O.B. McClinton born 25 April l1940

Obie Burnett "O. B." McClinton (April 25, 1940 – September 23, 1987) was an American black country music singer and songwriter, who placed several hit records on the country singles chart in the 1970s.

Obie Burnett McClinton was born in Senatobia. He was the second-youngest child born to Rev. G. A. McClinton, a clergyman and farmer who owned a 700-acre (2.8 km2) ranch near Memphis, Tennessee.Growing up on the farm of his Baptist minister father, McClinton picked cotton by day and by night listened to radio programs from such regional stations as WHBQ (Memphis) and WLAC (Nashville). While his musical tastes included blues, R&B, soul music, and rockabilly, McClinton was particularly fond of country music, and he regularly listened to Grand Ole Opry broadcasts on Nashville’s WSM.

                                       

To escape the agricultural work, the teenaged McClinton ran away to nearby Memphis, where he spent all his savings to buy a guitar, forcing him to return home. After completing high school, McClinton attended Holly Springs’s Rust College, which had given him a scholarship to sing in the college choir. McClinton graduated in 1966 and found a job as a disc jockey on a Memphis radio station, WDIA. In December 1966 he enlisted in the US Air Force and began performing at military talent shows. He began forging a career as a songwriter, penning country-soul ballads for Otis Redding (‘Keep Your Arms Around Me’), before finding the ideal foil in James Carr. Two of McClinton’s compositions, ‘You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up’ (1966) and ‘A Man Needs A Woman’ (1968), stand among this singer’s finest work. He also wrote songs for other soul music artists, including Clarence Carter and Arthur Conley.

In 1971, while working as a staff songwriter for Memphis-based Stax Records, McClinton signed a recording contract with a Stax subsidiary, Enterprise, which wanted to market him as a country singer. A fan of Hank Williams Sr. and Merle Haggard, McClinton also emulated the breakthrough success of another black Mississippian, Charley Pride, to whom McClinton self-deprecatingly compares himself in “The Other One.” McClinton and Oklahoman Stoney Edwards became virtually the only other African American musicians to achieve sustained commercial success in country music in the 1970s.

Known to refer to himself as the "Chocolate Cowboy", McClinton successfully marketed his first album on the Enterprise label long before the practice was commonplace. Featuring his first country chart single "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You", a top 40 song in 1972, which he considered to be his finest work. Another top 40 hit was "My Whole World Is Falling Down”—as well as such minor hits as “Six Pack of Trouble” and “Something Better.” 

Not entirely pleased with the studio production on his first two Enterprise albums, O. B. McClinton Country (1972) and Obie from Senatobia (1972), McClinton requested and received permission to serve as producer on his next album, Live at Randy’s Rodeo (1973). When Enterprise went out of business in the mid-1970s, McClinton briefly moved to Mercury Records in 1976, where he had a hit with ‘Black Speck’, before moving to Epic, where he scored half a dozen minor C&W hits. He also recorded for the Sunbird, and Moonshine labels. 

In 1986, O. B. McClinton was diagnosed with liver cancer, beginning a year-long battle with the illness that included multiple hospitalizations. The country music community supported him through benefit concerts, including one on November 11, 1986, featuring artists such as Reba McEntire, Waylon Jennings, and Kathy Mattea, which raised $40,000 for his medical bills, and another in March 1987. He passed away on September 23, 1987, at the age of 47, at HCA Park View Medical Center in Nashville, after being admitted for the final time four days earlier.

(Edited from Mississippi Encyclopedia & Grokipedia)