Jimmy Clanton

Jimmy Clanton was born in Louisiana on 2 September 1938 and formed his first band – The Rockets – in 1956 while attending Baton Rouge High School.

He enjoyed great solo success in the 1950s and 1960s with the popular teen-music genre, producing seven Top 40 singles on the Ace label including Top 10 hits Just a Dream (#4), Go, Jimmy, Go (#5) and Venus in Blue Jeans (#7).

In early 1961, Clanton was drafted and spent the next two years in the US Army, although his chart success continued with Don’t Look at Me, Because I Do, and the aforementioned Venus in Blue Jeans.

His only British hit was Another Sleepless Night, which spent a week at #50 in the UK in July 1960.

Clanton starred in the Alan Freed-produced rock ‘n’ roll movie called Go, Johnny, Go! (1959) and in Teenage Millionaire (1961).

In the 1970s, Clanton became a disc jockey at WHEX in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and regularly performed in an oldies revue called “The Masters of Rock ‘n’ Roll” before converting to religion in 1980.

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