Clarence Smith (born Clarence Edward Mauldin; November 3, 1940 – December 14, 2021), known as Sonny Rhodes, was an American blues singer and lap steel guitar player. He recorded over two hundred songs. "I'm what you call a self-proclaimed Disciple of the Blues!" said Rhodes about his years playing and singing for fans of blues around the world.
He was nominated 15 times for Blues Music Awards and won in the category 'Instrumentalist – Other' in 2011. Rhodes was born in Smithville, Texas on November 3, 1940, as the son of Emma Mauldin. He was orphaned as a baby and was adopted by sharecroppers Leroy and Julia Smith. He received his first guitar at the age of eight as a Christmas present and became serious about playing the blues at age 12. He credited his uncle as his source of inspiration.
Rhodes began performing around Smithville and nearby Austin in the late 1950s, while still in his teens. He listened a lot to T-Bone Walker when he was young. He acknowledged as influences the guitarists L.C. Robinson, Pee Wee Crayton and B.B. King and the singer Percy Mayfield. With his first band, Clarence Smith and the Daylighters, he played blues clubs in the Austin area until he joined the U.S. Navy after high school graduation.
In the Navy, he was stationed in California, where he worked for a while as a radio man and closed-circuit Navy ship disc jockey, telling off-color jokes in between the country and blues records he would spin for the entertainment of the sailors. Rhodes recorded a single, "I'll Never Let You Go When Something Is Wrong", for Domino Records in Austin in 1958. He also learned to play the bass guitar. He played bass accompanying the guitarists Freddie King and Albert Collins.
After his stint in the Navy, in his mid-20s, Rhodes returned to California and lived in Fresno for a few years before signing a recording contract with Galaxy Records in Oakland. He recorded a single, "I Don't Love You No More", in 1966 and another single for Galaxy in 1967, changing his stage name from Clarence Smith to Sonny Rhodes at that time. Frustrated with the San Francisco Bay area record companies, he recorded "Cigarette Blues" on his own label, Rhodes-Way Records, in 1978.
Rhodes toured Europe in 1976 and released numerous recordings on European labels, including I Don't Want My Blues Colored Bright and the live album In Europe. In 1985, he released Just Blues on Rhodes-Way. In the late 1980s, he recorded Disciple of the Blues, released by Ichiban Records in 1991, and Living Too Close to the Edge, released in 1992.
He later moved to Kingsnake Records, releasing several albums including The Blues Is My Best Friend (1994) and Out of Control (1995), and touring widely in the US, Canada and Europe. In 2008, he released I'm Back Again. His last release, The Essential Sonny Rhodes – Songs & Stories, on Need To Know Music is a retrospective of his career to date, featuring Rich Kirch, Barry Goldberg, Frank Howard Swart and Dawn Richardson. The record was produced by Brian Brinkerhoff and Swart.
By 2018 at the age of 78 years old Sonny was still performing 200 shows a year, slowing down only slightly despite his increasing frailty. He died on December 14, 2021, at the age of 81.
Phil Woods (November 2, 1931 – September 29, 2015 was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinettist, bandleader, and composer.
Born Philip Wells Woods in Springfield, Massachusetts, Woods began playing the saxophone at the age of 12, and was at first an admirer of the swing altoists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges. He had a few private lessons in his mid-teens with the pianist Lennie Tristano, the architect of a new jazz style that presented a more measured alternative to bebop’s full-on intensity, and subsequently came to be labelled the Cool School. But Woods was too visceral a performer to turn down the temperature on his sound, and he remained closer to the direct and explicitly communicative swing of a rootsier kind of jazz.
He studied music formally, first at the Manhattan School of Music, New York, from 1948, then at the Juilliard School, where he majored in clarinet, graduating in 1952 – an education that made him a popular sideman for his sight-reading skills. Woods preferred the two-sax front line adopted by Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt and others to the classic 40s sax/trumpet bop ensemble, although his debut album as a leader, Pot Pie (1954), did pair him with the bright-toned trumpeter Jon Eardley. He already played in the millionaire Charlie Barnet’s vivacious orchestra, but by in 1955-6 he worked with the bop pianist George Wallington, trumpeter Kenny Dorham and Frederich Gulda. Woods then began working with Dizzy Gillespie, whose globetrotting career as a jazz ambassador for America was beginning to accelerate – the assignment took Woods to South America and the near east.
For the next decade he led a number of small jazz groups, including a quintet with Gene Quill. He also performed in Buddy Rich's band, toured Europe with Quincy Jones (1959-60) and the USSR with Benny Goodman (1962), and worked as a studio musician, playing various reed instruments for recording sessions, television, films and advertising jingles. During the summers from 1964 to 1967 he taught at the Ramblerny performing arts camp in New Hope, Pennsylvania. In March 1968 Woods moved to France, which marked his return to playing small-group jazz. In Paris that same year he formed a quartet called the European Rhythm Machine with player Henri Texier, and the drummer Daniel Humair. The group remained intact until 1972, when Woods organized an experimental electronic quartet in Los Angeles. This was given a cold reception and soon disbanded.
Woods then moved to the East Coast, and in October 1973 formed an outstanding acoustic jazz group with Mike Melillo, Steve Gilmore, and Bill Goodwin. With this ensemble he won acclaim as the finest alto saxophonist in mainstream jazz, a reputation confirmed by his performances on Images(1975 with Michel Legrand), Live from the Showboat (1976) and I love you just the way you are (1977 with singer Billy Joel, all of which he received Grammy awards). With Hal Galper replacing Melillo (1981) and Tom Harrell added to the group (1983), Woods continued to tour internationally and record into the late 1980's. He began to play clarinet on a regular basis, especially in combination with Harrell's muted trumpet.
His repertory expanded to include not only bop (Airegin, 1974), but also, with the European Rhythm Machine, funk (The Meeting) and occasional passages of free jazz (Riot (both 1970), and with his new group, Latin jazz (Brazilian Affair, 1076). In 1979, Woods recorded the album More Live at Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas.
Woods, along with Rick Chamberlain and Ed Joubert, founded the organization Celebration of the Arts (COTA) in 1978 late one night in the bar at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. The organization would eventually become the Delaware Water Gap Celebration of the Arts. Their initial goal was to help foster an appreciation of jazz and its relationship to other artistic disciplines. Each year, the organization hosts the Celebration of the Arts Festival in September.
A series of brilliant albums for the Concord label, including Bop Stew (1987), Bouquet (1989) and Flash (1992), confirmed Woods’s elevation to the front rank of the world’s jazz soloists, a position he had deserved long previously. The trombonist Hal Crook and trumpeter Brian Lynch took Harrell’s place after 1989. Always a perfectionist, Woods often insisted on unplugged, all-acoustic performances even in jazz premises apparently unsuited to such low-key methods, but his commitment and musicality usually won over the most unruly of audiences.
Woods also took his role as a teacher very seriously, helping to found an annual arts festival in Delaware, and regularly taking masterclasses and musician-in-residence roles with student jazz bands around the world, including the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in Britain, and the Catania City Brass Orkestra in Italy. Woods would frequently take the featured-soloist role in these enterprises, performing as if there were nothing in the world he would rather be doing.
He developed a productive musical relationship with the Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi in the 90s, and Woods regularly documented his work both in the US and in Europe throughout the decade. High points were The Complete Concert (1996), live from the Wigmore Hall – a performance that caught Woods in more keening and delicate mood, notably on the Bill Evans dedication Goodbye Mr Evans; and Celebration! (1997), an American big band album in which Woods sweeps through a repertoire to which he contributed most of the arrangements with all the composed fire of his earlier years, and no hint of the chronic emphysema that hampered his work late in his life.
He was fluently creative, making characteristically witty spoken asides, on tributes to Marty Paich and Woody Herman with the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra in 2004, and became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and received a Living Legend jazz award from the Kennedy Center in 2007. His last significant recording was 2011’s Man With the Hat, a co-leader session with fellow alto saxophonist Grace Kelly. Carrying his obligatory oxygen tank, Woods was playing in Pittsburgh with members of the city’s symphony orchestra as recently as 4 September, interpreting his own arrangements of the famous Charlie Parker With Strings repertoire and announced at the end of the show that he would be retiring. He died a little more than three weeks later of emphysema on September 29, 2015, at the age of 83.
(Edited from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz & John Fordham's obit for the Guardian)
Sippie Wallace (November 1, 1898 – November 1, 1986) was an American singer, pianist, songwriter and one of the a major blues artists of the 1920s, whose renown as a performer carried well into the 1980s. Her early career in tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale".
