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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.”
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