Lucretia MacEvil - Blood, Sweat & Tears

Lucretia MacEvil - Blood, Sweat & Tears

3:05

Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, 1970

Written by David Clayton-Thomas

David Clayton-Thomas, the second lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears and the voice behind their biggest hits, died yesterday. BST is a band whose hits informed my first impressions of rock as a teenager.  So while Clayton-Thomas has a solid catalog in his own right, I'm returning to his work in the band's jazz-rock material.  This song is one of his best showcases. Brass punches, a muscular rhythm section, and Clayton-Thomas' booming baritone give the song a swagger that's impossible to ignore. He relishes every line as he tears into the title character, a classic femme fatale whom he blames for just about everything: "I hear your mother was the talk of the sticks / Nothin' that your daddy wouldn't do for kicks / Never done a thing worth-while / You're just an evil woman-child."  Of course, from a modern perspective, it's hard not to notice that Lucretia bears the brunt of the condemnation while the men around her get off lightly: it's hardly the lady's fault that her parents were layabouts or that a married man is willing to pay her rent!  How about criticizing the system and not the cogs in the machine, David?!  But in the end, whether you read the lyric as misogyny, melodrama, or tongue-in-cheek character sketch, Clayton-Thomas sells it with such conviction that the performance transcends its questionable premise. It's a fitting reminder of what made him such a commanding frontman.