Wallace was born Beulah Belle Thomas in the Delta lowlands of Jefferson County, Arkansas, the fourth of 13 children in her family. Wallace came from a musical family: her brother George Washington Thomas became a notable pianist, bandleader, composer, and music publisher; a brother Hersal Thomas, was a pianist and composer; her niece Hociel Thomas (George's daughter) was a pianist and composer. When she was a child her family moved to Houston, Texas. She was nicknamed "Sippie" because, as she states, "my teeth were so far apart and I had to sip everything." In her youth she sang and played the piano in Shiloh Baptist Church, where her father was a deacon, but in the evenings she and her siblings took to sneaking out to tent shows. By the time she was in her mid-teens, Wallace learned blues and ragtime music in the shows, in addition to performing in chorus lines and acting in comedy skits. These experiences influenced her contributions as a blues artist.
In 1915, Wallace moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, with Hersal. Two years later she married Matt Wallace and took his surname. Wallace followed her brothers to Chicago in 1923 and worked her way into the city's bustling jazz scene. Her reputation led to a recording contract with Okeh Records in 1923. Her first recorded songs, "Shorty George" and "Up the Country Blues", the former written with her brother George, sold well enough to make her a blues star in the early 1920s. Other successful recordings followed, including "Special Delivery Blues" (with Louis Armstrong), "Bedroom Blues" (written by George and Hersal Thomas), and "I'm a Mighty Tight Woman". Hersal Thomas died of food poisoning in 1926, at age 19. In 1929 Wallace settled in Detroit, where she would live for the rest of her life.
Matt Wallace died in 1936 and George Thomas Washington died on March 6, 1937. With neither the experience nor the guidance from her brother to guide her in refocusing her career, Wallace was unable to adapt her style to changing tastes, and by 1932 she had slipped into the same obscurity as other female blues artists of her era.
Aside from an occasional performance or recording date, she did little in the blues until she launched a comeback in 1966, after her long-time friend Victoria Spivey coaxed her out of retirement, and Wallace toured on the folk and blues festival circuit. Wallace recorded an album, Women Be Wise, on October 31, 1966, in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Roosevelt Sykes and Little Brother Montgomery playing the piano. She recorded another album in 1966, Sippie Wallce Sings the Blues, on which she accompanied herself on piano on the title song, with Sykes or Montgomery playing piano on other tracks. Both albums include her signature song, "Women Be Wise". These recordings helped inspire the musician Bonnie Raitt to take up singing and playing the blues in the late 1960s. Raitt recorded renditions of "Women Be Wise" and "Mighty Tight Woman" on her self-titled debut album in 1971.
Wallace contributed to Louis Armstrong's album Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers (1966), singing "A Jealous Woman Like Me", "Special Delivery Blues", "Jack o'Diamond Blues", "The Mail Train Blues" and "I Feel Good". She and Spivey recorded an album of blues standards, Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey, released in 1970 by Spivey's label, Spivey Records. In 1981, Wallace recorded the album Sippie for Atlantic Records, which earned her a 1983 Grammy nomination and won the 1982 W. C. Handy Award for Best Blues Album of the Year. Wallace's backup group was pianist James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band, consisting of Paul Klinger on cornet, Bob Smith on trombone and Russ Whitman and Peter Ferran on reeds.
She appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 and 1967, toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival in 1966, performed at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1967. In the 1970s Wallace's performances were curtailed due to failing health. She suffered a stroke in 1970 that left her temporarily wheelchair-bound and forced her to end her stint as organist of the Leland Baptist Church, but recovered sufficiently to perform at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1972, Wallace toured and recorded with Raitt in the 1970s and 1980s and continued to perform on her own. The duo performed the song "Woman Be Wise" on Late Night with David Letterman on April 27, 1982, with Dr. John accompanying on piano, in support of her album "Sippie". With backing vocals by Raitt, the album was nominated for a 1983 Grammy award for best traditional blues and earned the W.C. Handy Award for best blues album of 1983 the following year. She shared the stage with B.B. King at the Montreaux Jazz Festival on July 22, 1982, in a performance that was filmed and later broadcast.
