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Artist
David Clayton-Thomas
12+ albums
bluesblues rockCanadianOld Blues
about
David Clayton-Thomas (born David Henry Thomsett, 13 September, 1941, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, UK) is the son of a decorated Canadian soldier of World War II who met his piano-playing mother when she came to entertain the troops at a London hospital. They were married, and when the war ended, the family moved to Willowdale, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, when Clayton-Thomas was not yet school-aged. Growing up, he was taught music by his mother but had difficulties in what was a dysfunctional family. He left home in his early teens. He idolized the music of John Lee Hooker and began playing guitar and singing, and by the time he was 21 had his own band, The Shays. David Clayton-Thomas & The Shays recorded for Roman Records of Toronto. Clayton-Thomas released two albums on the record label, "A Go Go" (with The Shays) and "Like It Is" (with The Bossmen). In February 1966, he joined a new band, The Bossmen, fronted by the child prodigy, pianist Tony Collacott, who had played with Sarah Vaughan at New York's Carnegie Hall at the age of 14. The group recorded a lone single, the jazz-rock song "Brainwashed," which was a Canadian hit record in June 1966 and gave an indication of his future work. The band broke up soon afterward and he traveled to New York. In October 1967, he joined forces with former members of the Toronto R&B outfit, Jon and Lee & The Checkmates and renamed them his new backing band, The Phoenix. The group started a residency at a New York nightclub,
