Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
For nearly 20 years, the Secret History of Chicago Music has shined a light on musical underdogs. Some acts didn’t get the recognition they deserved because they had bad managers or made uncommercial music, but other times the reason isn’t so obvious—and I’m still scratching my head as to why multifaceted singer Dee Clark isn’t a legend. He might be remembered as a “one-hit wonder” due to the success of his 1961 single “Raindrops,” but that term elides his importance to Chicago R&B, soul, and rock ’n’ roll. Though popular in his day, especially locally, Clark is now a footnote (if that) in most histories.
Dee Clark was born November 7, 1938, in Blytheville, Arkansas, and Dee was short for “Delecta” or “Delectus” (sources vary, and we can’t ask him because he died in 1990). His family moved to the west side of Chicago in 1941, and his gospel-singing mother, Essie Mae Clark, encouraged him to pursue his love of music. At age 13, Clark started a trio called the Hambone Kids with Sammy McGrier, his classmate at Calhoun North Elementary on the west side (a victim of Rahm Emanuel’s merciless school-closing spree in 2013), and Ronnie Strong from Douglas Elementary on the south side.
The Hambone Kids were riding a craze around the “hambone,” a percussive dance that involves clapping, stomping, and slapping your own thighs and body. (Also called “juba,” it was originally brought to the American south by enslaved African people.) In 1952 the trio appeared on “Hambone” b/w “Boot ’Em Up,” a single billed to drummer Red Saunders and his orchestra and released by the storied OKeh label. On the A-side, the kids perform with singer and whistler Dolores Hawkins (also from Gene Krupa’s band), and on the B-side, Joe Willams (later of Count Basie’s orchestra) sings an ecstatic post–big-band number.
The song reached the top 20 on the pop charts, but to my mind it’s even more notable that it was arranged by Herman Blount—who was about to change his name to Le Sony’r Ra and then become the cosmic being Sun Ra.
“Hambone” inspired similar tunes recorded by Frankie Laine & Jo Stafford, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Carl Perkins. In a Yahoo Group called Shakin’ All Over, historian Dik de Heer made an even bigger claim about the song’s influence: “In 1955 one Elias McDaniel took a heavy variant of the rhythm and the same nursery rhyme lyrics, added his own powerful distorted electric guitar sound and immortalized the song and himself as Bo Diddley.”
I’d love to believe that this is literally true—and because Bo Diddley lived in Chicago at the right time, he easily could’ve heard the original single. But while the so-called Bo Diddley riff is a crucial part of the bedrock of rock ’n’ roll and R&B, we’ll probably never be able to trace it back to a single source.
In 1953, while Clark was attending Marshall Metropolitan High in East Garfield Park, he joined an established doo-wop group called the Goldentones as lead tenor vocalist. They came to the attention of famed local DJ Herb “the Cool Gent” Kent, who took them under his wing and renamed them the Kool Gents.
Kent got the Kool Gents signed to Vee-Jay Records imprint Falcon (later Abner), and Clark’s gorgeous, elastic croon helped them rule the local scene in 1955 and ’56. (They also put out a few novelty singles as the Delegates.) When Clark’s relationship with the Kool Gents deteriorated, he went solo. “The group and I, we weren’t getting along too well, different things came about, and I came around to the company and asked Calvin Carter and Ewart Abner if they would record me as a single,” Clark told Robert Pruter in his book Chicago Soul. “Calvin said, ‘I’m glad you asked because we’ve been wanting to do that anyways.’”
Clark’s first few solo releases didn’t set the world on fire, so he tried taking a turn into early rock ’n’ roll. On his 1957 single “24 Boy Friends,” he did an uncanny Little Richard impression—a well-timed move, because that same year Richard left secular music to attend Bible college.
“I liked Little Richard’s style ’cause he was like number one back then and I could imitate fairly well for having a tenor voice,” Clark said in Chicago Soul. “Little Richard had thrown his rings in the water, quit that scene. The guy who was booking Little Richard on the east coast heard my record and had me come [in November 1957] and do the remaining dates that was on Little Richard’s itinerary.”
