Claudia Lennear

Lennear was born Claudia Joy Offley at Providence Lying-In Hospital in Rhode Island. Her last name was changed after her mother married Leo V. Lennear, a Navy man stationed in Newport.^[3] She grew up in different neighborhoods in Providence. Although raised a Catholic, her grandmother taught her to sing gospel songs as a child.^[5]

In elementary school, Lennear studied music theory and took French at St. Charles Borromeo parochial school. Her career goal was to become a translator at the United Nations.^[3] She also took private piano lessons. In high school, she was in the chorale program. As a teenager she listened to Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Carla Thomas, and Ike & Tina Turner.^[5] During her senior year at Hope High School, her stepfather retired from the Navy and she moved to Pomona, California with her family in 1964.^[3][6]

After graduating from high school, Lennear enrolled in college and began fronting the Los Angeles-based soul group The Superbs.^[5] They performed local gigs around Los Angeles. Lennear made her recording debut with the group on the single "One Bad Habit", released on Doré Records in 1968.^[2]

Through her friend, singer Sherlie Matthews, Lennear landed an audition with bandleader Ike Turner in 1968.^[2][5] She passed the audition and left the Superbs to become an Ikette. She said: "He [Ike Turner] was a terrific business person, very disciplined, and he was a visionary."^[7] Lennear was with Ike & Tina Turner for a few years until she had a spat with Tina Turner.^[8] Nonetheless, Lennear recalled her time with the Turners fondly, telling The Providence Journal:

Without Ike and Tina, I'd probably be 20 miles from stardom, not 20 feet....they taught me how to perform, how to work with other singers and musicians. Ike taught me how to support Tina on stage. And Tina taught me how to present myself....During the three years I was an Ikette, I never witnessed any physical abuse.^[3]

After leaving the Ikettes in 1970, Lennear worked with many acts including Humble Pie and Joe Cocker. She was part of a trio of backup singers for Delaney and Bonnie that also included Rita Coolidge.^[9]

Lennear was one of Leon Russell's Shelter People. She sang back-up vocals on Joe Cocker's 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and live album, on Leon Russell and the Shelter People (1971), and on George Harrison's The Concert for Bangla Desh (1971).^[3] Her lead vocal live recording of "Let It Be" from the film Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1971) was the B side of Leon Russell's "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" single on A&M Records in 1971.^[10]

In 1973, Lennear released her first and only solo album for Warner Bros. Records entitled Phew!.^[3][11] She had a bit part in the film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), playing the secretary who asks Clint Eastwood's character for his Social Security number. Lennear appeared in the August 1974 issue of Playboy magazine in a pictorial entitled "Brown Sugar".^[3]

Lennear appeared in the Academy Award-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.^[5] After the success of the film, David Bowie contacted Lennear and offered to write songs for her next project.^[12]

Since 2014, Lennear has performed and recorded in Los Angeles with The New Ash Grove Players with S S Jones & Claudia Lennear. They have performed at the McCabes Guitar Shop, The Coffee Gallery, the Pasadena Pavilion for the Performing Arts, and The Improv.^[13]

At the Lockn' Festival on September 11, 2015, Lennear performed with the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Rita Coolidge, Leon Russell, and other alumni from the 1970 Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour in a memorial concert for Cocker.^[14][15]

In 2006, Lennear received degrees in French literature and art history from Pitzer College.^[16]

Lennear began teaching first in high school and then at Mt. San Antonio College, where she has been teaching French, Spanish, English, and remedial math.^[3][17]

In 2019, Lennear was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.^[4][18][19]

In 1969, Lennear dated Mick Jagger when Ike & Tina Turner were the opening act for the Rolling Stones on their American tour.^[20] Lennear's relationships with Mick Jagger and David Bowie are often cited as inspiration for The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" (1971) and Bowie's "Lady Grinning Soul" (1973).^[21][22][23] NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray noted in 1981 that she was "yet to reply in song to either Mick or David."^[21] However, in a 1973 article in Rolling Stone, she was quoted as saying that she wrote the song "Not At All" "to inform Mick Jagger of his dispensability".^[24]

• Official Website
• Claudia Lennear on AllMusic
• Singer Claudia Lennear aka the Rolling Stones' famous Brown Sugar; audio clip from Robert Elms, With Jason Solomons, Claudia Lennear, Louisa Pestell and Dr. Robert, BBC London, February 20, 2014