The Triumph of Merry Clayton

Published Dec 28, 2021, 5:00 AM

(Recorded October 6, 2021) Even if you don’t know the name Merry Clayton, you know her voice. It’s the one belting on The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter and it is remarkable - you can actually hear Mick Jagger hooting and hollering in the background after Clayton sings the hook. Clayton started providing backing vocals for Bobby Darin as a teenager and went on to record with Ray Charles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Carole King, Neil Young, and the list goes on and on. Her story is featured in the 2013 documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, which celebrated the often-overlooked contributions of backup singers to popular songs and won the Oscar for Best Documentary. Following a near-fatal car accident, Clayton has returned to release her first solo album in more than 25 years, Beautiful Scars. 


This episode introduces guest host Talia Schlanger, who will occasionally be featured on Here’s the Thing. Schlanger is a performer, musician, and broadcaster. She has interviewed hundreds of artists as the former host of the NPR-distributed program World Cafe and throughout her career at CBC. 

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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. We have a special episode for you this week. I want you to meet someone, Talia Schlanger. Hi, Talia, Hey Alec, it's great to be here. So, Talia, you're a performer and musician. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Yeah. Right now, I'm recording an album of my own original music that I write and sang and play on guitar. But I started my career professionally in theater when I was fourteen, doing a bunch of musicals towards the States with the Green Day Show American Idiot, and went to school for broadcasting, writing for radio and TV. You're also a radio host and producer. You've interviewed a lot of people, correct, Yeah. I used to host the NPR syndicated show World Cafe. We interviewed a different musician every day. You're Canadian, and you frequently guest host on the CBC. In fact, that's where I heard you one night on my radio. Your voice just jumped out of me and I thought, I've got to have run my show and here you are. I can't believe it, but here I am yes, so tell you as we start our second year of shows at My Heart, you'll be sitting in the host chair for here's the thing. In fact, you have an interview ready. Yeah, I had that chance to interview the amazing singer Mary Clayton Alec. Do you remember the first time you would have heard her voice? Yes, it was her performance as the Acid Queen in the London Symphony Orchestra recording of the Who's Tommy, Well tal you best of luck to thank you so much, Ali. Mary Clayton has the kind of voice that will stop you right in your tracks. Even if her name still isn't ringing a bell, You've definitely heard her sing on some pretty huge songs. She's sang on Leonard Skinner's Sweet Home Alabama. Carol King had her on Tapestry. She has sunk backups with Ray Charles Neil, Young, Joe Cocker, maybe most notably in The Rolling Stones with her unmistakable and emotional belting on Jimme Shelter. Mary Clayton told her story in the documentary twenty Ft from Stardom. The film celebrates the often overlooked contributions of backup singers in popular music. Twenty Ft from Stardom won the Academy Award for Best Documentary and shined a much deserved spotlight on Clayton's immense talent. But shortly after the film's triumph at the Oscars, Clayton's life took a dramatic turn when she was in a near fatal car accident. This past April, seven years after her accident and fifty years after her first solo album, Mary Clayton released Beautiful Scars. The album showcases her gospel roots and her unbreakable spirit, which can only be described as triumphant. I get the feeling of overcoming something very very hard that you came through. You know. I didn't stay in it. I came through it. That's the feeling that I get of Beautiful Scars. A scar is something that it always gets a scap. I got a scamp on my scar and then I healed it, you know, with God's help, of course, because I'm a woman of faith. I'm not religious. I'm a very spiritual woman. I am a woman of faith, and I did come through it with God's hilp. Yeah, and with scars. You know, you you can get rid of scars. It takes a minute. It took me almost five years, five years and five months, but I made it through with fine colors, and I came out shiny like gold and sounding like a dream. I'll tell you what. Thank you. So you brought it up five years ago. Do you mind saying what what you went through at that time that left you with this beautiful scar. So I had a bit of an accident right after I had won every accolade in that one can win in a career. Of course, I'm sure you know about twenty Feet from Stardom winning the Academy Award for the Best Documentary, and we had won everything, you know, one Sun