if you like our Facebook fanpage, you'll receive more articles like the one you just read! ), “Her spirit takes over immediately when you meet her,” says Adler, who has been Clayton’s champion since the late Sixties. Belated attention for vocalist with solo reissue, ’20 Feet From Stardom’ documentary. Determined to “blow them out of this room,” she did three increasingly intense takes, pitching it up an octave and pushing her voice till it cracked. Prodigiously talented, she could have been a big star in her own right, much like the other great singers – Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega – featured in the film (now screening in New York and L.A. and opening in wide release next week). The Eighties brought Clayton a new round of recognition, with notable work on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack and a recurring acting role on Cagney & Lacey. Life is too short as it is and I can’t live on yesterday.” Watch her above take the lead in an incredibly powerful recent rendition of the song at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, CA. The results give the song its chilling apocalyptic urgency, and they also came at a great personal cost to Clayton. There are plans in the works for the film’s principal subjects to do some tour dates together when Fischer gets off the road with the Stones, Clayton says. Set for release June 25th, The Best of Merry Clayton compiles 17 tracks culled from her three solo albums with Lou Adler’s Ode Records, and rarities including an orchestral performance of “The Acid Queen” from the Who’s Tommy and a featured lead on a 1969 gospel tribute to the music of Bob Dylan. Once she started singing on her own, the audience erupted! She got a call from producer Jack Nietzsche, she tells us in a clip from the documentary above, whom she remembers saying: “There’s a group of guys in town called… the Rolling… Somebodies… and they need somebody that will sing with them.”. A New Orleans native who grew up in southern California, Clayton spices her obvious warmth with more than a little sass: “I was kicking ass and taking names every time I opened my mouth,” she says. Her recollection of being summoned to the studio at an ungodly hour to sing on “Gimme Shelter” is one of the film’s most joyful moments. She could’ve been singing lead on ‘Gimme Shelter,’ which she basically was.”, Child of a pastor, Clayton found herself asking, “Lord, what is it?” when times were tough. Then there are those artists—often just as talented and ambitious—who make these choices for other people’s art: the pop star’s dance troupe, the Broadway chorus members, and the rock and roll back-up singers, some of whom we got to know in the 2014 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, including the great Merry Clayton, who contributed her haunting gospel chops to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.”, For the working backup singers in the documentary, the choices between everyday security and creativity aren’t binary. “She’s just overwhelming.”. The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” Played by Musicians Around the World. The movie’s enthusiastic reception has given Clayton an overdue opportunity to revisit her underappreciated early-Seventies efforts to build a solo career. They often present themselves instead as the kind of seemingly ordinary compromises we all make to some degree: do I go on this lucrative tour or attend my daughter’s recital? Unsubscribe at any time. Do I turn down this job—and paycheck—or miss a birthday, a family dinner, a night’s sleep? Want more Rolling Stone? Now she is basking in the attention she’s getting, however ironically, from Twenty Feet From Stardom. “It’s been a beautiful, precious run,” she says, “and I am loooo-ving it.”, In This Article: She was a Gospel singer who did backup vocals for various artists, including Ray Charles. Documentary, Merry Clayton, Twenty Feet From Stardom. But Adler admits he was frustrated when Clayton’s solo albums never quite took off. The Haunting Background Vocals on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter:” Merry Clayton Recalls How They Came to Be. The performance further proves, I think, that, just as much as Richards’ guitar lines and Jagger’s lyrics, her voice played a crucial, starring role in the classic recording. I can speak for no one else but I know what voice I hear in this song. It’s a great song, mainly know for its main hook which features Mick Jagger singing the chorus with a female singer. Sign up for our newsletter. Clayton tells Rolling Stone she never spent much time obsessing over the disappointments of her solo career. She had a regular role on the '80s TV show Cagney and Lacey, and played a maid in the movie Maid To Order. This became even more apparent when Mick Jagger invited his backup singer Lisa Fischer to help the band sing Gimme Shelter. Pregnant at the time of recording, “the physical strain of the intense duet with Mick Jagger,” notes the Los Angeles Times, “resulted in a miscarriage after the session.” As Mike Springer wrote in his post, the Stones’ song, and the entire Let It Bleed album, captured a particularly dark time for the band—as Brian Jones deteriorated into addiction and mental illness—and for the world, coming as it did after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Kennedys and the escalation of the Vietnam War. ©2006-2020 Open Culture, LLC. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. But Clayton is best known for singing backup, to Ray Charles as a teenager in the Sixties and to scores more since, including Carole King, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young and, most famously, to Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.”