Sippie with Bonnie Rait
In 1983-84 she traveled to Germany to tour, returning to that country again in the spring of 1986. Despite her failing health, her concerts were highly acclaimed. Fortunately for her fans, many of these performances were recorded with the German boogie-woogie pianist Axel Zwingenberger which would become Wallace's lasting legacy to the blues. In March 1986, following a concert at the Burghausen Jazz Festival in Germany, Wallace suffered a severe stroke and was hospitalized. She returned to the United States and died in the Sinai Hospital in Detroit on November 1, 1986, her 88th birthday.
She was buried at Trinity Cemetery, in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. In 1993 she was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
(Edited from Wikipedia, All About Jazz & Encyclopedia.com)
Booker Ervin (October 31, 1930 – August 31, 1970) was a powerful, blues‑driven American tenor saxophonist best known for his work with Charles Mingus and his influential series of Prestige albums in the 1960s.
Booker Telleferro Ervin II was born in Denison, Texas, United States. He came to the tenor saxophone late and by an unlikely road: his father, who had played trombone with Buddy Tate, taught him that horn first, and Ervin only took up the tenor saxophone in the U.S. Air Force, teaching himself while stationed in Okinawa, Japan. After completing his military service in 1953, he pursued formal training at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. After studying music in Boston for two years, he moved to Tulsa in 1954, he played with the band of Ernie Fields. After stays in Denver and Pittsburgh, Ervin moved to New York City in spring 1958, initially working a day job and playing jam sessions at night. What came out of that horn was one of the most distinctive sounds in jazz — a tenor that didn’t just sing but cried, smeared and testified, Texas blues and gospel carried in every bent note.
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus heard it before almost anyone, and from late 1958 Ervin was the bassist’s tenor of choice through his greatest run of albums. On Mingus Ah Um his mournful solo carries “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Mingus’s elegy for Lester Young; a year later, on Blues & Roots, his preaching chorus on “Moanin'” became the sound that record is remembered by. Mingus was the most demanding bandleader in jazz, and no saxophonist was trusted with more of his music. Ervin worked with Mingus regularly until 1960, rejoining various outfits led by the bassist at various times up to autumn 1964, when he departed for Europe. During the mid-1960s, Ervin led his own quartet, recording for Prestige Records with, among others, ex-Mingus associate pianist Jaki Byard, along with bassist Richard Davis and Alan Dawson on drums.
Ervin later recorded for Blue Note Records and played with pianist Randy Weston, with whom he recorded between 1963 and 1966. Weston said: "Booker Ervin, for me, was on the same level as John Coltrane. He was a completely original saxophonist. He was a master." Ervin’s own records turned his nickname into a bibliography.
The band called him “Book” — Randy Weston remembered the chant of “Cook, Book, cook” — and the leader albums followed the pun: The Book Cooks in 1960, a two-tenor debut alongside Zoot Sims, then the Prestige run with pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis and drummer Alan Dawson. Its peak came on December 3, 1963, at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs: The Freedom Book, five long, searching performances that stretch hard bop toward freedom without ever letting go of the blues. The Song Book, The Blues Book and The Space Book completed the set within the year.
Between October 1964 to summer 1966, Ervin worked and lived in Europe, playing gigs in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands. Basing himself in Barcelona, Spain, he featured regularly at the city's Jamboree Club. He recorded and broadcast while overseas, making albums with his own quartet, Dexter Gordon and Catalan vocalist Núria Feliu, featuring on various radio programmes and appearing at several jazz festivals, including a guest slot at the 1965 Berlin Jazz Festival, during which he performed a 25-minute improvisation. This performance was issued as "Blues For You" on the album Lament For Booker Ervin (Enja Records) in 1977.
Following his return to the United States in summer 1966, Ervin led his own groups in jazz clubs throughout the country, and appeared at both the Newport Jazz Festival (1967) and the Monterey Jazz Festival (1966) performing with Randy Weston; a recording of their performance was issued on CD in 1994. In 1968, Ervin again appeared at clubs and festivals in Scandinavia, broadcasting with the Danish Radio Big Band. He recorded again for Prestige, but in late 1966 was signed to West Coast label, Pacific Jazz, for whom he taped two albums, Structurally Sound and Booker 'n' Brass (1967), before switching to Blue Note.
Ervin recorded two Blue Note albums under his own name, In Between and Tex Book Tenor, the latter going unissued during his lifetime, initially being released in the 1970s as part of a double album shared with recordings (on which Ervin features) made under the leadership of Horace Parlan (Back from the Gig). Ervin's final recorded appearance occurred in January 1969, when he guested on a further Prestige album headed by teenage multi-instrumentalist Eric Kloss.
