Clarence Carter, the Southern soul singer and guitarist famous for his unabashed songs of adultery and lust such as the late-1960s hits “Slip Away” and “Back Door Santa,” died on Thursday. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by Rodney Hall, president of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where many of Carter’s hits were recorded. No further details were immediately available.
Blind from a young age, Carter stood out with his deep, declamatory baritone and a signature lecherous, full-throated laugh. He blended the fiery delivery of a backwoods preacher with the raw humor of a juke joint, most memorably on the extended spoken-word track “Making Love (At the Dark End of the Street).”
A bold reworking of James Carr’s 1967 classic, the 1969 recording featured Carter ruminating humorously on the sexual instincts of horses, cows, mosquitoes, and humans before closing with an anguished chorus about illicit love.
His biggest commercial success came with “Patches,” a 1970 narrative song about a poor farmer’s son that reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The track’s spoken passages, along with similar moments in his other records, earned him recognition as a precursor to rap. Carter himself noted in a 1998 New York Times interview that he, Isaac Hayes, and Barry White had pioneered that storytelling style long before rap existed.
His 1986 explicit hit “Strokin’” became a surprise million-seller (over 1.5 million copies) and jukebox staple despite limited radio play, later appearing in films such as the 1996 “Nutty Professor” remake and “Killer Joe” (2011). Hip-hop artists including Run-DMC and 2 Live Crew sampled his work over the years.
Born Clarence George Carter on Jan. 14, 1936, in Montgomery, Alabama, to sharecropper parents, he taught himself blues guitar as a child despite his blindness and later studied at the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, where he learned to transcribe music in Braille.