The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh

61 MAKING LOVE [AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET), Produced by ; written by , , and Clarence Carter Atlantic 2605 1969 Did not make pop chart

In the goal is to mingle the sexual into the spiritual so thoroughly that they can no longer be distinguished. No one has ever essayed the task more outrageously than Carter does in these four minutes of preaching and thirty seconds of singing. He begins at the beginning: With the birds and the bees, hilariously contrasting the sexual behavior of animals with the less straightforward procreative habits of human beings. "We like to get ourselves 'bout fifty cent worth of gas. And we like to drive waaay down a country road somewhere. Awww, and we like to make love in a car, children " says Carter, his voice rising to shout and then subsiding into one of his patented leering chuckles: "Heh, heh, heh." The music (orchestrated Muscle Shoals soul) swells; clown-time is over. Carter describes the deceptive habits of folks, male and female, who like to "slip around." Piano, horns, and drums practically sob with the resonance of his voice as he intones the final lines of his homily. I have heard Carter's spiel perhaps two hundred times and every time he reaches the climax, the hair on the back of my neck begins to tickle and goose bumps break out. It's not what he says so much as how. "Well, I tell ya, it makes no difference if you came from the city. And it don't matter if you came from the country," he intones, his voice taking on even more of the preacher's rumble. "And some of you out there within the sound of my voice may have come from the suburbs. But I'd like to suggest to ya one of the best places I know where you can make love. And that place is . . .

At the dark end of the street That's where we always meet Hiding in the shadows where we don't belong Livin' in darkness, Oh Lord, to hide our wrong . . ."

The sound seems to blossom directly from his chest, an explosion of feeling so rich that mere flesh cannot contain it. And as he booms out the song - a single verse, no more - Carter begins again to rant: "Don't let 'em find us! I know they gonna catch us one day. It may not be long - it may be sooner than we think. I know they gonna find us - somewhere at the dark end of the street." In its brilliant transition from the absurd to the profound, in its celebration of carnality and projection of abject fear, "Making Love (At the Dark End of the Street) " demolishes the concept of the cheating song. The infidelity about which Carter is singing might be sexual, but the compulsion to make and listen to such music stems from something even more primordial. That's why it can give you the shivers if you hear it in broad daylight, let alone the dead of night. And yet, there is nothing more absurd in all of rock and roll than that long drawn-out introduction. Carter hams it up, too, milking every line, exaggerating his Southern dialect. Maybe the most mysterious part of "Making Love" is the way that his travesty sets up the emotive power of the singing. Somehow, that ridiculous little story is indispensable to being captivated by the music. I still can't figure out how Carter managed to get from one end of that recitation to the other without

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cracking up, or for that matter how Rick Hall ever had the nerve to put out such a totally bizarre recording, All that's certain is that dozens of singers have tried themselves against "Dark End of the Street, " but none of them have ever touched the depths that Clarence Carter found in it while skirting as close to caricature as anybody in soul history. That might be the spookiest part of it all.

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