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“All nice music is a mix of what got here earlier than it,” musician/songwriter/arranger/producer Clarence McDonald as soon as stated. He spent his life mastering gospel, soul, jazz, blues, funk, and pop and mixing them collectively in magic moments with artists like Earth, Wind & Hearth, Barbra Streisand, Carole King, James Taylor, and Johnny Mathis.
“My authentic background was from the church,” he defined to Jake Feinberg. “That’s the place you bought musical coaching you couldn’t get wherever else.” McDonald realized piano and organ there, and by the age of sixteen, he was backing jazz artists in a Los Angeles nightclub.
When he started school, he labored as musical director for The Vocals (which later turned the Fifth Dimension), a bunch that was subsequently invited to go on tour with Ray Charles. “Plenty of what I play at this time, I realized instantly from him. If it doesn’t really feel good, don’t play it. Taking part in the notes will not be the perform. Making folks really feel them while you play them is the perform.”
In 1966 simply as his musical profession was starting to achieve traction, he was drafted by the US Military to combat within the Vietnam Warfare. In a 2009 interview, he stated, “You study what terror actually is. There’s no glory in battle, and it by no means proves who’s proper or fallacious.” When he returned residence in 1968, he started getting requires session work. “The enjoyable of it was getting to fulfill so many alternative varieties of individuals, taking part in completely different sorts of music, and studying lots,” he reminisced.
McDonald died in the summertime of 2021, having lent his expertise to hundreds of recordings and stay performances. As he advised InterviewWorld, “The enjoyment is figuring out while you stroll out of the studio, what we simply did, everybody was on the identical accord. That’s actually what a success report is. It’s not the approach. It’s the magic second the place every part aligns.”
Billy Preston – Will It Go Spherical In Circles
Preston and McDonald had been linked of their youths by means of being musicians within the Los Angeles church world. They got here collectively in 1972 for Preston’s Music Is My Life album, which McDonald organized. “Will It Go Spherical In Circles” went to the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Sizzling 100 and offered over 1,000,000 copies.
The Feelings – Greatest Of My Love
In 1976, McDonald submitted a tune for the undertaking The Feelings had been starting with Maurice White and Charles Stepney. Stepney invited him to the studio the place he was launched to Earth, Wind & Hearth. They made plans to work collectively, however Stepney died of a coronary heart assault days after their assembly. “That was a person I wished to check and study from,” McDonald recalled. White introduced McDonald into the EW&F squad, and so they co-produced Rejoice, the album that delivered this #1 smash in 1977.
Lionel Richie – Wandering Stranger
On this observe from Lionel Richie’s solo debut, McDonald performs electrical piano, accenting Gene Web page’s moody orchestral association. Lionel Richie offered over 4 million copies in the US and topped Billboard’s R&B Albums chart within the winter of 1982.
James Taylor – How Candy It Is
Taylor’s cowl of this Holland-Dozier-Holland composition hit the highest 5 of Billboard’s Sizzling 100 chart in 1975, that includes McDonald on piano and Fender Rhodes. McDonald had fond reminiscences of touring with Taylor: “The perfect reveals we had with James Taylor had been after we had been taking part in smaller theaters. I miss [performing] the place persons are shut sufficient which you can relate to them versus piping it out to them within the 2000th row at an area.”
Justin Timberlake – One other Tune (All Over Once more)
Produced by Rick Rubin, this observe closed Justin Timberlake’s 2006 FutureSex/LoveSounds. McDonald performed organ on this Timberlake/Matt Morris composition that one critic referred to as “a stunning, very old style soul ballad produced in an natural anti-Timbaland model.” “There’s a sense you get when human beings work together which you can’t get following a click on observe or doing laptop stuff,” McDonald stated.
Patti LaBelle – Love By no means Dies
McDonald and Sami McKinney co-wrote and co-produced this ballad from Patti LaBelle’s Grammy Award-winning album Burnin’. The tune’s inspirational message and uplifting temper affirmed one in every of McDonald’s core beliefs about music: “Music is simply enjoyable. Play it, make folks smile, you’ve accomplished your job.”
Looking for more? Check out our series of articles on the greatest sessions musicians ever.
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