The "Queen of the Blues" retired to Manatee County after a five-decade career.
Sat, 8 Apr 2000 "When I got started singing, I said, 'I'm going to put those in, in place of my teeth.' All the singers were doing stuff like that, with gold. I did diamonds, just to have something to make me stick out, you know." -Diamond Teeth Mary in a 1998 interview
ST. PETERSBURG - Heaven is rockin' because Amazing Grace has gone home.
Mary Smith McClain, known as Diamond Teeth Mary, the legendary blues shouter and gospel singer, died Tuesday morning in a St. Petersburg rehabilitation facility at age 97.
"We lost a real treasure. She was a real touchstone to the roots of blues, to the roots of music," said Larry Lisk, host of the Tuesday afternoon show "The Blues Lover" on WMNF (88.5 FM) and president of the Suncoast Blues Society.
A well-known blues singer who travelled the club circuit, Mary Smith came to Manatee County in 1960 when she was booked at the old Palms Club on U.S. 301, and then decided to retire here. She married Clifford McClain, her second husband, in 1965. He died in 1983. She contented herself with singing hymns and gospel music in area churches until her rediscovery in the 1980s.
A folklorist at the Smithsonian tracked her down and gave her the exposure that led to her "comeback" in the 1980s. She went on to perform at the Smithsonian Institution, toured Europe in 1981, made it to off-Broadway in 1983 with a show that was a re-creation of the travelling medicine shows, "The Vi-Ton-Ka Medicine Show," and sang for President Reagan.
Back home in Manatee County, Rock Bottom of Rock Bottom and the Cutaways, a popular St. Petersburg-based blues band, heard McClain at a Tampa club and took her under his wing. In her 70s, McClain would travel with Rock Bottom and his band on three European tours.
"It was a wonderful thing to have this time capsule to the past," Bottom said, recalling McClain's place in blues history.
McClain was a star attraction, a blues shouter in the Ma Rainey-Bessie Smith-Big Mama Thornton tradition. But McClain isn't remembered as well as those blues legends because she never recorded during her career years.
"What people don't realise is that for 50, 60 years, she was a big star. But she's been overlooked because she didn't record back then. Back in those days, people who recorded didn't make money. They might have received a fee, but there were no royalties. Mary saw them being exploited and stood up for her rights. Those people didn't make money, but they are remembered because of their recordings. Mary isn't remembered in history," Bottom said.
Mary Smith was born in 1902 in Logan County, W.Va. She ran away from home at 13 and joined a travelling carnival in Sofie, W.Va. She bounced from carnival to carnival. She started singing at 15, but didn't get her big break until she was 35.
That came in the form of a regular job at the Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, one of the most famous touring companies. She stayed there for 11 years, leaving only for USO tours (to New Guinea, among other places) and club dates in such places as the Apollo Theatre and Cotton Club in New York. Night spots from Boston to Miami billed her as "Queen of the Blues."
By then, she was carrying the nickname Diamond Teeth Mary because of the diamonds that were attached to her teeth in the shape of a star.
"The woman whose bed I was born in had a diamond necklace, and she gave it to my mother," McClain said in a 1998 Herald interview. "When I got started singing, I said, 'I'm going to put those in, in place of my teeth.' All the singers were doing stuff like that, with gold. I did diamonds, just to have something to make me stick out, you know."
She did that in the early 1930s. The signature teeth and distinctive voice made her a star and kept her in the limelight for much of the next 20 years.
Smith shared the bill with such legends as Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Fats Waller and Fats Domino. She toured with medicine shows along the South's Chitlin' Circuit until 1960.
During the past several years, McClain performed at Skipper's Smokehouse a club in Tampa with Rock Bottom and the Cutaways.
"Rock kind of took her under his wings. She had fallen on hard times, and we raised funds for her," said Tom White, owner of Skipper's.
"Above all else, she was a national treasure from a music standpoint. We would have a birthday party for her and she didn't like to give up the microphone. She would be boogying in her wheelchair. We would carry her on and off the stage in her wheelchair, and I remember once she was backstage signing autographs and she was yelling, 'Let me have that microphone.' She was comfortable with it. She appealed to people of all ages," White said.
Entertaining all the time and anywhere are the memories of local residents, too.
"She was a great singer and really loved to sing. Even when you visited her, she would entertain you. She would be sitting on her porch and just start singing blues and gospel," said long-time Bradenton friend Dorothy Middleton.
When she would visit her doctor, Dr. Leonard Orban, she would entertain the nurses.
"She would sing 'Amazing Grace' for the nurses in the office," said Orban, who also recalled watching her perform at her 92nd birthday party at a club in Tampa. "She had the place rocking."
She was a winner of the Florida Folk Heritage Award, performed at Carnegie Hall in 1994, and once, many years ago, earned a "Diamond Mary Appreciation Day" for her many years of volunteering in Bradenton.
Funeral services are pending, but White is planning a memorial celebration from 6 to 9 p.m. May 2 at Skipper's.
By JOANNE MAMENTA Herald Staff Writer Bradenton Herald Online