Dance we won Golden We were just on the high, really happy, and we traveled the world promoting that film. And so I had to go to sign some papers, do some paperwork, and on the way back, I get back on out here as a freeway and someone was could you pull over something that's going and they kept pointing to my car. So you know, when someone is pointing pointing to your car, you're saying, oh my god, maybe gases leaking. I've got whatever is going on, better pull over to sea. So I pulled over to the side after I got through talking to the people, trying to figure out what's going on. I was getting back onto the freeway to go on my way and a young man was getting on the freeway driving really fast and t bowed me and it broke both of my legs. So my first thought was thank god. I had the window down because I was speaking to the people on the other side, and when I looked down, I looked down and my legs had just I went to one side and I said in myself, I said, oh my god, I said, I think, and I'm screaming out the window. Thank my leg is broken. Call the paramedics. Paramedics was right across the street. Thank god, Thank god. So the paramedics came and the paramedics. He gets in the cardinal on the passenger side and he says to me, oh, Ms Clayton, I just saw your movie twenty feet from startom, I said, And I'm just in an accident. What do you mean you just saw my movie? He says, But don't worry. We're gonna take care of you. Anybody you want us to call, because I'm gonna give you something's gonna knock you out. Wow, And who do you want us to call, and of course the numbers that rolled off of my tongue was my uncle Lu, who was affectionately known as Uncle Lulu admer right, legendary record producer. Yeah, who worked with your whole career. Yeah, I called it my uncle Leu. So they called Uncle Lou, I'm told, and um, they got me out of Aparently they did, and they took me right to you Selway, which is the hospital here, you know. And the next thing I know, I was in intensive to care about five or six days, I'm told by my family and dear dear friends. And when I came up out of that intensive care, it was like, oh my god. I had the doctors, you know, when they come to see you in your room, they come and not one or two, it's about five or six sons they come marching in. After I came to myself and the doctors said Ms. Clayton, We've got some news for you. And I said, well, what is it? He says, well, we had to make some harsh decisions in order to save your life. And I'm looking at him, so what is it? He said, we had to amputate both legs from the knee down. Of course, I just my heart. You know. It's just like I had to take a ref because I knew that something had happened. I didn't know exactly what. So my first question was, did anything happen to my voice? You believe that was really your first question. That was really the first thing that you're thinking about after getting that news, after that news, it's the weirdest thing. My sister said, you asked the doctors, did anything happen to your voice? I said, doctor, So I remember them say, oh no, miss Clayton, we knew you were a singer. We made sure, and it happened to your voice box. Well, you know, so after they told me, um that nothing happened to my voice, so I looked at the doctor and said, well, nothing happened to my voice. I'll be okay, I'll be all right. And my sister told me, she says, you laid back in your bed and looked up and start singing this song that Ashfrid and Simpson wrote for me for a film that I did, called I Can Steal a Shine. And I was just singing. She said, we could hear you way down the hall singing lud old you know I can I can still shine you know, I'm just singing. So my sister told the doctors, she said, okay, come doctor here, we can go down. She's singing, she'll be fine. Oh my god, she's just like a Ersia in church. She ershed them right out of the room. And she said they walked out just shaking their heads, saying what kind of woman she won't to know about her voice as she started singing. So the doctors were shaking their head and they laughed, you know, and by then loing, some other people had gotten there, you know, and uh, and then they said, I just sung myself to sleep. I don't know how that song goes? How does it? How? What song is it? Um? I've loved good enough, I've loved heart bitter days. I've never seen I made some wrong. It's ride moves, you know what I mean, Just just just like you are. I'm waiting father, I'd want to come through. Life is heartometime and I've been hurt sometime. I can't still shine. I can't still shine, Oh my god. So I wanted to know. I wanted to know if my voice was working. So my Sageter said, when I found out my voice was working, she said, I just suddenly just went on to sleep when I sung myself to sleep. Can't you believe, Oh my God, thank you so much for singing. Just now, like thinking about that moment, you're comforting yourself to sleep singing. It's absolutely absolutely thank you for that. Oh my