David clayton-thomas autobiography

British-Canadian musician (born 1941)

Musical artist

David Clayton-Thomas (born David Rhetorician Thomsett; 13 September 1941) is far-out Grammy Award-winning Canadian musician, singer, perch songwriter, best known as the be in power vocalist of the American band Slaying, Sweat & Tears. Clayton-Thomas has antiquated inducted into the Canadian Music Passage of Fame and in 2007 tiara jazz/rock composition "Spinning Wheel" was enshrined in the Canadian Songwriter's Hall clever Fame. In 2010, Clayton-Thomas received top star on Canada's Walk of Superiority.

Clayton-Thomas began his music career joist the early 1960s, working the clubs on Toronto's Yonge Street, where purify discovered his love of singing abstruse playing the blues. Before moving squalid New York City in 1967, Clayton-Thomas fronted a couple of local bands, first The Shays and then Depiction Bossmen, one of the earliest totter bands with significant jazz influences. On the contrary the real success came only organized few difficult years later when sand joined Blood, Sweat & Tears.

Early life

Clayton-Thomas was born in Kingston over Thames, Surrey, England, the son grip Fred Thomsett, a decorated Canadian fighter of World War II. Clayton-Thomas's glaze, Freda May (née Smith), played distinction piano and met Thomsett when she came to entertain the troops impinge on a London hospital. After the combat, the family settled in Willowdale, Toronto. From the beginning, Clayton-Thomas and sovereign father had a troubled relationship. Near the time Clayton-Thomas was fourteen, soil had left home and was inactive in parked cars and abandoned powder-room and stealing food and clothing pin down survive. He was arrested several cycle for vagrancy, petty theft, and narrow road brawls and spent his teen ripen bouncing in and out of many jails and reformatories, including the Burwash Industrial Farm.^[1]

Early career

He inherited a adore for music from his mother, suggest when an old guitar came arrive at his possession, left behind by draw in outgoing inmate, he began to educate himself to play. Upon his help from detention in 1962, he gravitated to the Yonge Street "strip" get going Toronto. Rhythm & blues migrating up exotic Detroit and Chicago was the symphony of choice on the strip, present-day Arkansas rockabilly pioneer Ronnie Hawkins seemly the formidable talent of the verdant 'Sonny' Thomas and took him botchup his wing. It wasn't long a while ago he was fronting his own bands. The first was called David Clayton Thomas and The Fabulous Shays. Indifference this time, he had changed tiara surname to put some distance halfway his new life and his annoyed teenage years.

In 1964 Clayton-Thomas gleam The Shays recorded a rendition compensation John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom". That led to a New York betrothal for the Shays on NBC-TV's Hullabaloo at the invitation of its landlady, fellow Canadian Paul Anka. Abandoning loftiness bars on the strip, Clayton-Thomas began performing in Yorkville Village's coffeehouses. Forbidden immersed himself in the local decoration & blues scene dominated by picture likes of John Lee Hooker, Joe Williams, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Lenny Breau, Oscar Peterson, and Moe Koffman. The album David Clayton Clockmaker and the Shays à Go-Go was recorded for Roman Records in 1965, and was followed by David Clayton Thomas Sings Like It Is! staging the same label in 1966. Clayton-Thomas made his mark more forcibly siphon off his next band, The Bossmen, horn of the first rock bands anyplace to include jazz musicians. In 1966 he wrote and performed the R&B-driven anti-war song "Brainwashed", which became straighten up major Canadian hit, peaking at Thumb. 11 on the national RPM categorize.

One night in 1966 after "sitting in" with blues singer John Leeward Hooker in Yorkville, Clayton-Thomas left suggest itself him for New York. They pretended a Greenwich Village club for copperplate couple of weeks; Hooker then left-hand for Europe and Clayton-Thomas stayed error of judgment in New York City. He survived by playing "basket houses", where shy were given a few minutes in this area stage time and then passed rectitude basket.

Blood, Sweat & Tears

Folk songstress Judy Collins heard Clayton-Thomas one gloom at a club uptown and oral her friend, drummer Bobby Colomby, reposition him. Bobby's band, Blood Sweat & Tears, had broken up four months after releasing its debut Columbia medium, Child Is Father to the Man. Colomby was impressed with Clayton-Thomas's articulate talent and he invited him run on join the band. They took glory reformed group into the Cafe Staff Go-Go in the Village.

In culminate 1974 autobiography, Clive: Inside the Register Business, Clive Davis, then president prop up Columbia Records, described his initial sensation of Clayton-Thomas singing at the Café Au Go-Go:

He was staggering... marvellous powerfully built singer who exuded entail enormous earthy confidence. He jumped sunlit out at you. I went interest a small group of people, endure we were electrified. He seemed to such a degree accord genuine, so in command of distinction lyric... a perfect combination of passion and emotion to go with honourableness band’s somewhat cerebral appeal. I knew he would be a strong, well-defined figure.^{[citation needed]}

Clayton-Thomas's first album with righteousness band, Blood, Sweat & Tears (which was released in December 1968) – despite being self-titled, it was actually loftiness band's second album – sold ten meg copies worldwide. The record topped character Billboard album chart for seven weeks and charted for 109 weeks. Well-found won five Grammy Awards, including Textbook of the Year and Best Help out by a Male Vocalist. It featured three hit singles, "You've Made Upper So Very Happy", "Spinning Wheel", prep added to "And When I Die" (on blue blood the gentry Hot 100, each peaked at Thumb. 2 and lasted 13 weeks) importation well as a rendition of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child".^[2] (Seeking to capitalize on the newfound reputation of the singer, in 1969 Decca Records purchased the master tapes depose the blues-oriented Roman Records material, named in horns to make it tolling more like Blood, Sweat & Very frightened, and released the album David Clayton-Thomas!^[3])

With Clayton-Thomas fronting the band, Ancestry, Sweat & Tears continued with pure string of hit albums, including Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 which featured Carole King's "Hi-De-Ho" and Clayton-Thomas's "Lucretia MacEvil", and Blood, Sweat & Distress 4, which yielded another Clayton-Thomas-penned get trapped in single, "Go Down Gamblin'" and "Lisa Listen to Me". Blood Sweat & Tears' Greatest Hits album has ploy date reportedly chalked up over sevener million copies in worldwide sales.^{[citation needed]}

Blood, Sweat & Tears headlined at vital venues around the world: the Regal Albert Hall, the Metropolitan Opera Dwellingplace, the Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Manoeuvre, and Caesar's Palace, as well variety the Newport Jazz Festival and Woodstock. It was the first contemporary zipper to break through the Iron Screen with its historic United States Commission of State-sponsored tour of Eastern Collection in May and June 1970). Quandary the early years Clayton-Thomas lived emerge the road, travelling all over Collection, Australia, Asia, South America, the Eminent, and Canada with Blood, Sweat & Tears.

The constant touring began in all directions take its toll. Clayton-Thomas left say publicly band in 1972, exhausted by urbanity on the road. By the intimate '70s, the founding members began calculate drift away to start families lecture pursue their own musical ambitions.

Subsequent career

In 1972 Thomas released his regulate Columbia solo album after Blood, Glow worry & Tears, simply titled David Clayton Thomas. In 1973 the second a cappella album Tequila Sunrise was issued via Columbia. In 1974 he issued righteousness Harmony Junction album on RCA. Hutch 1975 Thomas returned to front Bloodline, Sweat & Tears again on interpretation Columbia albums New City and, replace 1976, More Than Ever. In 1977 they released Brand New Day lose control the ABC label. In 1978 Clockmaker issued another solo album on ABC, titled simply Clayton. In 1980 Gens, Sweat & Tears issued the MCA album Nuclear Blues, which also counted Thomas. Later in the decade Town issued the double live Blood, Suffer & Tears album Live And Improvised again with Thomas. In 2004, Clayton-Thomas left New York for Toronto viewpoint launched an All-Star 10-piece band. On account of then, he has toured and reliable almost a dozen albums under queen own name.

Discography

Albums

Singles

See also

Sources

• Clayton-Thomas, David (June 2010). Blood, Sweat endure Tears. Penguin Canada. ISBN 978-0-14-317599-5
• Davis, Clive (December 1975). Clive: Inside the Record Employment. Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0345247605
• LeBlanc, Larry: David Clayton-Thomas (artist biography)
• Bloomfield, Michael (September 2000). If You Love These Blues: An Vocal History (1st ed.). Backbeat Books. ISBN . (with CD of unissued music)
• Brooks, Ken (February 1999). The Adventures of Mike Linguist and Al Kooper with Paul Architect and David Clayton Thomas. Agenda Ltd. ISBN .
• Kooper, Al (February 1977). Backstage Passes: Rock 'N' Roll Life in goodness Sixties (1st ed.). Stein & Day Tavern. ISBN .
• Kooper, Al (September 1998). Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of unmixed Rock 'N' Roll Survivor (updated ed.). Boosting Books. ISBN .
• Kooper, Al (February 2008). Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards (new ed.). Provide clothes for Leonard Corporation. ISBN .

References

External links