The rolling stones gimme shelter
The only hurdle was getting permission from Clayton’s mother. From the first take, he was blown away by the volume and power of Clayton’s voice and immediately wanted to sign her to a contract.
She fell in with a group of other vocalists and with them landed her first recording session in 1962 at the age of 14, backing the pop star Bobby Darin. Photograph: Getty ImagesĬlayton’s career got underway after her family moved to Los Angeles. Merry Clayton (rear left) in 1965 as one of the Raelettes, Ray Charles’s backing singers. “I would lean up against her and take a little nap because I would have been up since seven o’clock that morning.” “I would always find my way to nestle up right up under Mahalia wherever she was sitting,” says Clayton. Jackson, a friend of Clayton’s minister father, would frequent the parish when she visited New Orleans. From as early as the age of six, she was a star of the church choir, earning the nickname Little Haley for her mimicry of Mahalia Jackson, the pre-eminent gospel singer of the time.
#The rolling stones gimme shelter full#
The devotional tone of Beautiful Scars brings Clayton full circle from where she started singing: at the New Zion Baptist church in New Orleans. “It was the closest recording situation that I’ve ever been in that was totally pure love,” Clayton says. Working with her longtime friend, the famed producer Lou Adler, she slowly put together her new album, Beautiful Scars, a collection of throwback R&B and modern gospel that includes the Martin-penned Love Is a Mighty River and the defiant title track written by Diane Warren, the stellar pop songwriter known for power ballads recorded by LeAnn Rimes, Aerosmith and more. Listen to Merry Clayton sing Touch the Hem of His Garment from her new album, Beautiful ScarsĬoldplay’s Chris Martin returned the favour when Clayton returned to the studio. It led to an invite to contribute to Coldplay’s 2015 album A Head Full of Dreams Clayton recorded her vocals a mere week after leaving the hospital. For many viewers, the film helped put a name to the pealing, cracking voice that bursts through Gimme Shelter, briefly pushing aside Mick Jagger. She has been singing a lot these days, especially in the wake of her appearance in 20 Feet From Stardom (2013), the Oscar-winning documentary that put the spotlight on the singers, many of them Black, who provided background vocals for the major pop and rock acts of the past five decades. Clayton’s sister summed it up: “If she’s singing, she’s fine.” Reassured that it was fine, she broke into song. All Clayton wanted to know was if her voice was affected. Her doctors and family braced themselves for a panicked response.
The moment that stuck with Clayton was when she learned about the loss of her legs. “I knew I was here in the world, but it was just like I was somewhere else. “It was like I was in another place,” she explains, speaking from her home in Los Angeles. She remembers waking up in hospital, but the incident itself, and much of the five months she spent recovering, is lost. What Clayton has no memory of is the 2014 car accident that was so severe that doctors were forced to amputate both of her legs below the knee. The 72-year-old singer tells tales with such particular detail: the warmth of falling asleep between gospel legends Mahalia Jackson and Linda Hopkins in the pews of her father’s church in Louisiana the recording sessions with Bobby Darin, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Rolling Stones, for whom she delivered the searing holler of Gimme Shelter.