The 1960s File Feature
Doin' Our Thing
Clarence Carter's "Doin' Our Thing": Recording History and Chart Performance Clarence Carter was one of the most commercially successful and artistically dis…
01 The Story
Clarence Carter's "Doin' Our Thing": Recording History and Chart Performance
Clarence Carter was one of the most commercially successful and artistically distinctive figures in the Southern soul tradition of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Born Clarence Roger Carter on January 14, 1936, in Montgomery, Alabama, he lost his sight progressively from childhood and was functionally blind by his early twenties. This circumstance did not impede his musical development. Carter studied at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind and developed into an accomplished guitarist and vocalist whose work drew on deep roots in the blues tradition while also engaging fully with the commercial soul idiom of his era. His association with Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, gave him access to one of the most productive recording environments in American popular music.
Atlantic Records and the Muscle Shoals Connection
"Doin' Our Thing" was released in 1969 on Atlantic Records, produced through the Fame Studios facility in Muscle Shoals. The Muscle Shoals sound, characterized by the interplay of a tight, groove-oriented rhythm section with expressive horn arrangements and Carter's raw, emotionally direct vocal style, was one of the defining sonic signatures of late 1960s soul. Fame Studios founder Rick Hall had created an environment that attracted Atlantic Records' most commercially minded producers and artists, and Carter was among the artists who thrived most fully in that setting.
The record was part of a remarkably productive period for Carter at Atlantic. He had scored a major hit in 1968 with "Slip Away," which reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and established him as a nationally recognized artist. He followed that with "Too Weak to Fight" later in 1968, and "Doin' Our Thing" arrived in 1969 as further evidence of his sustained commercial momentum. The production approach on "Doin' Our Thing" was consistent with his established sound, featuring the interplay between his gritty vocal delivery and the instrumental precision of the Muscle Shoals session players.
Billboard Hot 100 Chart Performance
"Doin' Our Thing" made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 27, 1969, entering at position 77. The record demonstrated a consistent upward trajectory through its chart run, climbing from 77 to 72 in its second week, then advancing through 68, 59, and 53 in subsequent weeks before reaching its peak position of number 46 during the chart week of November 8, 1969. The single completed a nine-week run on the Hot 100, one of the more substantial chart stays among Carter's 1969 releases and a clear indication of strong national consumer and radio support.
The record's performance on the R&B charts was stronger still, reflecting Carter's deep roots in the Black radio market and the enthusiastic reception his recordings consistently received from that audience. The nine-week Hot 100 run and the peak of 46 placed "Doin' Our Thing" solidly in the mid-tier of national chart performance, a respectable showing that confirmed Carter's status as a reliable commercial artist in the competitive fall 1969 market.
The Title and Broader Cultural Context
The phrase "doing our thing" carried particular resonance in 1969, a moment when expressions of cultural identity and self-determination were prominent in both Black American culture and the broader counterculture. The colloquial phrase, with its implication of autonomy and self-expression unconstrained by external expectations, connected Carter's record to a vocabulary that was culturally alive and charged with meaning at the time of its release. This kind of alignment between a song's language and the broader cultural moment it inhabits often contributed to a record's commercial performance by making it feel immediately relevant and contemporary.
Clarence Carter continued to chart successfully through the early 1970s, scoring his biggest pop hit with "Patches" in 1970, which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Song. His catalog from the late 1960s and early 1970s represents some of the most sustained and commercially successful work produced at Fame Studios, and "Doin' Our Thing" is one of the solid mid-career entries that documents the breadth of his output during this exceptional period.
02 Song Meaning
Autonomy and Mutual Commitment: The Meaning of "Doin' Our Thing"
Clarence Carter's "Doin' Our Thing" engages the theme of romantic partnership through a lens of shared identity and mutual self-determination. The phrase at the heart of the title, "our thing," suggests a relationship that has developed its own internal culture and set of practices, something specific to the two people involved rather than a generic romantic template imposed from outside. This framing gave the song a particular texture of intimacy and authenticity that resonated with audiences in 1969.
The "Our Thing" Construct in Soul Music
Carter's deployment of the "our thing" construct places him within a broader tradition of soul music that celebrated the specific and particular dimensions of romantic relationships rather than their generic qualities. Where many pop love songs of the era traded in universal sentiments, the best soul recordings often located their emotional power in the details of specific relationships, the particular ways that two people inhabit their connection. Carter's raw, confessional vocal style was especially well suited to this kind of specific, personalized expression, giving even relatively general lyrical material an air of autobiographical directness.
The late 1960s context of the phrase "doing our thing" added layers of cultural resonance that extended the song's meaning beyond its immediate romantic subject. In 1969, assertions of autonomy and self-directed action carried weight in a cultural climate shaped by civil rights advocacy, Black Power, and the broader counterculture's celebration of individual and communal self-determination. A soul record built around the concept of a couple defining their own way of being together participated in this larger conversation about the right to live according to one's own values and choices.
The Muscle Shoals Sound and Emotional Authenticity
The specific sonic environment in which "Doin' Our Thing" was produced contributed significantly to how its meaning was communicated. Fame Studios' characteristic sound prioritized a kind of raw emotional honesty over polished commercial sheen, and Carter's vocal style was perfectly aligned with this aesthetic. The combination of his voice, which carried the blues tradition's capacity for expressing emotional complexity with apparent directness, and the tight, groove-oriented instrumental backing created a sonic context in which claims about authentic relationship felt credible.
This credibility was central to the song's commercial and emotional effectiveness. Carter was not simply asserting a romantic premise; he was demonstrating through his vocal performance that he inhabited the emotional world he was describing. This integration of style and content was one of the defining achievements of the Southern soul tradition, and it explains why records produced in Muscle Shoals during this period continue to command respect and attention from listeners who value emotional authenticity in music.
Legacy Within Carter's Catalog
"Doin' Our Thing" occupies a solid position within the run of Clarence Carter recordings that established his national reputation in the late 1960s. It demonstrates the consistent quality of his output during a period when he was recording at peak commercial effectiveness, and it illustrates the range of emotional and thematic material he was able to address convincingly. The song's themes of partnership and shared identity complement the more explicitly confessional and narratively developed material that appeared on his biggest hits, rounding out a picture of an artist who could work across a spectrum of soul's emotional registers with equal conviction. For listeners exploring Carter's catalog, the record stands as evidence of his sustained artistic engagement during one of the most productive periods in Southern soul history.
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