God, You're welcome. So that was my way of, really, as you said, comforting myself because that was a lot to take in. But then again, as I said, I am a woman of faith, and I knew that God was in control and he had me in the palm of his hands, and that his word says that I'll never leave you or forsake you, even until the ends of the earth. And I truly believe that. I believe that all my life. So I knew that he was with me during this. I knew that he was with me. So I just as I said, I just arrested, arrested in him. I just knew he would take care of whatever needed to be taken care of, and I knew that he would handle whatever he needed to handle regarding my will being So you, I mean, you have this this faith in God being able to handle everything that you're not fail being as you've just said, But you also had to put in a massive amount of work in terms of rehabilitation, I think, to be able to get yourself moving again. And I'm really curious to know as a like, singing is such a physical act. You use your whole body. When I listened to you singing, I can hear you using your whole body. Did the physical change for you, change the way that that you approach singing at all? You know, to be honest, no, not at all. We were talking about that doing the recording of Beautiful Scars, and uh, Lou and Terry would tell me. You know, a matter of fact, we did an interview a couple of weeks ago and Lou was saying to the interviewee said Mary was out in the studio singing, and Terry and I just looked at each other and said, she has not missed a beat. She's on the same that she sound when I first met her. Says, unbelievable. So you know, sometime when you lose things in life, or you have a tragedy in your life, you're given other stuff to make up for that. So I was given the wind, the air, everything that I need to sing without faulting. For some reason. That was that was a gift from above that was given to me during that period. So no, I didn't have a hard time singing. I really really didn't. And I had such a good time, such a great, wonderful, loving, peaceful, happy time working with Uncle Lewin Terry. It's one of the greatest writers that I've ever had the opportunity to work with. What it comes to the music, you got to be spot on, you know, and if you're wise, you'll listen to what he has to say when he's telling you to do certain things. So I became very wise on this project, and I listened to every technique and everything he told me. I would listen, I would apply it, and it worked out great for us. It's incredible. I mean, the record is spectacular, but it's really something like there's so many moving moments on it, but it's something to hear you say that you know you're taking feedback about technique and stuff. I mean, you put on your first solo record more than fifty years ago and you sounded perfect then, Like it's just so what a humble wait for you to feel. I guess that you still have something to to learn from somebody else, And oh my god, if you're not learning, Darling, you're not growing. I can still learn a whole lot, you know, especially in this craft called music, and in this music industry, you're you're always learning. And if you're wise, as I said before, you'll listen. I've always been a listener. That's how I learned by listening and watching. You know. I'll always hung out with people that were were older than me. You know, I never hung out with the kids. I was never wanting to do that. I want to hang out with the little older people. You know that the wise sisters, you know in the church or you know, because that was our life, was the church. I'd sitting not listen all the time, and I watched them. I listened to different choir members and the directors of the choir, and I would take what they did and I would apply it to when I was singing with Ray Charles, when I was singing with the Stones, when I was singing with Joe Cocker, when I was singing with my god mother, Dela Rees, when I was singing with my Haley jack not singing with but when I knew my Haley Jackson everything that everything that she did, because she would sitting I would always sit with her in my dad's church. When she'd come to visit, I would find her, you know, Haley, Uh, there she is. There's Haley, And I'd run to wherever she was and would nestle in between she and another great singer, her name was Linda Hopkins. They would always come visit my dad's church. Right, So all these ladies, I would just be really quiet that would mimic everything they would do. I would do, you know. But that's a process of learning, that's right. So you just painted us sort of a picture of your dad's church that you grew up in and sitting with these these gospel greats and sing from them. Does that then translate to everything else that you do, like I'm thinking of. I know, Sam Cook also was at your church when you're growing up, and he was with the Soul Stirs, this incredible gospel group before he did secular music. But there was a carry over, Like whether