Chicago soul legend Otis Clay dead at 73

Howard Reich
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

The music industry liked to peg Chicago vocal master Otis Clay as a soul singer. Or an R&B king. Or a gospel titan. Or a high-energy showman.

He was all of that, and more, Clay's roots in Mississippi and musical blossoming in Chicago making him an uncommonly eclectic musician who drew upon more stylistic influences than even his more ardent fans may have realized.

The one-time Grammy nominee, who churned out hits in the late 1960s with "That's How It Is (When You're in Love)," in the early 1970s with "Trying to Live My Life Without You" (later covered by Bob Seger) and in the '80s with "When the Gates Swing Open," said he soaked up the music of Duke Ellington and Thomas A. Dorsey, Sam Cooke and Muddy Waters, and a great deal more.

Clay, a 2013 Blues Hall of Fame inductee, died Friday at age 73, said his longtime arranger and producer, Thomas "Tom Tom" Washington.

His daughter, Ronda Tankson, told The Associated Press that her father died of a heart attack.

"Writing this with a very heavy heart and tears in my eyes as I recently heard the very sad news that the great Otis Clay suddenly passed on," Chicago blues musician Dave Specter wrote on Facebook. Specter collaborated with Clay on "Message in Blue," Specter's critically applauded 2014 album.

"Otis conveyed power with soul music and with blues like very few people I've ever heard live," Specter said Saturday. "It was as good as it gets.

"His live shows — it was so stirring, and so moving. And he was a great showman. Not when you think of a showman being an over-the-top entertainer on steroids. Nothing like that. It was so real."

Indeed, in concert Clay proved a galvanic force, his gravelly, rumbling low notes and fervent, imploring high ones showing a potent mixture of the sacred and the secular, the accessible and the sophisticated.

"My life always has been a combination of things musically," Clay told the Tribune in 2013, as he was celebrating the release of his album "Truth Is."

"Every Saturday night I listened to the Grand Ole Opry," added Clay, who was born Feb. 11, 1942, in Waxhaw, Miss.

"During the day, later on, you listened to (radio) coming out of Memphis. During the noonday, at 12 o'clock, we listened to (blues pioneer) Sonny Boy Williamson, coming out of Helena, Ark. (And) I'm listening to Vaughn Monroe and Rosemary Clooney and listening to Hank Williams and Roy Acuff."

So the far-flung idioms those artists represented were set deeply in Clay's musical persona, even before he came to Chicago as a teenager, in the mid-1950s, to live with his uncle and aunt. In Chicago he absorbed further musical influences but in the flesh.

"I guess I've always loved Chicago," Clay said in the Tribune interview. "And people say, 'Well, you're from Mississippi.' And I say, 'Chicago is only a suburb of Mississippi.' It was the place to go. It was exciting, of course.

"You got to be in a place where a lot of legends (lived), whether they were blues or gospel, they were in Chicago. I guess I was about 6 or 7 years old when I saw my first live show. I was living in Clarksdale, Miss., at that time, and that was Muddy Waters.

"And now I'm in the same city that Muddy Waters is living in and playing local clubs and what have you, though I wasn't going to 'em yet. Sam Cooke was here, the Soul Stirrers, the Caravans and all these (other gospel) people. It was a lot of excitement."

By age 15, Clay was singing Chicago gospel with the Golden Jubilaires, and three years later, in 1960, touring America with Charles Bridges' Famous Blue Jay Singers. That experience only expanded Clay's artistic range, because "our audience was basically, most of the time, white," meaning the singers were expected to perform repertoire well outside gospel tradition.

On Sundays, though, "most of the time we would be singing in black churches. … 1960: What was the greatest craze at the time? The twist. So we added that to our repertoire. We added 'That Old Gang of Mine,' 'Mother Machree.' We were variety singers, so therefore I had that exposure, so it wasn't so hard for me to do it."

Though Clay began releasing soul records on Chicago's One-derful label in the 1960s, he never lost touch with his gospel roots, recording and performing that repertoire through the decades. When disco was ascendant in the 1970s, Clay found a growing and devoted audience for his earthy music on the other side of the world, in Japan.

This came as a surprise to him.

"I had no idea," he said in the Tribune interview. "I thought when we got ready to go to a foreign country, we were going to go Europe. I didn't think I was going to go to Japan, because I'm thinking Pearl Harbor, WWII. … (I thought:) What am I going to sing? I thought it was one of the craziest ideas.

"And then I go to Japan. I find that they are so up on the music. That, too, was a lesson well learned. … They know the songs, they know the meaning of the songs."

Clay had been scheduled to perform Saturday night on Chicago's West Side, said arranger-producer Washington. Specter spoke to Clay on Wednesday: "When you get a FaceTime call from Otis Clay, it's a big deal," said Specter, honored by the call and noting that the singer looked to be in fine spirits.

"He was just a combination of his voice, his passion, his intensity," Specter said.

Performing with Clay was "the most inspiring feeling I ever got," he said.

"I remember the first rehearsal at Delmark (Records) for 'Message in Blue' – his voice made me cry. And it was just a rehearsal.

"I've worked with a lot of great singers. But I don't think I've worked with anybody who had that feeling."

Funeral plans have not been announced.