Carl Carlton, the R&B singer best known for 1974's top 10 single "Everlasting Love" and the Grammy-winning 1981 hit "She's A Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked)," has died. His son, Carlton Hudgens II, announced his death in a Facebook post Sunday: "RIP Dad, Legend Carl Carlton singer of She's a Bad Mama Jama. Long hard fight in life and you will be missed." Carlton was 72.
Carlton was born Carlton Hudgens in Detroit in 1953. In the mid-1960s, he began his performance career as a child under the name "Little Carl" Carlton, landing on the Billboard Hot 100 with 1968's "Competition Ain't Nothin." As a teenager, he signed with Back Beat Records and moved to the label's home base of Houston. Dropping the "Little" from his stage name, he scored a hit with 1971's swinging soul track "I Can Feel It."
Carlton kept landing singles on the US soul/R&B charts, and with 1973's Can't Stop A Man In Love, he began steadily releasing albums for the next decade-plus via labels including ABC, 20th Century Fox, and RCA Victor. He scored his highest-charting hit in 1974 with his cover of the pop-soul song "Everlasting Love," which reached #6 on the Hot 100 — his lone top 10 hit on the pop chart.
But his most enduring hit may be "She's A Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked)," a funky post-disco smash written and produced by Leon Haywood, which reached #22 on the Hot 100 and went all the way to #2 on the R&B chart. It has since been sampled often, and as People points out, appeared in movies such as Miss Congeniality 2 and Fat Albert plus shows like Friends.
Carlton's release schedule slowed down after the mid-'80s. He released the album Main Event in 1994 and dropped one last LP, God Is Good, in 2010. Per Soul Tracks, he suffered a stroke in 2019. No cause of death has been announced.