he's singing gospel or whether he singing secular music, you feel you have the feeling that it's coming from the same place. Is that true for you as well? I mean, it doesn't matter, no matter, and that's really a no matter. I mean, it doesn't matter what I'm singing, there's gonna be a gospel field in there, right and um, when I was singing, really doing a lot of background singing, That's what the grouts from Europe want, That's what they wanted, That's what the Stones wanted, That's what Joe Cocker wanted. That's what Barbara Streisan wanted when she would hire us. You know she's singing the way you would sing in your church. Don't don't hide it. The field that I want is that feel that you guys have. And it all came back to where we came from and we came out of the church. So yes, everything I sing, even when I did um, I was the original Acid Queen and Tommy with the London Symphony Orchestra, which is the musical for people who are not familiar to the who the band their musical Tommy, that's an incredible role. I was the original Tina did the film, but I was the original last Queen on the record for the double album with because Lou was one of the producers. Lou Asler and Lou Reisner were the producers of that album, so naturally Lou was gonna have me to say that character you know. So even when I did Tommy, you could hear gospel in there. If your childie all he could be. Now this girl can put him right, you know what I mean. You could hear that gospel in there. You know, whatever I saying, it's gonna there's gonna be some gospel feeling there no matter what I say, you know. So that's just who I am, and that's just what I do. Vocalist Mary Clayton. If you like interviews with groundbreaking musicians, make sure you check out Alex Conversation with David Crosby. We always produced our records and we had when we called the reality rule. You come into the room, just us, nobody else and I seeing each other as song, and they either liked it, and if they liked it, you know, then we start figured out how to sing it. And these are hugely talented guys. Man, they came with a lot of stuff. Neil's nickname is sometimes it's CSN sometimes why you know, and when it would be CS and Y it was a lot bigger. The reason to cuss always Neil's decision, because if there's twenty thousand people in the stadium, Neil put ten of them there here the rest of Alec and David Crosby's conversation at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Mary Clayton shares the story of how she got her start in the music business, which meant juggling after school recording sessions with homework and knaps. I'm telling I Ash Langer sitting in for Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Mary Clayton's powerhouse vocals stand out in a crowd. That's been clear since her very first professional recording gig with a legendary crooner. I was almost fifteen and we were doing this record with a gentlemle name Bobby Darren. And Bobby Darren wanted background singers, but he wanted the gospel sound. He was very, very soulful man, and he loved African American singers. He loved it. So I was called for this record date at Capitol Records. It was myself and a group of other girls and we did this background session and for some reason, he kept saying to the singers, there's someone who is a little bit loud. So they would say, okay, Bobby, we'll we'll ask her to stand back. So the girls would say, Mary stand back a little bit, and I'd stand back a little bit and um, he said, okay, starting all over again. We start singing again, and he said, you know that voice is still it's good, but it's just still a little loud. So they'd asked me to step back, Mary, step back a little bit more. So I step back, step back, so more remind you. By the end of the session, I was all both out the room right until down the street, almost our studio ad until I was able to adjust that. Because I'd never sing in a recording session before, so I didn't know how to really really blend. I'd sung in choirs, you know, but I never I didn't know how to and they taught me how to blend, but I don't know. I guess hearing yourself back and the headphones. I learned very quickly, though. So he said, excuse me, what is your name? I said Mary? He said, can you come in? So I went behind the booth, you know, and I went in thea in the control room. He said, can you sing your apart? So I sung my part to him. He said, that's that voice I keep hearing. I said yes. He said how old are you? I said, I'm gonna be fifteen Christmas. What you're singing like that? At fifteen? He said, I think I need to talk to your parents. I said, we'll wait a minute. Did I do something wrong? Oh no, you don't do anything wrong. You're doing something very right. But you're very You're a little bit loud, he said, But I'd like for you to come in tomorrow with your parents. I'd like to take a meeting with your parents. So we took a meeting with Mr Darren about a week or two later, and he wanted to sign me. So