Interview: Clarke Peters

I’m speaking to actor and singer Clarke Peters – and very aware of his pivotal role in epic 21st century TV masterpieces The Wire and Tremé. I’m brimming with questions: but one simply has to come first.

“So, Mr Peters – was that really you singing ‘oh give me love’ in the background on Joan Armatrading’s magnificent Love and Affection?”

Pause. “Yeah, that was me.” Oh, lordy.

That he found himself in a recording studio adding the perfect touch to one of the most perfect of pop classics is just one example of Clarke Peters’ unfailing ability to be in the right place at the right time. He calls it being ‘blessed’ and, despite difficult spells and even tragedy along the way, he has seized many remarkable opportunities since quitting New Jersey for Europe in 1971.

Though identified now with the intense gravitas of those TV roles, Clarke’s career started with music. An early soul band, The Majestics, led to West End musicals thanks to the support of theatre maestro Ned Sherrin. Sherrin also convinced Clarke to write his own show, 1990’s hugely successful Five Guys Named Moe.

“Ned was my mentor. I’d worked with him on shows like Side by Side by Sondheim and I had this idea about [jive pioneer] Louis Jordan – I felt his music was talking to me. If anyone deserves the name ‘Godfather of Rock’n’Roll’ it’s Louis, but his career went right back to the minstrel shows. Five Guys was a celebration of what he was about, which was having a fucking good time!”

There’s an obvious link with another Louis – whose career Clarke will help to celebrate at this month’s Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival. “Satchmo! He started with King Oliver, the end of ragtime, right through to Count Basie and beyond. That was a real life, not just musically but politically too.” Clarke will be reading the trumpeter’s own words as part of The Louis Armstrong Story at the Colston Hall, a venue he remembers fondly from touring with Shirley Bassey in the 1970s.

Clarke Peters’ own career took a decisive jump in 1999 when Kevin Spacey took his production of The Iceman Cometh from London to Broadway – and Clarke went with it. “It was my first job in the States, and it got me spotted by David Simon for The Corner – which led on to The Wire.”

His Wire character, detective Lester Freamon, spends much time making miniature furniture. “That was an actor trying to remember his lines! By concentrating on that I was keeping all the information I had to impart – and there was lots – in its proper order.”

Initially convinced that Lester would not last long, Peters spent a lot of time partying with co-stars Dominic West and Wendell Pierce. As they settled in for the long haul, however, he reined himself in (“I was too old!”) and, by Season 3, he was teaching himself oil painting. He’d recognised something else, too: “I began to notice people pointing and by Season 4 – oh my god! I appeared to be something! I’m still not really used to that celebrity. I’m just a working actor.”

If Lester was the ultimate cool detective hero, Tremé’s Chief Lambreux was an impassioned warrior whose New Orleans connection with Native American culture chimed with Clarke’s mother’s Cherokee background. “When I went to New Orleans I met the people who really hold on to that and they embraced me. We know who we are!”

Having partied around the pre-Katrina town with Pierce, he was shocked by the subsequent devastation. “Whole neighbourhoods were reduced to hundreds of acres of nothing. There used to be houses there for generations but those families won’t come back. What has survived, though, is the richness of the culture – music, art, writing, spoken word and, obviously, the food. It’s a special place and I hope it never, never leaves me.”

With nothing as big as The Wire on the horizon, Clarke’s now happy to enjoy family life in his adopted homeland and to focus on music once more, while waiting for whatever comes next. “At my age I like to pick and choose. It has to be interesting.”

With so blessed a career to date, there’s little doubt that’s exactly what it’ll be.

Clarke Peters appears at the Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival (The Lantern, Saturday 7 March) and as part of The Louis Armstrong Story (Colston Hall, Sunday 8 March). For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristoljazzandbluesfest.com