Rev. Claude Jeter

Claude Jeter, founder of The Swan Silvertones, passed away on January 6th, 2009, in the Bronx, at the age of 94. Born in 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama, Jeter reigned as on of Gospel's stars in the 1940s through to the 1960s, his distinctive falsetto fronting the Four Harmony Kings, who later were renamed The Swan Silvertones on their move from Kentucky to Nashville in 1942, releasing music on the King Records, Speciality Records and Vee-Jay Records labels. In later years, Jeter moved to a solo career (Shanachie Records in the early 1990s), after becoming a pastor in Harlem, NY in the late 1960s. He influenced artists such as Al Green, Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield and Eddie Kendricks, along with a host of Gospel artists of the time. Jeter's improvised lyric on the 1959 hit "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep" was the inspiration for Paul Simon's hit, "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Simon later brought in Jeter to sing on his own projects.