he signed me the Capitol at fifteen on his label, which was T and M Music at Capitol Records. So that was my first experience in the recording studio. And we did several singles, you know, a lot of things because I was stealing. God, I was in high school, you know, I was still in high school, trying to get through high school to graduate to go to college. So that was my first first experience in a recording studio. So you're a teenager and your parents are called in and he's like, I want to sign your daughter. What did they think of that? Were they like you have to do your homework first, or they were like, go for it. So he wanted me to do another session. And the session required me to be at the studio at about four o'clock in the evening. So Mr D like we called him Mr D. Mr D said, okay, we'll have a car and a driver to pick her up from school. My mother said, okay, you can have a car on the driver to pick her up from school. She said, but these are the requirements. She has to do her homework. She has to take a nap because she would have been up early early in the morning for school. And then she can come down. We will be there by then and sing with Shorty Rogers and his big band in your studio. But these are the requirements. My father said. Now, if you can meet those requirements, sure she can do the session. But oh yes, they had to pick me up. Mr Darren had to correct my homework. I mean it was something I had English or something, you know, math or whatever. But he came up and checked out. He had a lady to come, a teacher to come and check my homework, made sure that the lights were out. I took a two hour nap that I got my god. Because he had everything in his big office there and he came in. They woke me up to prepare me to go downstairs to sing with Shorty Rice is big band. I'm talking about a big band. I'm not talking about I'm not talking about a little small six piece band. I'm talking about an eighteen piece orchestra. And he was doing a record called You're the Reason I'm Living Okay, and I did to do it with him on this album call You the Reason I'm Living and the duet was called who can I count on If I can't count on you? And he was floored. He said, all of that voice is coming out a little bit body. I said, yeah, I guess, so he says, well, was incredible. So Shorty would come over and he said, I told you she could sing. JE said, Bobby, I told you this young lady could sing. And he was just like shaking his head. Mr Darren, He said, I can't not believe you're singing like this to be the age that you are. And my mother just looked at him. She was she was in the booth with me, so she just looked up at him, so you know, she was trained. And of all the church now and we we sing in the church. We don't play you know, you either sing or you're gonna play an instrument. You know you're gonna be one for the other. Because see, I'm from New Orleans, and in New Orleans, you sing, you play an instrument, you go to college. You know, that's just the way that was. That's unbelievable. I mean, you've got this person. He's a huge star. He believes in you so much. You come in, you crush it. He's going to these great lengths to make sure that you can be on these sessions for him. What did you dream for yourself at that point? Because I mean, I'm thinking, your kid, kid, you must have thought, I can I've got something. What did you dream for yourself at that point? I didn't think any of that stuff. I just thought, you know, this is really really nice. I wonder can I do this when I get out of school? You know. And I've spoken to some of the other girls and older ladies that we're doing background session. I said, you guys do this all the time. They say, oh yeah, we do maybe two sessions, maybe three or four sessions a week. I said, well, how much do you make? And they told me at that time they were paying background saying and if you doubled that particular song, which is put another track over that you get another That was incredible money for a fifteen sixteen year old in the sixties, in the six daies. Oh my god. And I said, that's that's pretty nice. So of course when I when I got out of school, you know, and they just started call I started getting these calls. You know, Jack would call Mary, there's a great session going on. It would be good miss Ms Clayton, be a good, good thing for Mary to go to this session. She'll get paid. We'll make sure she'd get paid. Union's gaye old. And after so a few years of that, I said, Mama said, well, you know, would you like to do this as as maybe her career, because you know you couldn't do this as a career if you want to, it's how you feel about it, I said, Mama loved to sing. She said, well, this is good training for you, whatever you want to do. But by then I had gotten this great call from my great friend Billy Preston, my childhood friend, one of the greatest keyboard and organists and songwriters in the world, Billy Preston. So Billy called one day and he says, what are you