Personnel:
Cecil Gant, Jack Charmella, Baby Rutt, Ted Swinney, Ernie Newton.
Reference: BMCD 6047
Here is the 5th volume of the complete recordings by this piano master.
Pianist Cecil Gant seemingly materialized out of the wartime mist to create one of the most enduring blues ballads of the 1940s. Gant was past age 30 when he burst onto the scene in a most unusual way. Private Gant proceeded to electrify the assembled multitude with his piano prowess, leading to his imminent 1944 debut on Oakland's Gilt-Edge Records: the mellow pop-slanted ballad "I Wonder," which topped the R&B charts.
Gant shot to the upper reaches of the R&B charts for Gilt-Edge like a guided missile with his "Grass Is Getting Greener Every Day" and "I'm Tired" in 1945, recording prolifically for the imprint before switching over to the Bullet label for the 1948 smash "Another Day Another Dollar" and 1949's "I'm a Good Man but a Poor Man". Urbane after-hours blues, refined ballads, torrid boogies Gant ran the gamut during a tumultuous few years in the record business (he also turned up on King, Imperial, Dot, and Swing Time/Down Beat), but it didn't last. His "We're Gonna Rock" for Decca in 1950 (as Gunter Lee Carr) presaged the rise of rock & roll later in the decade, but Gant wouldn't be around to view its ascendancy; the one-time "G.I. Sing-Sation" died in 1952 at the premature age of 38.
Rounding off the present CD are two titles from the rare LP by Cecil Gant on the Sound label, which features two otherwise unavailable alternate takes, albeit with overdubbed instruments. The forthcoming CD volumes in our complete Cecil Gant series will contain his recordings for the Swing Time, Imperial and Decca labels from 1949-1951.
