Clarence Carter, the blind Southern soul star who scored two Top 10 hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s with “Slip Away” and “Patches,” died today, May 14, following diagnosis of Stage 4 prostate cancer and a battle with pneumonia and sepsis. He was 90.

His death was first reported by Rolling Stone, with the magazine confirming the news with Rodney Hall, president of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Candi Staton, the singer and Carter’s ex-wife.

After having hits on the R&B charts (including 1965’s “Step By Step” and 1967’s “Tell Daddy”), Carter landed on the pop charts – as well as, concurrently, the R&B lists – with 1968’s “Slip Away,” a song that highlighted Carter’s powerful and emotional baritone voice with a lyric in which the singer implores his married lover for a secret rendezvous (“Could you just slip away without him knowing you’re gone?/Then we could meet somewhere, somewhere where we’re both not known”).

Two years later Carter released his biggest pop hit, the Grammy-winning (for Best R&B song) “Patches,” which rose to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song, written by General Johnson and Ron Dunbar and first recorded by Johnson’s band Chairmen of the Board, told the story of a boy named Patches who recalls his bone-tired father’s final words to him: “Patches, I’m depending on you son/To pull the family through/My son, it’s all left up to you.”

The song featured not only Carter’s trademark singing but his spoken introduction to the tale (“I was so ragged that folks used to call me Patches…”).

Carter also recorded a number of raunchy novelty songs eschewed by mainstream radio but finding success in later years: The 1968 “Back Door Santa” was sampled by Run-D.M.C. for the 1987 single “Christmas in Hollis,” and the even more explicit “Strokin'” from 1986 was featured on the soundtrack for Eddie Murphy’s 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor as well as in William Friedkin’s 2011 film Killer Joe.

Carter was born blind on January 14, 1936, in Montgomery, Alabama, and, after later receiving a guitar for Christmas, became a self-taught player. He attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama, and graduated with a degree in music from Alabama State College in 1960.

In the years after his major crossover success, Carter continued recording and touring, establishing his own label, Cee Gee Entertainment, in 1996.

Information on survivors was not immediately available.