doing? I said, why are you whispering? He says, listen, whatever you're doing, I need you to drop it because I want you to come up and sing for Ray. I said, Ray, Who is it? Ray Charles? I said, what I said? The Ray Charles? He says, only wanted Ray Charles. He said, get dressed, put on something cute, smell good, and and be real cute. And you come up to Ray's office. They're going on tour and their auditioning singers. And I told Rady that you were just fantastic and that you would just be great for his group. Well I would, I would have to sing from Mr Charles. And I left with a contract, you know, for my parents to check out to see if this would be something that I want to do. So Billy and I made it this big story. He said, you tell your mother that my mother's gonna let me go and then we and then you're gonna We had this big thing, you know, we were doing this big covert operation, you know, to get on this tour. My mother would say, do you guys really think we're crazy? Do you do you know who we are? We are? Your mother? You have to have a chaperone if you go out there on this tour. So she told Mr. Child My dad said, well, you know what, I have a good girl here and I want her to come back here just the way she left, and if she doesn't, you're gonna have a problem. My mother, my mother told Mr Charles, you have a problem with her father, and that's not the one you want to have a problem with. So Ray, you know, he came and he spoke to my mom said, don't worry about her. Everything's gonna be just fine, and we'll have chaperons and Billy, they're gonna be the youngest one on the tour. We're gonna take good tear of don't don't, don't worry about it. Miss Clayton. It's okay. I'm just letting you know in front, so you know behind you want no problem with me? Now, this is my baby, you know. So Billy and I and you know, we got it together, and we got a wardrobe, my parents got a wardrobe and everything together, and we went out on this tour to Ray Charles and had the time of our lives with a big this big orchestra. He had this huge orchestra and he had three other singers, you know, so he rehearsed us profusely because he was a perfectionist and he wanted it to be the way he wanted it to be, you know, to singer to Ray Charles. That was something to say in the mid sixties, what do you do well, I singer? You what you sing with Ray Charles? Well, yeah, i'd seing with Ray Charles. Well, oh my goodness, sure, we'll let you have this. So we'll let you have that whatever you want. You know. Unbelievable, And just like that, you're a Raylette. And there you go. I was a Raylett and I didn't let ray Oh. That was a big thing that people said. They said that in order to be a Raylet you had to let Rolsa. Not in me. Yikes. I married his conductor and was married to his conductor for thirty two years until he closed his eyes and left this earth. Yeah, unbelievable saxophone player. Yeah, yeah, the great Curtis saying me, that's right. Singer Mary Clayton follow here's the thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When we return, Mary Clayton talks about the benefits and the challenges of being a black female artist in the nineteen seventies. I'm Talia Schlanger in for Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. By the time she was twenty one, Mary Clayton was a seasoned pro having already performed with some of the biggest names in music. But it was a surprise phone call late one night from a famous producer that launched her career into the stratosphere. Jack Niici. This is a producer. Jack Nietchi calls and he says, listen, there's a bunch of guys in town. They're they're rolling And before he can get out stones I'm saying, and my husband's takes a phone. He says, Man, why you call them Mary so late? You know she's pregnant. He says, Man, we're getting ready to go to bed. He said, Man, you gotta let her work on this date. This date is gonna be wonderful. We got to set a car and don't worry about her. I'm coming into Limo and I'll take care of her, take her there and then I'll bring it back. He said, Man, it is really really late. She's put lotion on her hands when she starts to put lotion in her hands. It's bedtime. So so I had these beautiful silk, pink silk pajamas. So my husband says, baby, aren't you gonna change your clothes? I said no, So I said, do I have to go? Curtis? He said, yeah, baby, just go. I won'ta take you long. He said, this could be really really important. He said, you know, these boards from England. Just maybe something that that would be really really good for you, you know, later on in your career, you know. So he's talking to me as he's nudging me to the front door, and we opened the door and the limo is sitting way down the driveway like waiting for me, you know. So I get in the car. I said, okay, I'm going, I said, but I'm not gonna be going along. So I take this Chanelle scarf that rollers in my hair, and I put the Chanelle scarf because I'm not taking your rollers out of my hair. And