“Bridge Over Troubled Water” by MERRY CLAYTON

The Rolling Stones, a secular hymn made spiritual, and the crack in an unbreakable woman’s voice.

Oh, when times get rough

“Whoa!” 

It comes just past the three minute mark of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter”: Merry Clayton’s voice cracks like too-near thunder on a summer night — in tune — and the amazement of the biggest touring rock band in the world is caught on mic. 

Clayton was ready for bed when she got the call to do a session with some band she didn’t know, so she went to the studio in silk pajamas, mink coat, and her hair in curlers under a Chanel scarf. Pregnant, she sang sitting on a stool. She did one take with Mick Jagger on the “war, children…” chorus as a lopsided duet. When they asked if she’d do another take, she resolved that she’d “do another one that’s going to blow them out of this room.” 

She went up an octave for this pass through the “rape, murder” lyric that had initially given her pause, pushing herself to give those words their proper emotion. Her voice doesn’t just break, it shreds and splinters as if from its own power, and in the time it took Jagger or someone to shout, she pulls it back together again for one last soulful run through “just a shot away.” She made one of the most famous moments in rock, more famous than its singer would ever be, and then took their car back home in the middle of the night. She miscarried later that day. 

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” comes from her 1970 debut album, which was called Gimme Shelter despite her dark associations with that song. It was good marketing, but not good enough — the album failed to chart. Her voice is a muscular marvel throughout, even if the record seems to aim for a middle it never quite hits. On it, she does her own, punched-up version of “Gimme Shelter,” where wah-wah guitar replaces the original’s sinister harmonica. She also covers “Forget It, I Got It,” originally by English rock band Spooky Tooth, and The Doors’ “Follow Me Down,” which in her case is well sung. There’s also “I Got Life” from Hair, along with a proper ‘70s soul song in “Here Comes Those Heartaches again.” It’s on the Simon & Garfunkel song, however, where she sounds most at home, because she meets it at church. 

The journey of soul music, starting with Ray Charles, has been from the spiritual to the secular. Simon & Garfunkel’s song, however, is a bit of the reverse. The song was inspired both by Bach chorales and by gospel group The Swan Silvertones, particularly their song “Mary Don’t You Weep,” from which Simon borrowed the lyric "I'll be your bridge over deep water, if you trust in my name" for its title. For her part, Clayton, who was named Merry because she was born on Christmas Day, started singing in New Orleans’ New Zion Baptist Church, where her father Rev. A.G. Williams was pastor. The gospel roots of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” make it one cover she didn’t have to bully to make it her own. 

Sail on pretty girl

Sail on by

Your time has come to shine

All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine

Oh, if you need a friend

I'm sailing right behind

Clayton’s change of Simon’s “silver girl” lyric is telling. It isn’t just the arrangement of the song that’s more gospel, but its intent. Simon wrote the song for his wife Peggy, who had begun to notice her first streaks of silver-gray hair¹. “Pretty girl,” however, is for any woman listening, and it’s indicative of how she changes the song’s focus from comforting a particular someone, to the comfort available to any and all of us. The lyrics that draw the full force of her talent — not just the power and the fury, but her grace and artistry — are those that speak directly to the universality of tough times. The way she slides every note through “When tears are in your eyes / I'll dry them all” and “I'll take your part / Oh, when darkness comes” — she’s not singing to convince someone to have faith; she’s singing as faith itself. When her voice, yes, cracks as it soars through the titular lyric, you can’t not believe in something. 

Clayton’s own faith saw her through a miscarriage and a solo career that stalled before it ever got out of the gate. Her biggest spotlight came in the documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, which told the stories of backup singers² who were often literally in the shadows. Some, like the incomparable Lisa Fisher, are more comfortable there. Darlene Love³, who went from top backup singing group The Blossoms to a solo career, says in the documentary that to make that leap, you “need a kill spirit. Merry had that kill spirit.” The documentary makes clear that it was a surprise to everyone, Clayton included⁴, that she wasn’t one to make that leap. Stevie Wonder maybe understands a little better, saying in the documentary that to be a star, any singer needs the right material and a producer who gets who they are. That’s all too rare, perhaps especially for a talent as singular as Clayton’s, which is perhaps easier to use than truly understand. 

20 Feet from Stardom won the Oscar for Best Documentary in March of 2014. Two months later, Clayton was in a car accident that cost her both her legs. When doctors told her of her amputation, she started singing a song she recorded in 1987, “I Can Still Shine.”

Merry Clayton’s latest album is 2021’s Beautiful Scars.

15 Song Playlist

Paul Simon Shows how he jammed The Swan Silvertones’ Gospel Changes into a Bach Chorale.

Thank You

Thanks for reading. This is the song I needed to get through this week of war. I hope it’s a small help to yours. If you have a song of your own that’s a help in these times, “Oh, when darkness comes / And pain is all around,” please share in the comments.

1. There’s long been the rumor that the “silver girl” is a hypodermic needle, which makes this another drug song. This would make the “I” in the song make no sense, because no one has ever had to be there to help heroin through tough times.

2. Clayton started as one of Ray Charles’ backup singers (who were often to the front of the stage) The Raelettes.

3. Darlene Love’s credits with The Blossoms run from Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke to Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Uncredited, that’s her and The Blossoms singing “He’s a Rebel,” a #1 pop hit producer Phil Spector released as a single with another one of his groups, The Crystals, on the label. When Love’s contract with Spector finally ended, she signed with another producer; Spector bought that contract so that he could continue burying her career. To be a worse person, he’d have to murder someone. Which he also did.

4. “I thought if I just put my heart in it, I’d be a star,” she says, heartbreakingly.