery Advertiser, the elder Carter said, “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be going, but I’m going to keep going until something tells me it’s time to quit or Old Man Death comes to run me down.”