Ervin died of kidney disease in New York City in 1970, aged 39. Most biographical accounts of Ervin's death give an incorrect date. His gravestone in The National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, New York, clearly shows the date as August 31, 1970.
Donnie Owens (aka Donald Lee Owens) (October 30, 1932 – October 27, 1994) was an American singer, guitarist, producer, and composer.
Owens was born on October 30, 1932, in Chester, Pennsylvania to parents John Easley Owens and Nellie Mae Brigman Owens. After high school he joined the United States Air Force and became an Airman First Class. He served in the Korean War. When fellow Korean War veteran Lee Hazlewood moved to Arizona, Owens helped him get a job as a disc jockey at KCKY, a small country station in Coolidge, Arizona. This was the beginning of a working relationship which spanned decades. Owens performed for almost five years as Donnie Owens and the 4 Jacks at Harry’s Capri Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona.
Owens recorded several singles on the Guyden Records label (a subsidiary of the Philadelphia-based Jamie Records label), each featuring Duane Eddy on guitar. His first release was in 1958 when he recorded songwriter Buddy Wheeler's song “Need You” at Loy Clingman's Viv Recording Studio in Phoenix, Arizona. “Need You” peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and stayed on the charts for 15 weeks In 2012, “Need You” was named by the Phoenix New Times as one of the 100 songs which define Arizona. His second release, “Tomorrow” was also written by Buddy Wheeler. The back-up vocals were provided by the Ben Denton Singers.
“Tomorrow” charted in the Top 30 in Phoenix and was play listed in Chicago and Boston. It reached #89 on the Cashbox Top 100 Singles chart, but never charted in Billboard. His third Guyden song “Ask Me Anything,” was released in May 1959. It made the Top 30 in Phoenix, Arizona, but failed to chart nationally. During this period Owens played the rhythm guitar and was a Rebel in Duane Eddy`s band, Duane Eddy & The Rebels. He recorded with Eddy on his albums Have 'Twangy' Guitar Will Travel (Jamie Records, 1958), The “Twangs” The “Thang” (Jamie Records, 1959), Duane Eddy With Guests Donnie Owens and Neil Sedaka ( Reo Records, 1959), and Duane A Go Go Go (Colpix Records, 1965).
To promote his albums, Owens made appearance on numerous radio and TV shows. On November 2, 1958, Owens was featured on the Len Graham Record Hop and on January 14, 1959, he performed on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Owens also had releases on other record labels. In 1960 he recorded with rock'n'roll singer Don Cole as the Two Dons and released "Out In The Cold Again". In 1961 he recorded the single “Stormy (Came to Town)” (written by Lee Hazlewood) with B-side “What A Dream!” for Trey Records. The single was released in the US and Canada. “Stormy (Came To Town)” received airplay in Vancouver and peaked at #7. Vancouver was the only record market where the song charted. The same year Owens also released the promo single “No Love Lost”/’I Forgot About You” on Project Records. Both songs were written by Norma and Connie Conway and produced by Lee Hazlewood.
In 1966, Owens wrote and released the single “Heart Attack” with B-side “Loneliness of Hurt” (written by Jimmy Gray) on the Ramco label. Owens and Floyd Ramsey produced both sides. The same year, he released the single “My World” (written by Owens and Waylon Jennings) with B-side “Soldier’s Last Letter” (written by Ernest Tubb and Sgt. Henry Stewart) on the ARA label. Both sides were produced by Owens and Waylon Jennings. In 1967, he wrote and recorded the single, “Climbin’ the Walls,” which was the A-side to his cover of the song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” which was written by Lee Hazlewood and previously recorded by Nancy Sinatra. Owens and Waylon Jennings produced both sides. Owens played guitar for Nancy Sinatra’s album, Sugar (Reprise Records) and also performed with Nancy Sinatra at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He also wrote songs for a number of other recording artists, including Budd the Spudd and the Sprouts, Virgil Warner, Johnny Wakely, Ray Sharpe, Sanford Clark and Mac Wiseman.