I put the Chanelle scarf over my hand. I tied beautifully and put a little bit of makeup on, a lipstick off. I went get to the studio and I said the guy, I see somebody coming through the back door, and who was it but Keith and Mick. So they come to me and they say, are you married? I said, yes, I am, I said, and who are you? He said, well, I'm I ain't bloody Keith and this is Mick right here. You know how they talk? I said, well, hi, how are you? Said? Oh, we're fine. We're glad you're here. Mary. So okay, So what do you want me to sing? He said, because I can't stay long? Wow. So Mix said, I'm gonna go and gonna go and get it. They said, you want to come into booth. I see, I'll come in and listen to the tracks. I listened to the track. I said, it's pretty cool. He said, we just want you to sing this part right here, and you're gonna do an answer to what you know, justice slowle verse right here to say, and then on the second time we'll let you know after you get through with this, what you're gonna do next. So after I did war Children just a Shadow with just a Shadow low along with with Mick. I did that part and I said, wow, this is really something. I that part with him, and then here comes Keith out the booth. He said, well, darling, this is the second one you have to do? And I said what, And I've read the lyric and I said, rape murder. It's just a shot away. And it was rape murder again, it's just a shot away. So I looked at him myself, Honey, I'm here by myself. I'm not getting ready to sing anything but a rape and a murder. It's you're also sorry, you're twenty one years old and you're pregnant also, like, let's be honest, like that's and it was, and it was high, it was high. The key was high. Yeah. So I did that part and then he told me the gist of the song. He told me what it meant. I said, oh, okay. So then we sung that part and they I told him, I said, you guys, go in and just let me do my point. I urged them right on out. I said, you guys going, You don't have to be out here with me. I've been doing this for a while and I know what I'm doing. So they left and they went to the booth. So I started to sing. And at that period, it was civil rights movement going on. Dr King had just been assassinated, it was the war in Vietnam and I really had to call on all of my ancestors to help me. After I found out what we were really singing about. I called on my grandmother, my great grandmother. I called everybody that ever loved me that we're not here anymore. I called on them to come and help me because I needed help and in this particular song, in this night. So I called on them and they came and they helped me. You know, I know people believe in that and some people don't. I believe in and people coming to helping people that anybody who is they ever loved me. I called them to come up and help me that night, and they did. And I remember when I came to myself because it was like out of body experience when I when I did the very high party, that shiny what just that shint I And it just seems like everything in me, from everything that was going on in the world, all of the stuff that was going the just came through me. And I was screaming, you know, just with all of everything that was within me, and all I could hear and see was making Keith and Jimmy and everybody in the booth just oh, they were screaming back in the back, you know, So apparently I did a pretty good job. I said, well, I'm gonna give you one more for safety and I'm out, Mary, can you do it one more time? Can you keep the screaming? I said, I'm gonna give you whatever I have. I said, you do know that I'm carrying a baby right now. It says, oh, yes, darling, you you do with Just do the best. I said, don't worry about it, I'll get it done. So I gave them one more for safety. And as I gave them that, they weren't back in the booth. I need to listen. To listen back, I was waving goodbye and I was going on. I think I did two passes of that, and the next thing I knew it was the biggest hit of life. Wow, you know, it was giving shelter everywhere I write today. It's a huge record to deal right today. You know, I think what you did on that song is one of the most powerful moments of recording in all of music history. Like I'm not joking when I say that, Like I really mean that very seriously. You can hear everything that you've just said. You can hear the entire civil rights movement. You can hear your ancestors, you can hear all of humanity, you can your birth and death, you can hear everything in it. It's harrowing and it's what you've given so much of yourself. And that same year you put out your first solo album, Give Me Shelter. You use that at the title of the title track. The version, your version is absolutely unbelievable and it's so different. So tell me what you wanted for yourself as a solo artist at that moment in time after, you know, after having this massive hit with the Rolling Stones and putting out your own solo record. You know, it's