Clark’s 1958 single “Oh Little Girl” b/w “Wondering” featured backing by “the Original Little Richard Band,” aka the Upsetters. But later in ’58, Clark sang in his own style again on the smoothly soulful single “Nobody but You” b/w “When I Call on You.” His subtle, powerful performance on the A-side sounds more indebted to Jackie Wilson or Sam Cooke than to Little Richard, and the pleading B-side gets a gentle, nostalgic feel from its easy tempo and a phalanx of backup singers swaddled in ghostly reverb.
Clark returned to pounding rock ’n’ roll with a tough Bo Diddley shuffle on the 1959 single “Hey Little Girl,” cowritten by Otis Blackwell (who also cowrote “Fever,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and “All Shook Up”). The song, which featured Phil Upchurch on guitar, stayed on the pop charts for 15 weeks, peaking at number 20. (Clark also cowrote the Phil Upchurch Combo’s 1961 smash “You Can’t Sit Down.”)
Over the next couple years, Clark continued to enjoy great success locally and sometimes charted nationally, and in 1961 he had the biggest break of his career. On the way back from a New York gig, Upchurch was driving the two of them through a storm, and Clark started singing to the rhythm of the windshield wipers and jotting down lyrics. That birthed the classic tune “Raindrops,” which bridged doo-wop with the emerging sound of soul.
“Raindrops” combined stormy sound effects, sweeping strings, and a melody to die for. It climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the R&B chart. Soul music was largely a singles game, but the song also appeared on Clark’s third and final proper LP for Vee-Jay, 1961’s Hold On. . . . It’s Dee Clark. Over the years, the tune has been covered by the likes of David Cassidy, Tony Orlando & Dawn, Jan & Dean, and country singer Narvel Felts.
Clark released other excellent singles in ’61, including the classy and catchy “Don’t Walk Away From Me” b/w “You’re Telling Our Secrets,” but they didn’t reach the same heights. For the 1963 release “Crossfire Time” b/w “I’m Going Home,” he moved to the Constellation label, started by Abner after he was fired from Vee-Jay. Clark consistently got lots of airplay in Chicago, but further mid-60s Constellation singles such as “Warm Summer Breezes” (with a fab Johnny Pate arrangement) and “Come Closer” didn’t hit nationally.
In the late 60s and early 70s, Clark bounced among various labels, among them Columbia, Wand, Liberty, and Rocky, with the latter releasing a new version of “Raindrops” in 1973. Two years later, a funky number on Chelsea Records, “Ride a Wild Horse,” became a surprise UK hit, but Clark failed to make good on its promise. “He was booked for a European tour, he was sent the money for his air fare, and then he disappeared with the cash,” wrote de Heer. “No Dee Clark in the UK, no international tour. And since then, no record deal.”
The 80s were unkind to Clark. Relegated to the oldies circuit, he got by on small gigs, and for a time he lived in a motel in Toccoa, Georgia. In 1987, Clark suffered two heart attacks and a stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed and struggling with his diction. Because he didn’t have insurance, he kept performing to pay for his treatment—until December 7, 1990, when he died of another heart attack in Smyrna, Georgia. He’d played his last gig at the Portman Lounge in Anderson, South Carolina, with the Jimmy Gilstrap Band. He was buried at the Oakridge-Glen Oak Cemeteries in Hillside, Illinois.
Thankfully, Clark’s early work still has a life among hardcore fans of soulful music. Even during his life, his recordings were being reissued on compilations: London label Charly R&B released Keep It Up in 1980, and Bay Area label Solid Smoke released Dee Clark With His Groups . . . the Kool Gents & the Delegates: His Best Recordings in 1984.
In 2022, UK label Acrobat issued the 55-track Dee Clark compilation Raindrops: The Singles & Albums Collection 1956-62. As far as I can tell, that’s the newest release, but there can never be too many—Clark needs to be heard by new ears, so that maybe one day he’ll be mentioned in the same breath as Smokey Robinson, Wilson Pickett, and Curtis Mayfield.
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
