David Clayton-Thomas, the lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, whose husky, high-strung tenor on “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die” and other hits, helped make the so-called “brass rock” band among the most popular acts of the late 1960s, died “peacefully” Tuesday at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto at age 84.
A onetime street fighter and petty thief, Canadian Clayton-Thomas became a rock superstar, the front man of a nine-member group that sold millions of records and won two Grammys for “Blood, Sweat & Tears,” which beat out The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” for best album of 1969.
Calling out amid a jazzy parade of horns, keyboards and percussion, Clayton-Thomas’s urgent shout was a signature voice of the era, preaching love on the Motown cover “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” a lasting legacy on Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die” and a cool head on his own “Spinning Wheel.”
Meanwhile, Blood, Sweat & Tears helped inspire a wave of horn-led bands, among them Chicago, the Electric Flag and Ten Wheel Drive.
But after topping the charts in 1970 with the album “Blood, Sweat & Tears 3,” their appeal soon faded. A burned-out Clayton-Thomas left the group in 1972, and neither he nor the remaining musicians ever regained their old stature.
Blood, Sweat & Tears would continue recording over the next few years, and even briefly reunited with Clayton-Thomas, who went on to release more than a dozen solo albums and tour on his own for decades.
Clayton-Thomas was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996. “Spinning Wheel,” covered by everyone from James Brown to TV star Barbara Eden, was voted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame a decade later.
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