. “The quality of her talent, in the studio and onstage – she had it all going. It’s just a shot away.” (Both the compilation and the Twenty Feet From Stardom soundtrack include Clayton’s own version of the song from her 1970 solo debut. Adler, the recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who founded Ode and helped produce the Monterey Pop Festival, is godfather to Clayton’s son and was close with her husband, the late saxophonist Curtis Amy, who played on King’s blockbuster Tapestry album. Mick Jagger Tells the Story Behind ‘Gimme Shelter’ and Merry Clayton’s Haunting Background Vocals, The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” Played by Musicians Around the World, Gimme Shelter: Watch the Classic Documentary of the Rolling Stones’ Disastrous Concert at Altamont, Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. As Mike Springer wrote in a previous post on the Stones’ side of the story, Clayton “made her professional debut at age 14, recording a duet with Bobby Darin. Check it out! But she “turned it around,” she says: “I took it as life, love and energy and directed it in another direction so it doesn’t really bother me to sing ‘Gimme Shelter’ now. Miller argued there was something missing from Gimme Shelter, something that would turn good into great. She was, after all, a pro. Set for release June 25th, compiles 17 tracks culled from her three solo albums with Lou Adler’s Ode Records, and rarities including an orchestral performance of “The Acid Queen” from, and a featured lead on a 1969 gospel tribute to the music of, Trump Talks of ‘Leaving the Country’ if He Loses, Watch the Osbournes Go Ghost Hunting in ‘Night of Terror’ Trailer, Ice Cube Tries to Explain What in the Hell He Was Thinking, Watch ‘SNL’ Flip Between Joe Biden, Donald Trump ‘Dueling Town Halls’, Tom Waits, John Prine to Receive Prestigious PEN Songwriting Award, Terry Allen on Creating Sculpture From Guy Clark’s Ashes, Terry Allen Resurrects Iconic Concept Album ‘Juarez’, recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. This became even more apparent when Mick Jagger invited his backup singer Lisa Fischer to help the band sing Gimme Shelter. Check it out! “I knew who I was, and what I had,” she says. “Stay cool, stay humble, stay beautiful, and just do the work.” In the new documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, that’s singer Merry Clayton’s explanation for her positive attitude through decades of playing second fiddle with her first-rate voice. I suppose you never heard of a group called the Beatles either. What rock were you living under? All rights reserved. “But I never got that message from Him.”. She went on to work with The Supremes, Elvis Presley and many others, and was a member of Ray Charles’s group of backing singers, The Raelettes.” When she got to the studio, she had some reservations when Richards and Jagger asked her to sing “Rape, murder/It’s just a shot away,” but when the band explained the gist of the song, she said “Oh, okay, that’s cool,” and totally went for it, as you can hear in her isolated part above. We want to hear from you! They found what they were looking for in 20-year-old Merry Clayton. Didn’t know the Stones in ’69? We never spam. “It was hard to accept,” says the producer, who was recently reminded that Clayton’s version of King and Gerry Goffin’s “Oh No Not My Baby” was nominated for a Grammy in 1973. "Gimme Shelter" is the opening track to the 1969 album Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones. We thank you! When The Rolling Stones took to the stage in Glastonbury in 2013, the magic was unquestionably in the air. To support Open Culture’s continued operation, please consider making a donation. Whether she knew of them or not, it’s her offering of her best voice -one that hints of triumph and tragedy and cries for both- that is truth. Gimme Shelter: Watch the Classic Documentary of the Rolling Stones’ Disastrous Concert at Altamont. The question of what an artist is willing to give up for her art is unanswerable until the moment of sacrifice arrives, and she must make a choice—safety, comfort, family, etc, or the leap into a creative endeavor whose outcome is uncertain? We’re hoping to rely on our loyal readers rather than erratic ads. Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. Suggested by producer and long-time Stones acolyte Jack Nitzsche, Clayton had made her name through duets and backing vocals for Ray Charles, Burt Bacharach and Elvis Presley, among many others.
Murder! Clayton had to make such a spur-of-the-moment decision late one night, while just getting ready for bed at her L.A. home. The live renditions of this song are always amazing, especially when it’s the female singer’s turn to sing, and this case is no different! (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. What mattered was “being the best in everything that was put on your plate to do.”, And there’s little question she was the best in the room. Relive 5 Of The Best-Selling Rock Artists Of The ’60s, AC/DC Shares New Details For Upcoming Album “Power…, Stevie Nicks Streams Performance Of “Rhiannon”…, A Collection Of David Bowie’s 1990s Concert…, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” Hits No.1 Again…, The Story Of How Eddie Van Halen Rearranged “Beat…. “Any time Lou calls you for anything, it’s always a winner.”. © Copyright 2020 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC.
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