Funky16Corners

Clydie King – ‘Bout Love

By Larry, August 7, 2012 1:45 pm

Clydie King (top) with the Raelettes:
(clockwise from top left) Alex Brown, Clydie King, Gwen Berry, Merry Clayton.

~~Listen/Download Clydie King – ‘Bout Love~~

Greetings all

Welcome to the middle of another glorious week.

The tune I bring you today is a longtime favorite of mine, by a singer that you’ve probably all heard (whether you knew it or not).

As a youngster, back in the days of LPs and album covers, I – and my friends – used to spend a lot of time perusing record jackets, and after memorizing band line-ups, registering (almost subliminally) the names of what might, for lack of better term, be called the “support staff”, i.e. backing singers, horn sections, percussionists and producers (among others).

As I grew older, and had years of stuffing factoids into my fevered brain, and became a collector of soul and funk in earnest, some of those names began to pop up again, and again.

Among those names, one that loomed large was that of Miss Clydie King.

Truth be told, I can seldom say ‘Clydie King’ without also saying ‘Venetta Fields’ and ‘Sherlie Matthews’ the women with whom she was often grouped in background singing duties.

As the Blackberries, they provided harmonies for Joe Cocker. Humble Pie, Leon Russell, Bob Dylan, the Rollings Stones, Steely Dan, Barbra Streisand (she appears with Streisand in ‘A Star Is Born’) and countless others.

Interestingly, many of these singers, including King, got their start as Raelettes, alongside the mighty Merry Clayton.

King recorded her first 45 – as Little Clydie and the Teens – at the age of 13 in 1956.

She went on to record in groups, duets (with both Mel Carter and Jimmy Holiday) and as a solo for more than a dozen labels between the mid-50s and the late 70s.

The tune I bring you today hails from her 1971 LP for the storied Lizard label.

Founded by producer Gabriel Mekler, Lizard released titles by King, Nolan Porter, Paul Humphrey and heavy rock by bands like Frantic and Jamul.

I originally picked up King’s ‘Direct Me’ LP (with one of the greatest low-rent design jobs I’ve ever seen) because it contained a cover of a fave song of mine, Gladys Knight’s ‘You Need Love Like I Do’.

Once I got the record home, it was the track I bring you today that really grabbed me. It was several years before I found a copy of the 45.

‘Bout Love’, which has a certain amount of popularity amongst the Northern Soulies (rightfully so) builds perfectly into an anthemic chorus that packs enough power to get any lazy ass up off of the sidelines and onto the dance floor.

The album features Billy Preston on keys (King and Preston had sung together in church as teenagers and they worked together with Ray Charles) , Paul Humphrey on drums and David T Walker (who can be heard to great effect on ‘Bout Love’) on guitar.

King continued to work as a backing singer and recording with the Blackberries, and Brown Sugar.

She seems to have been out of the business for many years.

I hope you dig the tune and I’ll see you all on Friday.

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In other, most excellent news, the mighty Bo-Keys featuring Percy Wiggins have a new single (Writing On the Wall b/w I’m Still In Need) and if you can drag yourselves over to Soundcloud you can stream both sides!

You can dig it here!