David Clayton-Thomas, the husky-voiced Canadian singer who fronted Blood, Sweat and Tears at the height of their powers and sang three songs to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in a single year, died peacefully on Wednesday June 24 at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
He was 84. No cause of death was given.
Clayton-Thomas joined Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1968 after the band had fractured following their debut album.
Folk singer Judy Collins caught him performing in New York and recommended him to drummer Bobby Colomby.
The fit was instant. Their self-titled second album, the one Clayton-Thomas fronted, spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, went four-times platinum and won the Grammy for Album of the Year, beating out the Beatles' Abbey Road.
The three singles that powered it, "You've Made Me So Very Happy," "Spinning Wheel" and "And When I Die," all hit No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1969.
He wrote "Spinning Wheel" in 15 minutes in an upstairs apartment in Toronto.
His path to that moment was improbable. Born in England in 1941, raised in suburban Toronto, he spent time in jail as a young man, it was a discarded guitar found in a cell that turned things around.
He was a street-level blues player who talked his way into one of the most musically sophisticated bands in rock by being the thing they were missing: a voice with soul.
"Blood, Sweat and Tears, without me, was basically a jazz band," he said. "I think my contribution was the rhythm and blues and the soul I brought into it."
He left the band in 1972 when the pressure and controversy, including a State Department-sponsored tour behind the Iron Curtain that alienated the rock counterculture, wore him down.
He returned on and off over the years and spent the last two decades releasing solo albums and touring in Canada.
He sold more than 40 million records across his career. He is survived by his daughters Ashleigh and Christine.