“All great music is a combination of what came before it,” musician/songwriter/arranger/producer Clarence McDonald as soon as mentioned. He spent his life mastering gospel, soul, jazz, blues, funk, and pop and mixing them collectively in magic moments with artists like Earth, Wind & Fireplace, Barbra Streisand, Carole King, James Taylor, and Johnny Mathis.
“My original background was from the church,” he defined to Jake Feinberg. “That’s where you got musical training you couldn’t get anywhere else.” McDonald discovered piano and organ there, and by the age of sixteen, he was backing jazz artists in a Los Angeles nightclub.
When he started faculty, he labored as musical director for The Vocals (which later turned the Fifth Dimension), a gaggle that was subsequently invited to go on tour with Ray Charles. “Lots of what I play today, I learned directly from him. If it doesn’t feel good, don’t play it. Playing the notes is not the function. Making people feel them when you play them is the function.”
In 1966 simply as his musical profession was starting to achieve traction, he was drafted by the US Military to battle within the Vietnam Conflict. In a 2009 interview, he mentioned, “You learn what terror really is. There’s no glory in war, and it never proves who’s right or wrong.” When he returned residence in 1968, he started getting requires session work. “The fun of it was getting to meet so many different kinds of people, playing different kinds of music, and learning a lot,” he reminisced.
McDonald died in the summertime of 2021, having lent his expertise to 1000’s of recordings and dwell performances. As he instructed InterviewWorld, “The joy is knowing when you walk out of the studio, what we just did, everyone was on the same accord. That’s really what a hit record is. It’s not the technique. It’s the magic moment where everything aligns.”
Billy Preston – Will It Go Spherical In Circles
Preston and McDonald had been related of their youths by the use 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 Round In Circles” went to the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Scorching 100 and bought over one million copies.
The Feelings – Greatest Of My Love
In 1976, McDonald submitted a tune for the mission 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 & Fireplace. They made plans to work collectively, however Stepney died of a coronary heart assault days after their assembly. “That was a man I wanted to study and learn 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 monitor from Lionel Richie’s solo debut, McDonald performs electrical piano, accenting Gene Web page’s moody orchestral association. Lionel Richie bought over 4 million copies in america 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 Scorching 100 chart in 1975, that includes McDonald on piano and Fender Rhodes. McDonald had fond reminiscences of touring with Taylor: “The best shows we had with James Taylor were when we were playing smaller theaters. I miss [performing] where people are close enough that you can relate to them as opposed to piping it out to them in the 2000th row at an arena.”
Justin Timberlake – One other Track (All Over Once more)
Produced by Rick Rubin, this monitor closed Justin Timberlake’s 2006 FutureSex/LoveSounds. McDonald performed organ on this Timberlake/Matt Morris composition that one critic known as “a lovely, very old-fashioned soul ballad produced in an organic anti-Timbaland style.” “There’s a feeling you get when human beings interact that you can’t get following a click track or doing computer stuff,” McDonald mentioned.
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 among McDonald’s core beliefs about music: “Music is just fun. Play it, make people smile, you’ve done your job.”
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