From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Mon Sep 2, 2002  1:15 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Jimmy Clanton

JIMMY CLANTON

Born 2 September 1940, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

In the fall of 1957, Ace label owner Johnny Vincent signed husky-voiced
Jimmy Clanton, a white teenager from Baton Rouge, who had been brought
to his notice by studio owner Cosimo Matassa, who also acted as Clanton's
manager. Vincent wasn't overly keen on recording white boys (Ace had been
specialising in R&B and Southern Blues until then) and signed Clanton mainly
as a favour to Matassa. When Clanton's second disc, "Just A Dream" reached
# 4 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1958 (and # 1 on the R&B charts), it paved
the way for Ace's entree into the world of TV, movies and glossy fan magazines.
Clanton's next record, "A Letter To An Angel", showed influences of Johnny Ace,
but from this point the R&B content was quietly extinguished and Jimmy was
turned into an all-American pop idol, in the company of Frankie Avalon, Fabian
and Bobby Rydell. He had a string of hits (eleven Billboard chart entries on
Ace,
1958-63); in fact, by the early sixties, he was the only Ace artist still
producing
hits. He also played in a couple of films, the first being "Go Jimmy Go" (also
starring Alan Freed and Chuck Berry), the title song of which peaked at # 5 in
1959. Another Top 10 hit was "Venus In Blue Jeans" in 1962, but soon Jimmy
and most others of his generation would be swept away from the charts by the
rising tide of Beatlemania. In 1969 he had a minor hit ("Curly") on Laurie. In
the
eighties he was living in Pennsylvania, singing religious songs. It's not quite
clear what happened to him since.
In the UK, he had only one chart entry, the Neil Sedaka/Howard Greenfield
penned "Another Sleepless Night" (1960), which dropped off after one week.
Jimmy Clanton was the most successful artist Ace ever had. Though his Ace
recordings primarily leaned towards pop ballads, some tracks are evidence of
Jimmy's rocking South Louisiana roots, like the excellent "You Aim To Please",
the B-side of "Just A Dream".

CD's: Go Jimmy Go (Westside WESM 517)
Jimmy's Tunes : More Of The Best from Ace Records MS. (Westside WESM 542)