Christine Elizabeth Clark (born February 1, 1946), better known as Chris Clark, is an American soul, jazz, and blues singer, who recorded for Motown Records. Clark became known to Northern Soul fans for hit songs such as 1965's "Do Right Baby Do Right" (by Berry Gordy) and 1966's "Love's Gone Bad" (Holland-Dozier-Holland). She later co-wrote the screenplay for the 1972 motion picture Lady Sings the Blues starring Diana Ross, which earned Clark an Academy Award nomination.
Clark was born in Santa Cruz, California. From early childhood she expressed an interest in singing. She was active in school bands and by 1960, when she was 14, Chris Clark was on stage. She went on her first tour with Jan And Dean and Dick & Dee Dee. She also was on a tour with The Coasters and The Olympics at a VFW Hall in Marin County. Other recording artists Chris Clark performed with in the early 60’s was Bobby Freeman. She went down to Los Angeles to play in a number of clubs until she was kicked out when they discovered she was underage. Her big break came near the end of 1963 when she had an audition with Motown.
Chris Clark was the first white singer to sign with Motown. In the fall of 1965 she recorded “Do Right, Baby, Do Right.” Clark was considered America’s answer to Dusty Springfield. Clark had soul. But Motown didn’t quite know what to do with her and how to market her. The single charted in Oakland, California, but got scant airplay elsewhere. Her next single release was penned by Holland-Dozier-Holland. It was titled “Love’s Gone Bad”which reached #105 pop, and #41 R&B in the U.S. in 1966. In Canada, the song made it to #95 on the RPM 100.
Her next release was “I Want To Go Back There Again”. It was a regional hit in several record markets in the USA. However, it failed to make the Billboard Hot 100. There seemed to be no breakout hit record for Chris Clark. In 1969, Motown tried once again to get her noticed. They released an album titled CC Rides Again, on the subsidiary, Weed Records. It featured Chris Clark riding an elephant. The album was full of covers. It included “Spinning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat and Tears, “With A Little Help From My Friends” and “Get Back” by The Beatles, Elvis Presley’s “In The Ghetto” and “Good Morning Starshine” from the musical Hair. However, the album was a commercial failure.
Clark became famous in England as the "white negress" (a nickname meant as a compliment), because the six-foot platinum blonde, blue-eyed soul singer toured with fellow Motown artists, who were predominantly black. However, Chris Clark was approached by Berry Gordy Jr. to be one of several co- writers of the script for Lady Sings The Blues. The 1972 film earned five Academy Award nominations, including for Chris Clark. Clark got married to Ernest Tidyman, who co-wrote the screenplay for Shaft. She was his fourth wife. He died from complications from a perforated ulcer in 1984 in London. Clark went on to be an executive with Motown’s film and TV production studio in Los Angeles.
In 1990, after going through rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic, Clark moved to Arizona, where she spent many years living in a cabin in the woods. She started taking double-exposure photographs and, before long, dove headfirst into the art world. She re-surfaced in 1991 when she re-recorded 'From Head To Toe' with U.K. producer Ian Levine for Motor City Records, but it was not until 2006 that Chris Clark appeared again to sing in concert. This occasion was the Royal Albert Hall in London, UK. A Motown Collection had been released and she shared the stage with The Temptations and The Four Tops. She got the invitation from The Temptations who had her open for all of the concerts (13 or 14) in the UK.
In 2015, Clark performed the song "The Ghosts of San Francisco", written by R. Christian Anderson and John Thomas Bullock, for the feature film When the World Came to San Francisco. The music video for the song was winner of the "Mixed Genre Jazz Film Award" at the New York Jazz Film Festival in November 2016.
Looking back, Berry Gordy Jr. says of Chris Clark, “She just didn’t get the material. She worked with Holland-Dozier-Holland. She did one of the greatest songs I ever wrote. But she could never break that glass ceiling.”
Gordy recalls that on stage and in the recording studio, Chris Clark was one of the best: “She was up against Smokey. She was up against Stevie. She was up against Marvin. She was up against Diana and the Supremes, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Marvelettes. And she held her own against those people.”
Clark Clark currently lives in Santa Rosa, California and continues to work as a screenwriter, fine art photographer and singer. In 2005 Universal Music released a 50-track double-CD entitled Chris Clark: The Motown Collection, which includes Soul Sounds, C.C. Rides Again, and many unreleased Motown recordings.
(Edited from Vancouver Pop Music Sinature Sounds, Wikipedia & SF Gate)