01 Do What You Gotta Do
02 Looking For A Fox
03 Slippin' Around
04 I'm Qualified
05 I Can't See Myself
06 Wind It Up
07 Part Time Love
08 Thread The Needle
09 Slip Away
10 Funky Fever
11 She Ain't Gonna Do Right
12 Set Me Free
13 I'd Rather Go Blind
14 Think About It
15 The Road Of Love
16 You've Been A Long Time Coming
17 Light My Fire
18 That Old Time Feeling
19 Steal Away
20 Let Me Comfort You
21 Look What I Got
22 Too Weak To Fight
23 Harper Valley PTA
24 Weekend Love
25 I'm Happy-Go-Lucky (Adapted from Baby Blues by John Arthur Lee)
26 She Ain't Gonna Do Right (Demo)
27 Use Me Anyway You Can (aka Take Me, Use Me)
28 There Won't Be Another Sunset
29 I'll Be Over After A While
In early 1967 Rick Hall’s Fame set-up was missing a vital ingredient. Despite all the success he had achieved as a producer, studio-owner, publisher and record label boss, he had yet to sign an enduring artist. That was about to change. The previous year a duo who recorded as Clarence & Calvin hired the studio to cut a self-financed single. They had been working together for five years and had just left a deal with Houston-based Duke Records. As he watched them, Hall thought he had found his stars and urged them to come back and sign with him. When the day came, only Clarence Carter appeared. At first, Hall was dismissive of the singer’s pleas to be signed as a solo act but eventually relented and gave him a go.
In their first year together, Carter placed a few singles on the R&B chart and provided Etta James with one of her signature songs by writing ‘Tell Mama’, but it wasn’t until his records switched from the Fame label to the higher-profile Atlantic that big hits started coming. Essentially, nothing had changed. His records were still recorded by Hall at Fame with the same musicians but DJs seemed to take Atlantic releases more seriously. Everyone involved thought ‘Funky Fever’ would be Carter’s breakthrough but it was its flip, ‘Slip Away’, that hit the higher reaches of the R&B charts, selling over a million copies. This success was followed by ‘Too Weak To Fight’ also going gold.
The success of the 45s each resulted in an album. The first, “This Is Clarence Carter”, gathered up most of his pre-hit A-sides and added a few tracks no-one had heard before. The second, “The Dynamic Clarence Carter”, comprised ‘Too Weak To Fight’ and its B-side, plus pop covers and versions of Fame-published songs.
For this release we are also including a handful of previously unissued cuts that have languished in the Fame vaults for the best part of 50 years: ‘I’ll Be Over After A While’, which was one of the demos Clarence & Calvin recorded at Fame, three hitherto unknown songs and a demo of Carter’s version of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham’s ‘She Ain’t Gonna Do Right’.
If you want these albums on CD, this is the definitive issue.
Dean Rudland |
