The Raelettes Had Their Day After Ray

Before other musicians were imitating him (Billy Joel said, “This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley”), Ray Charles was another Nat King Cole imitator.  But Ray ultimately found his voice and sound, a revolutionary fusion of jazz/blues/gospel and later country.  After the world fell in love with Ray’s voice, he found he needed a few female voices to augment his sound, notably the wonderful warbling on “Drown In My Own Tears” of Dorothy Jones, Earl-Jean McCrea, and Margie Hendrix.

A year after this 1957 hit, Ray officially formed the Raelettes, to the relief of David “Fathead” Newman, Ray’s fantabulous sax player who recalled, “Ray wanted to have some background singers in there and we didn’t have any of the background singers. We [Fathead and his bandmates] were actually the first Raelettes.”  The Raelettes, led by Hendrix, came out swinging and had a #5 hit on the R&B charts with “Night Time Is the Right Time” which caught the attention of John Fogerty and CCR who later covered the tune.

Many a Raelette caught Ray’s attention too.  As noted in the 2004 film Ray, a pinch of truth was in the joke that being a Raelette meant you had to “let Ray” into a bedroom.  Charles laughed the gag off, saying, “That was a funny line, but not exactly true.”

At first, it was Margie Hendrix’s voice that attracted Ray. He gushed, “Aretha, Gladys, Etta James, these gals are all bad, but on any given night, Margie will scare you to death.”  Margie certainly scared Ray when after having their child, Charles, in 1959, she demanded that he leave his wife Della and marry her.  Ray elected to stay faithful (on paper) to Della and Margie chose to stay with Ray for the next five years, contributing to a hit with a title that described their volatile relationship: “Hit the Road, Jack.”

Their affair finally ended with Ray firing Marge because she’d hit the bottle hard and then hit it off with John Hunt, Ray’s trumpet player. Margie continued to have substance abuse and career problems, dying at the age of 38.

But while Margie’s solo career floundered, some Raelettes went on to find success. Among them, Minnie Riperton, Marilyn McCoo of the Fifth Dimension, and Edna Wright of Honey Cone.

Two other Raelettes, Clydie King and Merry Clayton, also backed everyone including the Stones, Steppenwolf, Humble Pie, B.B. King, Barbra Streisand, and Linda Ronstadt. King stole the affection of Bob Dylan, having two of his six children.  He called her his “ultimate singing partner.”

For Clayton’s part, she provided the electrifying backing vocals on the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.”

King and Clayton both sang backup on “Sweet Home Alabama.” Clayton’s husband, Curtis Amy, who played the sax solo on the Doors’ “Touch Me,” urged her to sing with Skynyrd.  Merry stated: “He said: ‘Why don’t you protest with this music? Sing it with everything that’s in you. Sing it as if you’re saying, ‘I got your Alabama right here.’ We went, singing through our teeth, not wanting to be there. And that was our protest.”

As a teen, Clayton’s vocal prowess impressed Bobby Darin so much that he offered her a contract.  When she was just fifteen, she made her resounding recording debut, wailing with Bobby on his cover of Patsy Cline’s hit “Who Can I Count On?”

Unlike other teen singers whose lives took a tragic turn, Merry’s mother, Eva, wisely told her daughter’s bosses that the Claytons were no pushovers.  Before Merry signed Darin’s contract, Eva laid down the law.  Merry remembered, “Mom said, ‘OK, these are the rules. When you pick her up from school, she has to take a nap so that she can be refreshed. And then you have to correct her homework.’ So, here’s poor Bobby Darin correcting homework.”

Eva also kept Ray Charles from making merry with Merry.  Billy Preston, friend of the Claytons, had been hired by Ray and tried to get Merry into the band.  After successfully passing her audition, Ray told Merry she was a Raelette only for Eva to give the wolfish singer a warning, “She will come back here the way she left. If she doesn’t, we’re gonna have a problem.”

-Mark Daponte

Photo: Ray Charles, 2003 (Victor Diaz Lamich via Wikimedia Commons)