Rare photo of Donnie Owens
Owens played guitar on several Lee Hazlewood albums, including The N.S.V.I.P.'s (Not So Very Important People) (Reprise Records, 1965), Love and Other Crimes (Reprise Records, 1968), Requiem for an Almost Lady (Viking, 1971), and his Cowboy in Sweden soundtrack (LHI Records, 1970). In 1968 Owens was a guitarist on the Elvis Presley RCA Records release “Speedway,” the original motion picture soundtrack for the MGM motion picture of the same name. Having developed a loyal following, Owens continued to do back up work and perform locally in the \phoenix area for many years.
On October 27, 1994, Owens was accidentally killed at the Palms Motel in Phoenix, Arizona. His girlfriend, the manager of the hotel, was trying to scare off a man who was threatening Owens, but instead, accidentally shot Owens in the stomach. He was taken to the hospital where he died of his injuries on October 27, 1994, at the age of 61, just a few days prior to his 62nd birthday. He was interred at National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix.
Edward Bennett Coles (October 29, 1910 – June 18, 1970), known professionally as Eddie Cole, was an American jazz musician and brother to musicians Nat King Cole, Freddy Cole, and Ike Cole.
Jazz bassist Eddie Cole had the misfortune to be the older sibling of a much more famous musician, jazz and pop legend Nat "King" Cole. He never saw anything like the popularity of his younger brother, though they worked together during the late '30s and Eddie Cole got to cut his first credited records as a bandleader in association with Nat "King" Cole's late-'30s group the Rogues of Rhythm.
The first child of Reverend Edward J. Coles and the former Perlina Adams, Eddie Cole was born in 1910 in Montgomery, Alabama. He was the second oldest of ten children and the oldest son. His brothers Nat King Cole (1919–1965), Ike (1927–2001), and Freddy (1931–2020) also each pursued careers in music. In 1923 the family moved to Chicago. As a boy, Eddie studied both piano and bass and by the time he was 17, he had organized his own band.
At age 20, he was recruited into the ranks of Noble Sissle's band the Sizzling Syncopators, staying there six years and playing alongside such greats and Sidney Bechet and Clarence Brereton. He married Thelma Madison in Detroit, Michigan, in 1933 but later married actress Betty King. Following a tour of Europe in 1936, Cole left Sissle's band to join his brother's group, the Rogues of Rhythm, with whom he recorded both under their name and also several sides credited to Eddie Cole's Solid Swingers, which featured him on vocals and bass as well as piano.
Eddie on bass
Following World War II, Cole relocated to Philadelphia, where he organized a new group mixing comedy and jazz, called the Three Loose Nuts and a Bolt; later on, he changed his focus more exclusively toward music, renaming his band Eddie Cole & His Gang. The group, which included Jimmy White on guitar, Duke Johnson on bass, and Charles "Jelly Bean" Johnson on drums, was popular locally and released three singles on Ivin Ballen's Gotham Records label in 1950, but Cole never enjoyed anything like the success or fame of his younger brother.
During the second half of the 1950s, Cole moved to Los Angeles and later formed a piano/vocal duo, the Two Hot Coles, with his wife, the former Betty King; they were among the earliest artists signed to the fledgling Warner Bros. label at the end of the 1950s. His contact with Warner Bros. gave Eddie Cole one last chance at stardom in 1959 when he took on a role in the new Warner Bros. television detective series Bourbon Street Beat, playing the Baron, a pianist at the New Orleans club around which the action took place. The series only lasted a year, though it did yield a soundtrack album that included Cole. He later appeared on The Law and Mr. Jones and The Jack Benny Program.
He retired in the 1960s, and died on June 18, 1970, at the age of 59.
Eddie Cletro (October 28, 1918 - February 2, 2012) was an American musician, bandleader, and radio personality best known for his work in Western and country music.
He was born Eddie Oliver Clethero in New Jersey in 1918. Later, advertising made much of Cletro's Irish heritage and the family name was originally O'Clethero. When he was nine years old, Eddie took a liking to music and began to playing the ukulele. By the time he was 14, he learned the guitar and was leading his first band. He started performing when he was just a young teenager, finding a fun way to make an extra buck. His family moved to California, where, inspired by the Beverly Hillbillies and other local followers of country and western music, he led his own string band as a teenager.