very weird to say, but at that time, I was so young. I was so young. I just wanted to sing, and I had met this lovely, wonderful, precious human being named Lou Addler who believed in me. I wasn't thinking too much of anything back then other than I really wanted to sing, and I wanted it to be good, and I wanted to make him proud. Yeah, I wanted to make my husband and my family proud. But I really, when someone is believing you and putting money and putting everything they could put into you, into you. You want to make them proud. You know, I have no doubt that you made him proud. Do you think he wanted you to be the biggest star in the world, though, I think that you wanted I like I think he did. He did. Things happened that you have no control over. At that time, it was Aretha, Aretha, Aretha right right. Aretha was grateful as a great friend of mine, and I knew her since I was like eight nine years old. But a lot of time you couldn't get earplay on the radio if you were you were an artist like myself, even though you were in the same field that she was in. It was Aretha and Diana Ross, the Supremes, the Motown era, so you couldn't really get traction. You can get so much, so much traction, and then he would drop off, you know. But he always wanted the best for me, always wanted the best for me. I didn't necessarily want to be a huge star. I just wanted to sing, especially at one I mean, please, really, I didn't even know. I didn't even know of being. The only star that I knew was Bobby Darren and Ray Charles. Wow, that perspective that you have is incredible and it makes it I feel mad because I love your early solo works and I feel like I play like I play your first time at parties, like I love I love it, and it's like it's incredible, and I think that for me, like when you say at that moment it was Aretha, Aretha, Areatha or Diana Ross, like there's an element for me to me anyway of racism and sexism there where it's like there's only allowed to be one person. Absolutely absolutely that's the way it was. But see, that's that's the way that it was. An African American artist, you know, in a field of music where to them their star could only be one. Was read the Franklin to be one. On the other side of R and B and pop, Diana Ross, you know, could only be one. And that's just the way it was. That's the way it was set up. So that's what happened. But I was always busy and I was always working always. It sounds like maybe you've got the best of all the things, you know what I think I did. I think I did because I was constantly going to the bank and I love that good. Well, you deserve to get paid but I will say that the other evidence of you sort of coming out on top of this is that we listen to beautiful scars and it's like there's no wear and tear on your voice, like you haven't lost God. Like it's almost rude, like how can you still do that? How can you sing like that? It's I'm just how so thrilled for you that you're able to do that. The only thing I can say is that this is my gift from God. And when God gives you a gift, that's what it is. That's his gift. We all have have gifts, and when he but when He gives you a gift, when He annoys you and appoint you with this beautiful gift, if you take care of it and you nurture it, God honors that. I think that He honors that. And you know I often said, oh my God, God, I just thank you so much that you left my gift intact. And I knew that when my gift was intact and I was left intact, that he had something else that he wanted me to do. He wasn't finished. My destiny was not finished. Had I been finished, had he been finished with me, I would have perished in that accident, you know, because if anyone would looked at the car they were sending to, Novo made it out of this, you know. I said, Oh my goodness, there's some one of these many people I have to touch with this gift before I leave this earth. I think I know the answer to this, But I'll ask you, what do you pray for before you go out and sing for people? That they will be touched, that they will be delivered from whatever they're going through, that they would come away with a smile on their face and know that they can make it in any situation that you go through. You can make it through anything. But you have to know who you are. Mary Clayton. I'm so honored to get to talk to you today. Thank you. What a gift you've given the world with the music that you make in the way that you speak of it. Thank you so so much, my pleasure. Bless you, guys, My thanks to singer Mary Clayton. I'm Talish Langer. I'll be here from time to time as guest host on Here's the Thing. This episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach mcknee's Maureen Hoban and Carrie Donna Hue. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Alec Baldwin will be back in with new episodes of Here's the Thing, Make the Bname Come to to

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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