For his pick, Mick Jagger went with 1969's "Gimme Shelter." NPR's Melissa Block suggests that the two talk over the song, to which Jagger jokingly responds, "Talk over it? Sacrilegious. I could rap ...

It was around midnight in the late fall of 1969 when a very pregnant Merry Clayton received a phone call asking her to come to the studio to record backing vocals on a song called “Gimme Shelter.” The ...

The backup singer on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” thought of the Vietnam War while singing it. “Gimme Shelter” didn’t chart at all in the United States. It was more popular in the United ...

One singer worked on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” and The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” She contextualized the latter in the Vietnam War era. “Gimme Shelter” arguably captured the late ...

You hear Merry Clayton’s life in her voice. In her soul-filled renditions, there is the innocence of a girl who sang at her daddy’s New Orleans church, the unabashed fun of a young woman who sang on ...

Merry Clayton is an American soul and gospel singer and an actress. She provided a number of backing vocal tracks for major performing artists in the 1960s, most notably in her duet with Mick Jagger ...