Clay Cotton made his living at the piano from the 1960s to the 1990s. After contracting MS, he switched to mastering a whole other keyboard.
by Rebecca Kellogg
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Clay Cotton was an in-demand piano man. At the height of his musical career, he played as a talented side man for musicians including Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, and B.B. King.
That all changed after he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
Eventually his hands could no longer play the notes that had earned him his livelihood and he was forced to find another line of work. He and his wife, both early adopters of the Internet, have supported themselves entirely as online marketers since 1996.
Though his life took an unexpected turn and forced him to reinvent himself, Clay’s sense of humor and enthusiasm remain intact. On his Web site he refers to himself as “QuadBlogger Clay Cotton: The Boogie-Woogie Google Boy.”
The Music Years
Clay Cotton, who grew up around San Francisco, had an early and natural love for the piano.
“My parents both loved music,” he said. “Mother’s brother played in the speak-easies in New Orleans. My grandmother played ragtime piano. I went over to her house one day and heard someone playing ‘In the Mood.’ I said ‘That doesn’t look too hard. Can you teach me?’ He taught me the left hand one week and the right hand the next week.”
At age 12, Cotton made his first money from music—fifty cents for playing at a church. A year later, he played in a band with friends and started making regular money. His friend was a bass player who got the band gigs from frat houses at the University of California at Berkeley.
“I learned on the fields of play,” Cotton said. He learned the feel, the chops and the tenets. “The feel is the feel you have for the music. The chops are the techniques, and the tenets are the understanding of musical elements. Some people would call that theory.”
Cotton had thought about going to college, but instead he just kept playing music. When he received a draft notice, his father got him a test with the navy school. He whipped through it and did well because he was so motivated.
When he came back, his friends were doing drugs. But he got an opportunity to play with friends for Charlie Musselwhite of Charlie Musselwhite’s Blues Band. Musselwhite was delighted with Cotton’s music and invited him to dinner to talk about playing together. It was Cotton’s first pro gig. Cotton ended up playing a lot of gigs in the Haight-Ashbury Musical Renaissance of the mid-1960s.
“I just basically followed the smiles—when people loved it, I played more of it,” Cotton said. “People wondered why I didn’t play more jazz. In the ’50s and ’60s it was no fun. I saw the smiles for the dance music and the pop music . . . rhythm and blues, folk music, gospel music.” His first professional touring act was with Tracy Nelsen. “It wasn’t something I did by design,” he said. “I fell into it. These people I was around respected that I loved the music enough to play well. And I respected them . . . there is a respect for the craft.”
He would open for Steve Miller and Janis Joplin.
“Janis used to come around and play,” Cotton said. She seemed to take a fancy to him, but he didn’t pursue her.
He jammed with Frank Zappa, B.B. King, Chuck Berry. One day he ran into Elvis Presley in the men’s room. “He said ‘Nice playing in there,’ and I said ‘Thanks.’”
After playing with so many famous people, Cotton developed his own opinions of fame, hero worship, and the spotlight.
“I learned a lot about fame from being around all these famous people,” he said. “Popularity is a teen’s game, yet it permeates our media-rich culture. Many bask in that glow, but only a chosen few learn to wield controlled fame— and so many others meet their destruction by it.”
“I kind of got tired of the night clubs. I wished there were more venues to play music. I played a lot of big festivals. The working musician plays nightclubs. I just felt there was more for me to give and explore.”
His last gig was with Boz Skaggs in his nightclub in San Fransisco.
Cotton feels he was at his best as a musician around 1984, a time when he was working on his technique by practicing regularly out of piano technique drill books.
“They try to get kids to play these exercises,” he said. “It made me more fluid and graceful.”
In the 1980s, he recorded himself playing some of his favorite pieces.
“Now I’m really sad because my musical identity did not allow me to embrace other achievements,” Cotton said. “I was a player. I really didn’t do myself justice. I think because of identity problems. I really needed to get out of the musical world.” He bought his first computer in the 1980s. And then a motorcycle crash took him out of the running. During his recovery he got pulled away from the music world.
Computers were a hobby that would benefit him shortly thereafter.
The Computer Years
Cotton has the distinction of having had not one but two careers he has loved.
In 1997, Cotton was diagnosed with MS.
From 1996 on, Cotton and wife Kimberly have supported themselves as Internet marketers. Their Internet marketing and blogging efforts generate revenue for the couple to cover costs.
“The Internet came along just when I needed it,” Cotton said. “I’ve got friends, clients, partners I’ve never seen in person.”
Calling himself a “lemonadian,” (one who, when dealt lemons, makes lemonade) Cotton continues to work in his new creative medium, seeking to create “value worthy of devotion.” He read the works of the great marketing masters and learned to apply their principles to market himself, his clients, and his affiliates.
“Marketing is salesmanship multiplied, and the Web can make that happen many fold, but you gotta have insight, chops and nerve,” Cotton said. “Ask the audience what they want, allow folks to tell themselves a story that they want to hear, offer to resolve the tension, and make the call to action. The trick is to undersell and over-deliver until you create lifelong loyalty, a devoted fan base.”
“Now that I have been doing that for so many years,” he says, “I have so much more to offer the world.”
Cotton says dealing with MS is just like playing music on the road. “You’ve really got to develop a sense of humor to deal with the tension,” he says. “Humor is a good reliever. Music is a great reliever. If you don’t have a sense of humor about spinal cord injuries, it isn’t very funny. Comedy is really tragedy with the addition of time.”
Though the piano man no longer tickles the ivories, his music lives on, fittingly, on the Internet. Tracks from the pieces he recorded in the 1980s are still available online at claycotton.com/coffee/gift/.
Rebecca Kellogg is a frequent contributor to Action.
