David Clayton-Thomas
David Clayton-Thomas (born September 13, 1941 in London ; actually David Henry Thomsett ) is a Canadian musician and was the singer of the group Blood, Sweat & Tears .
Career
He was born to a Canadian soldier and an English music hall singer during a German air raid in London. Growing up in Amich Lake, Ontario, Canada, he learned to play guitar and piano by himself and worked in the steel mills of Hamilton when he was nineteen.
Between 1963 and 1965 he led the rock group Fabulous Shays and 1966 The Boss Men, with which he was able to place his bestseller Brainwashed at number one on the Canadian charts for sixteen weeks. In 1968 he went to John Lee Hooker as lead guitarist and in the same year switched to Blood, Sweat & Tears as a singer. With these he had hits like You've Made Me So Very Happy , And When I Die , Hi-De-Ho , Spinning Wheel and the self-composed songs Lucretia MacEvil and Go Down Gamblin . His role in this band was controversial: Critics praised his "powerful rhythmic phrasing and a voice that effortlessly ranges from the low baritone to high falsetto tones" ( New York Times ), but also criticized his vocal mannerisms and dumpling articulation . While still a member of BS&T, he produced his first solo LP in the fall of 1971 and went freelance as a soloist in 1972.
He was able to recruit excellent musicians for his Sanctuary Band, with which he won the first prize worth 16,000 dollars at the song festival in Rio de Janeiro in October 1972: Danny Kortchmar (guitar) had previously worked with James Taylor and Carole King . Willy Weeks (bass) came from the bands of Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack , Kenneth Rice from Aretha Franklin . Other musicians on the second solo record Tequila Sunrise: William Smith (keyboard), Michael Jay Weinstein (harm), Kenny Marco (guitar), Chuck Rainey (bass), Tessie Calderon (drums).
Since Columbia / CBS allegedly denied him the previously agreed publicity support and failed to transfer the royalties, Clayton-Thomas went to court in 1973 and to the competition RCA. The LP Harmony Junction released there did not exceed its Columbia solo sales of about 50,000 copies per record. That's why he returned to Blood, Sweat & Tears as a band singer in late 1974.
From 1975 on he had the band name printed on the posters in large letters: Featuring David Clayton-Thomas. He shared the rights to the band name with the drummer Bobby Colomby and recruited several groups for revival appearances during the 80s, which however did not produce any records after Nuclear Blues (1980).
In 1990 he sued the writers of the Milli Vanilli hit All Or Nothing for plagiarizing his hit Spinning Wheel , and signed a solo deal with Zoo Records label SRC.
At a BS&T performance in West Bloomfield Michigan in June 1995, he shocked the audience by remarking that the weather today was "as hot as the last train to Auschwitz". In June 1996 he was honored for his life's work in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In the same year he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame .
Web links
- Works by David Clayton-Thomas in the catalog of the German National Library
- Homepage of David Clayton-Thomas
- http://www.musicline.de/de/artist_bio/Clayton-Thomas,David
Individual evidence
- ^ Canadian Music Hall of Fame - Inductees. Canadian Music Hall of Fame , accessed August 6, 2017 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Clayton-Thomas, David |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Thomsett, David Henry (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 13, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |