Clydie King (August 21, 1943 – January 7, 2019) was an American singer, best known for her session work as a backing vocalist. King also recorded solo under her name. In the 1970s, she recorded as Brown Sugar, and her single "Loneliness (Will Bring Us Together Again)" reached No. 44 on the Billboard R&B charts in 1973.
King was born in Dallas, Texas, and after her mother's death was raised by her older sister. After starting to sing in the local church, she moved with her family to Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Discovered by songwriter Richard Berry, King began her recording career in 1956 with Little Clydie and the Teens. Soon afterwards, credited as Clydie King, she made two singles on Speciality, ‘Our Romance’ and ‘I’m Invited to Your Party’ (1957). During the early 1960’s she contributed to early recordings by producer Phil Spector.
She made two further singles for Philips in the early 1960s (as Clydie King & the Sweet Things) plus one as by Mel Carter & Clydie King; three more in 1965 for Imperial, a 1968 duet with Jimmy Holiday and four more 1968-69 solo singles, all on Minit. She also recorded solo singles for Specialty Records, Kent Records and others. She sang background for Ray Charles in The Raelettes from 1965-1968.
King provided backing vocals for Humble Pie, which had great success in the United States, and she went on to become an in-demand session singer, worked with Venetta Fields and Sherlie Matthews and recorded with B.B. King, The Rolling Stones, Steely Dan, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Dickey Betts, Joe Walsh, and many others. She was a member of The Blackberries with Fields and Matthews and sang on Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which became a feature film.
In 1971, she was featured on the Beaver and Krause album Gandarva. She sang the lead vocal on the gospel-inflected "Walkin' By the River." Ray Brown played bass on the cut. Along with Merry Clayton, she sang the background vocals on Lynyrd Skynyrd's seminal hit "Sweet Home Alabama". Her 1971 solo single "'Bout Love" reached No. 45 on the R&B chart. Reviewing her 1972 debut album Direct Me, Robert Christgau wrote in the Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): "Clydie has a voice that's more sly Diana than robust Martha and addresses the title plea to Gabriel Mekler, who (this time, anyway) proves neither as sly nor as robust as Berry Gordy." In 1972, backed by a 31-piece Quincy Jones orchestra, Clydie followed the double-act of Carole King & James Taylor and preceded Barbra Streisand at a lavish, star-packed ‘Four For McGovern’ fundraiser at the LA Forum, the nature of which is indicated by the fact that Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn acted as ushers.
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One more single, a version of Sly & the Family Stone’s ‘Dance to the Music’, credited to Clydie King & Brown Sugar, came out on Chelsea Records in 1973, as did the album Brown Sugar Featuring Clydie King (with a heavy reliance on songs penned by Donna Weiss). As one of the vocal group the Blackberries she also made a mysteriously never-released album for Motown at the end of the ‘60s, followed by several Blackberries singles in 1973 & 1974. In 1976 King worked with Streisand again, as one of the Oreos in her movie with Kris Kristofferson, A Star Is Born. In 1977 she sang behind another diva, Better Midler, on her Broken Blossom album.
After joining Dylan’s band in 1980 during the so-called “gospel years”, Ms. King become a valued singer, a moral support and a girlfriend, first working on most of the Saved sessions at Muscle Shoals in Sheffield, Alabama and then joining the backing singers on the second 1980 gospel tour, starting in Toronto that April 17 and finishing in Dayton Ohio on May 21. In general, she sang a solo number, ‘Calvary’, in the middle of alternate shows. (The backing singers also began most concerts with several jointly-sung gospel numbers before Bob Dylan came onstage, so that King was in the group singing five songs, sometimes as many as seven, most evenings.)
King soon took on a more prominent collaborative role and helped define Dylan’s early 80s sound with her velveteen harmonies and her intuitive understanding of Dylan’s approach to phrasing and melody. Her last day of action in Dylan’s professional life seems to have been at Dylan’s home studio in the garage at the Malibu house in March 1984, when she sometimes joined Bob and The Plugz at their rehearsal sessions for the ‘Late Night with David Letterman’ TV show that month, though she didn’t take part in the show itself.
King was married two, or three times. Her first husband was Robin Hale, by whom she had three sons: Christopher, Randy, and Magge Hale. Her second husband was Tony Collins, by whom she had a daughter, Delores Collins. In 1998, newspapers reported that Bob Dylan's then girlfriend, Susan Ross, had stated that Dylan had been secretly married to Clydie King and had two children by her.
King died on
January 7, 2019 in Monrovia, California, aged 75 from complications of a blood
infection.
(Edited from Wikipedia & The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia