Carl Carlton

Detroit native Carl Carlton got his start in the record business through baseball. When a neighbor yelled down from an apartment window to some kids playing baseball in vacant lot to stop playing ball and to turn that radio off, they yelled back "that ain't no radio, that's Carl!" The neighbor ran down to see where this astonishing soulful voice was coming from. Later, he took Carlton to Lando Records where he began recording in the late '60s as Little Carl Carlton. His first single was "I Love True Love." Carlton had some previous experience from singing in church and being snuck into clubs to perform for tips by his older siblings. When a later single, "Competition Ain't Nothing," started to take off in the summer of 1968, the single was picked up by Don Robey's Back Beat Records. Carlton signed with the label and moved to Houston where the label was located. It was a big change for the youngster to go from Detroit's notorious Black Bottom neighborhood to waking to fresh country air and the gentle mooing of Jersey cows on Robey's spacious ranch. When he wasn't touring or flying around the country doing recording dates, he'd perform at Robey's club, the Duke Peacock, which was also the name of Robey's other label. During this time, Carlton worked with a then-struggling songwriting/production duo named Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, producer David Crawford (Candi Staton's "Young Hearts Run Free"), and producer/writer Bunny Sigler. Carlton scored some minor chart hits for Back Beat in the late '60s and early '70s, with "46 Drums - 1 Guitar," "Oh Mary How I Got Over," "I Can Feel It," and "Drop By My Place," which broke the R&B Top 20 and the pop Top 40. When Don Robey sold his Duke Peacock/Back Beat labels to ABC Records in 1972, a compilation album of Carlton's singles...