The early 1940s found him working with Stuart Hamblen and the Lucky Stars over radio station KFWB in Los Angeles, California which ran an hour and 15 minutes each day. In the evenings, Eddie would perform at the Tom Brenneman restaurant. Eddie noticed that the patrons didn't seem to react much to the bands popular renditions of the day. But whenever the band slipped in a western tune or two, their audiences would get a bit more enthusiastic. This gave Eddie the impetus to make a switch to being a western music performer - exclusively. As so often was the case back then, the stars or their managers thought that they would be liked more if they were truly from a western town instead of their bona fide roots. Eddie decided that being from Colgate, Oklahoma and changing his name to Eddie Cletro would sound better to the audiences. He also dropped the clarinets and trombones that were in his band and added fiddles and accordion to give him a western sound.
By 1946 Eddie was working six nights a week at the Palomino Nightclub in West Hollywood. Spade Cooley would come in and sit in to listen to the bands playing there at the time, then leave. Spade decided he had liked what he heard at hired Eddie to play for his band at the Santa Monica Ballroom each weekend. He was with Spade for about a year, then he and his band moved to begin working with Foreman Phillips in 1947 in Baldwin Park, California, and later at the Town Hall in Compton, California.
Around 1949 or so, Eddie prodded Foreman Phillips into trying television and also got KABC-TV interested, too. When they did get the show on the air, it was pretty informal and spontaneous for the most part - no scripts. The band showed up, did their songs and bits but the fans enjoyed it all the same. All told, he was with Foreman Phillips about four and a half years. The show was called "Foreman Phillips Presents" and starred Foreman Phillips and featured Eddie Cletro and his Western Variety Band. The show aired from Stage 2 at the ABC Television Center in Hollywood.
Eddie & His Round-Up Boys appeared in the movie "The Trail of the Rustlers" that starred Charles Starrett, known then as the Durango Kid and Smiley Burnette and released by Columbia Pictures in 1950. They made their first recordings for the Lariat label in the early 1950s. This formation included outstanding musicians such as steel guitarists Tommy Sargent and Ernie Ball and lead guitarist Cameron Hill. They later recorded for Imperial, Decca, Columbia, Viper and Sage N Sand. The group also accompanied musicians such as Rose Maddox and Eddie Dean on memorable recordings in the mid-fifties. Although he had no hit records, several of his recordings have long been highly sought after among collectors, particularly the great, rocking double-sider from 1952, First Class, Second Hand Woman b/w Flying Saucer Boogie. In addition, they were considered stars of local television for a few years, first with Foreman Phillips on KABC and then with Doyle O'Dell on KTLA's popular show 'Western Varieties'. The show ran for 6 years. Eddie also worked with other prominent regional figures, including Cliffie Stone and Hank Penny.
During 1955, when his daughter, Diane, was about nine years old, Eddie recorded a holiday record with her, "Santa Claus, Jr." for Sage & Sand Records. Diane recalled that it was quite an experience for a little girl. They recorded the tune at Eddie Dean's home studio. They worked until nearly 2:00am to finish the final recording of the tune. After its release it led to lots of personal appearances, autograph signing sessions, as well as an appearance on the Western Varieties television show.
Eddie and his band, his Roundup Boys, were regulars at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills. Through the years he played many events, with big names of the day. By the end of the decade the Roundup Boys were slowly phased out. By 1960 Eddie was leading a strolling trio with two violinists, still performing at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel, where he remained until 1965. Afterwards he moved into sales but continued to gig on a more casual basis. Eventually he eased into retirement.
He married his high school sweetheart, Wynne, and they enjoyed 54 happy years before she died in 1992. At the age of 80 he married his good friend Susan, and they enjoyed 5 happy years of golf course living in Palm Desert before she passed away. He moved to Sonoma in 2004, and lived with his daughter and son in law for 8 happy years. For a time he was a member of the Vintage house singers. He continued to sing and play his beloved 54 Gibson into his 90's.
Eddie passed away peacefully February 2, 2012 at Palm Springs, Riverside County, California. He was 93 years old.
(Edited from Hillbilly Music, Find-a-Grave & Bear Family liner notes)
He was nominated 15 times for Blues Music Awards and won in the category 'Instrumentalist – Other' in 2011. Rhodes was born in Smithville, Texas on November 3, 1940, as the son of Emma Mauldin. He was orphaned as a baby and was adopted by sharecroppers Leroy and Julia Smith. He received his first guitar at the age of eight as a Christmas present and became serious about playing the blues at age 12. He credited his uncle as his source of inspiration. 
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