One of the few successful Black country singers of the 1970s, O.B. McClinton first forged a career as a songwriter, penning country-soul ballads for Otis Redding ("Keep Your Arms Around Me") and James Carr. (Two of McClinton’s compositions, "You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up" and "A Man Needs a Woman," stand among Carr's finest work.) McClinton then became a staff writer at Stax Records and, in January 1971, began recording as a C&W artist on the company’s Enterprise subsidiary. McClinton briefly moved to Mercury Records in 1976, where he had a hit with "Black Speck" before moving to Epic, where he scored half-a-dozen minor C&W hits.