Schoolboy Cleve She's Gone - Strange Letter Blues 7inch, 45rpm

Schoolboy Cleve

Cleveland White was born in Baton Rouge in 1925. He said he was self-taught on guitar and harmonica and that he enjoyed par- ticularly the music of Sonny Boy Williamson, the harmonica player and singer from Tennessee who had some influential blues discs on BLUEBIRD RECORDS, notably Good Morning, School Girl. White attended local music venues when he was underage and would always ask any visiting musicians whether he could play with them, eventually gaining the name 'Schoolboy' when musicians, apparently including Sonny Boy himself, remembered him. Cleve had become Lightning Slim's most regular harmonica player dur- ing 1955, and he was soon in Miller's studio with him. On one Lightning session, Miller gave Cleve his own vocal debut on Strange Letter Blues, a familiar tale about news from far away but enlivened by harmonica sounds right out of the book of the second man to record as Sonny Boy Williamson, Rice Miller, whose discs on TRUMPET RECORDS of Jackson, Mississippi, were influential along with his radio broadcasts out of Arkansas. Jay Miller was delighted to find that Cleve already had a quirky, mar- ketable name, and the disc came out as by Schoolboy Cleve. It was to be the last blues on FEATURE before Miller turned his at- tention to his EXCELLO pact. Cleve White was briefly in the Baton Rouge R&B band of Joe Hudson, the Rocking Dukes, and he...

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Extract from: Various Artists - Blues Kings Of Baton Rouge (2-CD) - BCD17512
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