David Clayton-Thomas

Clayton-Thomas was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, the son of Fred Thomsett, a decorated Canadian soldier of World War II. Clayton-Thomas's mother, Freda May (née Smith), played the piano and met Thomsett when she came to entertain the troops at a London hospital. After the war, the family settled in Willowdale, Toronto. From the beginning, Clayton-Thomas and his father had a troubled relationship. By the time Clayton-Thomas was fourteen, he had left home and was sleeping in parked cars and abandoned buildings and stealing food and clothing to survive. He was arrested several times for vagrancy, petty theft, and street brawls and spent his teen years bouncing in and out of various jails and reformatories, including the Burwash Industrial Farm. ==Early career==

He inherited a love for music from his mother, and when an old guitar came into his possession, left behind by an outgoing inmate, he began to teach himself to play. Upon his release from detention in 1962, he gravitated to the Yonge Street "strip" in Toronto. Rhythm & blues migrating up from Detroit and Chicago was the music of choice on the strip, and Arkansas rockabilly pioneer Ronnie Hawkins recognized the formidable talent of the young 'Sonny' Thomas and took him under his wing. It wasn't long before he was fronting his own bands. The first was called David Clayton Thomas and The Fabulous Shays. By this time, he had changed his surname to put some distance between his new life and his troubled teenage years. In 1964, Clayton-Thomas and The Shays recorded a rendition of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom". This led to a New York engagement for the Shays on NBC-TV's Hullabaloo at the invitation of its host, fellow Canadian Paul Anka. Abandoning the bars on the strip, Clayton-Thomas began performing in Yorkville Village's coffeehouses. He immersed himself in the local jazz and blues scene dominated by the likes of John Lee Hooker, Joe Williams, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Lenny Breau, Oscar Peterson, and Moe Koffman. The album David Clayton Thomas and the Shays à Go-Go was recorded for Roman Records in 1965, and was followed by David Clayton Thomas Sings Like It Is! for the same label in 1966. Clayton-Thomas made his mark more forcibly with his next band, The Bossmen, one of the first rock bands anywhere to include jazz musicians. In 1966, he wrote and performed the R&B-driven anti-war song "Brainwashed", which became a major Canadian hit, peaking at No. 11 on the national RPM chart. One night in 1966, after "sitting in" with blues singer John Lee Hooker in Yorkville, Clayton-Thomas left with him for New York. They played a Greenwich Village club for a couple of weeks; Hooker then left for Europe and Clayton-Thomas stayed on in New York City. He survived by playing "basket houses", where performers were given a few minutes of stage time and then passed the basket. ==Blood, Sweat & Tears==

Folk singer Judy Collins heard Clayton-Thomas one night at a club uptown and told her friend, drummer Bobby Colomby, about him. Bobby's band, Blood Sweat & Tears, had broken up four months after releasing its debut Columbia album, Child Is Father to the Man. Colomby was impressed with Clayton-Thomas's vocal talent and he invited him to join the band. They took the reformed group into the Cafe Au Go-Go in the Village. In his 1974 autobiography, Clive: Inside the Record Business, Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, described his initial impression of Clayton-Thomas singing at the Café Au Go-Go: He was staggering... a powerfully built singer who exuded an enormous earthy confidence. He jumped right out at you. I went with a small group of people, and we were electrified. He seemed so genuine, so in command of the lyric... a perfect combination of fire and emotion to go with the band’s somewhat cerebral appeal. I knew he would be a strong, strong figure. Clayton-Thomas's first album with the band, Blood, Sweat & Tears (which was released in December 1968) – despite being self-titled, it was actually the band's second album – sold ten million copies worldwide. The record topped the Billboard album chart for seven weeks and charted for 109 weeks. It won five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Performance by a Male Vocalist. It featured three hit singles, "You've Made Me So Very Happy", "Spinning Wheel", and "And When I Die" (on the Hot 100, each peaked at No. 2 and lasted 13 weeks) as well as a rendition of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child". (Seeking to capitalize on the newfound fame of the singer, in 1969 Decca Records purchased the master tapes of the blues-oriented Roman Records material, dubbed in horns to make it sound more like Blood, Sweat & Tears, and released the album David Clayton-Thomas!) The BS&T band went on a United States Department of State–sponsored tour of Eastern Europe in June–July 1970. It is now known that the State Department pressured the group into the tour in exchange for a U.S. residency permit for Clayton-Thomas, The tour and its aftermath is the focus of a 2023 feature-length documentary titled What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? With Clayton-Thomas fronting the band, Blood, Sweat & Tears continued with a string of hit albums, including Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 which featured Carole King's "Hi-De-Ho" and Clayton-Thomas's "Lucretia MacEvil", and Blood, Sweat & Tears 4, which yielded another Clayton-Thomas-penned hit single, "Go Down Gamblin'" and "Lisa Listen to Me". ''Blood Sweat & Tears' Greatest Hits'' album has to date reportedly chalked up over seven million copies in worldwide sales. Blood, Sweat & Tears headlined at major venues around the world: the Royal Albert Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden, and Caesars Palace, as well as the Newport Jazz Festival and Woodstock. It was the first rock band to break through the Iron Curtain with its historic United States Department of State–sponsored tour of Eastern Europe in June–July 1970. A documentary about the tour was released in 2023 titled What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? including interviews with Clayton-Thomas. The documentary's premise was the Iron Curtain tour caused the band to lose much of its counterculture fanbase now that the band was seen to be working directly with the government. In the early years Clayton-Thomas lived on the road, travelling all over Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, the US, and Canada with Blood, Sweat & Tears. The constant touring began to take its toll. Clayton-Thomas left the band in 1972, exhausted by life on the road. Variety later described Clayton-Thomas's decision to leave as ruining the band who "needed every bit of his sweat and swagger." By the mid-1970s, the founding members began to drift away to start families and pursue their own musical ambitions. ==Subsequent career==

In 1972, Thomas released his first Columbia solo album after Blood, Sweat & Tears, simply titled David Clayton Thomas. In 1973 the second solo album Tequila Sunrise was issued by Columbia. In 1974, he issued the Harmony Junction album on RCA. In 1975, Thomas returned to front Blood, Sweat & Tears again on the Columbia albums New City and, in 1976, More Than Ever. In 1977, they released Brand New Day on the ABC label. In 1978, Thomas issued another solo album on ABC, titled simply Clayton. In 1980, Blood, Sweat & Tears issued the MCA album Nuclear Blues, which also included Thomas. Later in the decade Columbia issued the double live Blood, Sweat & Tears album Live And Improvised again with Thomas. It was reported in the 30 May 1992 issue of Cash Box that Clayton-Thomas was one of the artists on the Sedona Recording Company roster. In 2004, Clayton-Thomas left New York for Toronto and launched an All-Star 10-piece band. Since then, he has toured and recorded almost a dozen albums under his own name. ==Discography==

Albums Singles • 'Boom Boom' No. 16 July 27, 1964 CHUM • 'Walk That Walk' No. 3 April 1965 CAN/No. 28 CHUM • 'Take Me Back' No. 39 June 28, 1965 CHUM • 'Out of the Sunshine' No. 31 CAN/No. 32 September 13, 1965 CHUM • 'Brainwashed' No. 11 July 1966 CAN/No. 6 CHUM • 'Sing A Song' No. 53 May 1972 CAN • 'Magnificent Sanctuary Band' No. 56 June 1972 CAN • 'Anytime...Babe' No. 91 July 1974 CAN ==See also==