Clarence Carter, Soul Singer Behind "Patches" and "Strokin'," Dies at 90

Clarence Carter, the blind soul singer from Montgomery, Alabama whose voice carried the grit of the Deep South and the warmth of the church, died Wednesday at 90. His death was confirmed by Bill Carpenter, a spokesman for Carter's former wife and fellow soul legend Candi Staton. He died of natural causes, having spent his final months battling Stage 4 prostate cancer, pneumonia, and sepsis — and still working until close to the end.

He kept going until Old Man Death came to run him down. That was always the plan.

The Voice That Couldn't Be Ignored

Carter was born on January 14, 1936, blind from birth, in Montgomery, Alabama — a place and time that stacked every possible obstacle against a Black man with no sight and a guitar. He taught himself to play anyway. He majored in music at Alabama State College. He built a career that would span six decades and produce some of the most distinctive recordings in American soul music.

His catalog broke cleanly in two directions. There was the tender, deeply human side — songs like "Patches," his biggest hit, a 1970 tearjerker about a boy who loses his father and has to become a man to keep his family's farm alive. The song reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Song. It remains one of the most emotionally direct recordings of its era — the kind of song that makes people pull over the car.

And then there was the other side of Clarence Carter: exuberantly, defiantly raunchy. "Slip Away." "Back Door Santa." And above all, "Strokin'" — a funky, talking ode to sex so explicit it never got near commercial radio but became a jukebox institution, a party standard, and eventually a cultural touchstone that appeared in Eddie Murphy's 1996 film The Nutty Professor. "Have you ever made love just before breakfast?" Carter asks in the song, in the most conversational possible tone. The answer, clearly, was yes.

Both sides of Carter's work were equally sincere. He saw no contradiction between them.

Muscle Shoals and the Sound That Defined an Era

Carter recorded some of his most celebrated work at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama — the unlikely small-town recording facility that became one of the most important rooms in American music history. The studio had already hosted Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin when Carter walked through the door, and his recordings there fit seamlessly into the lineage of what became known as the Muscle Shoals sound: raw, soulful, and rooted in something that couldn't be faked.

Rodney Hall, president of FAME Studios, was among those who confirmed Carter's death — a fitting connection to close. Hall had known him through the recordings that defined both Carter's career and the studio's legacy.

In later years Carter recorded for Ichiban Records and eventually his own label, Cee Gee Entertainment. He released his final album, Mr. Old School, in January 2020. In 2024, at 88 years old, he put out a new single. He was still recording. He was still going.

Candi Staton and a Life in Southern Soul

Carter and Candi Staton — herself one of the defining voices of Southern soul, responsible for classics like "Young Hearts Run Free" and "Stand By Your Man" — were briefly married in the 1970s before divorcing. They had a son together, Clarence Carter Jr. The two remained connected through their shared musical world for decades after the marriage ended, and it was through Staton's spokesman that the news of Carter's death first reached the public.

The parallel arc of their careers — two blind spots in the same musical landscape, both rooted in Alabama, both recording at the same moment when Southern soul was at its peak — is one of the more remarkable coincidences in the genre's history.

The Philosophy He Lived By

Carter spoke throughout his public life about his determination to be celebrated rather than pitied. Blindness was part of who he was, not a limitation he needed others to acknowledge or grieve on his behalf. He moved through the world on his own terms, made the music he wanted to make, and kept making it well past the point when most people would have stopped.

In a 2012 interview with The Montgomery Advertiser, he was asked how long he planned to keep going.

"I don't know how much longer I'm going to be going," he said. "But I'm going to keep going until something tells me it's time to quit or Old Man Death comes to run me down."

He was 90 years old when it did.

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