Clarence Carter

Clarence George Carter was born on January 14, 1936, in Montgomery, Alabama. He was blind from birth or early infancy; most sources say he was born blind, while some reports say he lost his sight at about the age of one. He later recalled hearing a woman tell his mother that she would have to take care of him for the rest of his life, a remark that left him determined to prove her wrong.

As a boy he was given a guitar for Christmas and taught himself to play by listening to records and copying what he heard. The Alabama Music Hall of Fame names bluesmen John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins and Jimmy Reed among the records he learned from.

Carter attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama. He went on to Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) in Montgomery, graduating in August 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in music. His formal training meant he could sing, play guitar, play keyboards, write songs and arrange, writing his charts in braille to be transcribed for other musicians.

Carter's first professional act was a duo with Calvin Scott, a fellow blind musician. As Clarence and Calvin they cut singles for the small Fairlane label, including "I Wanna Dance But I Don't Know How", then recorded four singles for Duke Records, mostly as the C and C Boys. None charted.

In 1965 the pair paid Rick Hall's FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals to record "Step by Step" and "Rooster Knees and Rice". Atlanta disc jockey Zenas Sears tipped off Atlantic's Jerry Wexler, and "Step by Step" was released on Atco, though it did not chart. The duo played clubs in Birmingham in 1966 before Scott was seriously injured in a car accident, and the partnership ended.

Working with Hall, Carter released solo singles on the Fame label. "Tell Daddy" (1967) reached number 35 on the Billboard R&B chart and inspired Etta James's "Tell Mama", for which Carter received songwriting credit. At the end of 1967 he joined Atlantic Records, continuing to record at FAME with its session band. "Looking for a Fox" opened his Atlantic run, and in 1968 "Slip Away" went to number 2 R&B and number 6 pop, followed by "Too Weak to Fight" (number 3 R&B, number 13 pop). Both were certified gold. Late in 1968 "Back Door Santa" became a seasonal hit.

In 1969 and 1970 "Snatching It Back", "The Feeling Is Right", "Doin' Our Thing" and "I Can't Leave Your Love Alone" all crossed to the pop and R&B charts. "Patches" (1970) became his biggest hit, reaching number 4 in the US and number 2 in the UK and earning a gold disc within two months.

Carter left Atlantic at the end of 1971, returned to Fame (scoring a minor hit with "Sixty Minute Man" in 1973) and signed with ABC Records in 1975, releasing albums including Loneliness and Temptation. As disco took over, his commercial fortunes faded. In the early 1980s he built a studio in the basement of his Atlanta home and taught himself to program keyboards.

In 1985 he signed with Atlanta's Ichiban Records. The album Dr. C.C. (1986) produced "Strokin'", which was too explicit for radio but became a jukebox phenomenon and launched a long second career on the Southern soul and blues circuit. He released several Ichiban albums that placed on the R&B albums chart, later founded his own Cee Gee Entertainment label, issued Mr. Old School in January 2020 and the single "Danger Point" in 2024, and toured into his eighties.

In 1968 Carter met singer Candi Staton, who became one of his backing vocalists. They married in 1970. He introduced her to Rick Hall at FAME, which helped launch her own career, and he co-wrote songs for her, including the Grammy-nominated "I'd Rather Be an Old Man's Sweetheart (Than a Young Man's Fool)". They had a son, Clarence Carter Jr., and divorced in 1973. A second son, Herbert Deon Wilkerson, was born in 1981.

Carter lived for many years in Atlanta, Georgia.

Carter rejected the idea that the blues had to be sad. In a 2011 radio interview he said most people thought of the blues as songs of regret, but that he preferred to sing up-tempo songs people could dance to. He was open about the playful, risque streak in his work, which writer Brian Ward said made a career "from tales of unbridled love and illicit sex".

He also spoke often about determination in the face of disability, telling The New York Times in 1998 that being told what he could not do only made him work harder.

Carter is regarded as one of the essential voices of the Muscle Shoals and Southern soul sound. "Slip Away" has appeared in films including The Commitments, Almost Famous and Licorice Pizza, "Back Door Santa" endures as an offbeat Christmas standard and was sampled by Run-DMC in "Christmas in Hollis", and "Strokin'" was used in The Nutty Professor and Killer Joe. Director William Friedkin called him "the Mozart of Southern music", and Duane Allman described him in 1971 as "the most amazingly perceptive man I ever met". His later records kept an audience on the Southern soul and blues circuit alongside artists such as Denise LaSalle and Bobby Rush.

Carter's recordings of "Slip Away", "Too Weak to Fight" and "Patches" were each certified gold. "Patches" won its songwriters the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song in 1971, and Carter was nominated for best male R&B vocal performance. He received a Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Award in 1994 and was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2003.

Key singles: "Tell Daddy" (1967), "Looking for a Fox" (1968), "Slip Away" (1968), "Too Weak to Fight" (1968), "Back Door Santa" (1968), "Snatching It Back" (1969), "The Feeling Is Right" (1969), "Doin' Our Thing" (1969), "Patches" (1970), "Sixty Minute Man" (1973), "Strokin'" (1986), "Danger Point" (2024).

Albums include Loneliness and Temptation (ABC), Dr. C.C. (Ichiban, 1986) and Mr. Old School (Cee Gee Entertainment, 2020). Film uses of his songs include The Nutty Professor, Killer Joe, The Commitments, Almost Famous and Licorice Pizza.

Candi Staton later spoke and wrote publicly about their marriage. She said Carter was unfaithful, that she wrote songs about his infidelity, and that he reported her to the tax authorities; in her memoir she described an incident in which she said he beat her. Carter's own catalogue was also frequently too explicit for radio, most famously "Strokin'".

Clarence Carter died on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, at a hospice in the Atlanta area, Georgia, at the age of 90. His death was confirmed by his management, by FAME Studios president Rodney Hall, and by a spokesman for Candi Staton. He died of complications from pneumonia, with sepsis also reported, and had recently been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. Some early reports gave May 14, the day the news was announced. Funeral and burial details have not been made public. Hall said: "Clarence recorded all of his greatest hits at FAME Studios alongside Rick Hall, and recorded as part of the FAME family for more than four decades. He was far more than an artist to us. He was family."