C.J.'s reputation had lead to appearances on the famed Louisiana Hayride at the age of sixteen, where he made friends with the emerging firebrand, Elvis Presley. At least that's where they first met. Elvis played Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park, New Orleans on Thursday September 1st 1955. They had previously played The Louisiana Hayride on Saturday August 27th. D.J. Fontana had joined the group on a regular basis starting August 8th , but on September 1st he was sick. Joe was playing support on the gig and he stepped in to take D.J.'s place. One of Joe Clay's many brushes with fate.

Early in 1956 one of the producers and broadcasting jocks at WWEZ, Jolly Charlie, received a letter from an agent for RCA Victor Records, which said they were on the lookout for regional acts to sign to their new subsidiary, Vik. This was a matter of mere months after 'Elvis the Pelvis' had been lured away from Sun Records in Memphis and had inked to the RCA Victor parent company. Vik had been set up as a response to the new Big Beat music that the teenagers were clambering for. In this way Joe Clay's first release on the label would be sandwiched between releases by Eddie Fontaine and The Treniers. Quite an eclectic bunch. Other artists on the label were Mickey & Sylvia, of 'Love Is Strange' fame, and Mickey Baker would soon play a part in the Joe Clay story. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. When the Trio were presented with the letter, young C.J. took up the challenge, and said he would cut a demo. He recorded 'Shake Rattle And Roll' and 'Flip Flop And Fly,' accompanying himself on a borrowed guitar, at the radio station offices in the Jung Hotel on Canal Street, New Orleans. He handed the tape back to Jolly Charlie. A month later C.J. got a call from RCA Records producer Herman Diaz Jr. in New York. Would he like to make a record? On April 25th 1956, Diaz flew C.J. up to Houston to the famed Gold Star Studio where Starday Records were cutting their great rockabilly sides. On the session C.J. was accompanied by Starday session stalwarts, Link Davis and Hal Harris.

Joe remembers going through twenty-odd takes of each song on the Houston session, because the drummer was speeding up or dragging. Surprising considering the quality of the guitar stranglers on hand. Also very frustrating for Joe, an accomplished percussionist himself. Although Herman Diaz may have found it hard to believe that this kid was up to session standard, even though he obviously was.

It was on the plane back to New Orleans from Houston that Herman Diaz asked C.J. what he was going to call himself, as Claiborne Cheramie was not the most easy and catching of rock 'n' roller's names. Hence, Joe Clay was born by shortening the first and re-arranging his first two names.

Joe cut five tracks on April 25th 1956, from which his version of Rudy Grayzell's 'Ducktail', together with the Link Davis song, 'Sixteen Chicks', were chosen as his first record release on Vik 0211, released May 19th 1956. 'Ducktail's writer, Grayzell, had been influenced by Joe's old pal Elvis for the title of the song, and ironically had recorded the original version on Starday in the same studio and released the same month as Joe's. Because both versions were out at the same time, neither garnered good sales.

Only one month passed before Joe was asked to come to New York City and record his next session. Apparently, Herman Diaz Jr. had not been pleased by the Houston session. If he could have seen into the future, would he argue with the untold thousands of rockabilly fans growing in number since the rediscovery of these sides in the seventies in Europe, who had claimed Joe's Houston sides to be rockabilly manna from Heaven? Anyway, Joe was booked into RCA Studio 1 in The Big Apple, May 24th.

For this session Diaz had commissioned legendary rhythm and blues session guitarist and supervisor, Mickey Baker, to put a band together for the session. Baker duly corralled a quintet that included himself and Skeeter Best on guitars with two drummers! The resulting four tracks that were cut were truly awesome slabs of rockabilly/rhythm 'n' blues dynamite. From this session RCA culled 'Crackerjack' and 'Get On The Right Track' for Joe's second and final Vik 45, 0218, released July 21st. Pretty hot on the heels of the first waxing, but that's how fast releases happened in the fifties, if the current single was not taking off, put out the next. On the other hand, the speed of the second release might have had something to do with Diaz and his lack of belief in the first.

After the New York session Joe returned home. A while later Herman Diaz called Joe about a big juke box convention in Chicago, and came and picked him up. Nat King Cole and Bobby Darin were two of the other artists set to appear live at the convention. It was the biggest audience Joe had yet played for. Nat Cole suggested to the young singer that he sing above people's heads in order to overcome his nerves. The convention was followed by a banquet, and just before the banquet a six feet five blonde was introduced wearing a skimpy costume, carrying a basket round in front of her filled with sixteen live chicks. On the basket hung a sign saying, "Get it quick, it's on Vik, Joe Clay, Sixteen Chicks." Oh, where is that photograph that someone among the audience must have snapped?

Right after this Chicago visit Joe went back to New York to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, appearing with Nat King Cole. This was still May '56 and Joe was still promoting 'Ducktail'. Considering the amount of Sullivan Shows that have emerged an video and DVD by now, it's more frustrating that Joe's only appearance (before Elvis!), has not turned up so far. Even more surprising given the presence of Mr. Cole. For this appearance Joe rehearsed with a band for a week, and it wasn't until later he discovered that the guitarist was Barney Kessel, whom he had never heard of at that time. Not too surprising considering Kessel's extreme lack of rockin' history! Also a far cry in style from Mickey Baker! Joe's current record was still 'Ducktail' at this point, but the producers of the staid Ed Sullivan Talk Of The Town would not allow him to do it. This was at a time when Elvis Presley's first TV appearances on the Dorsey Shows and the Milton Berle Show had caused a furious controversy. Ed Sullivan had publicly declared his disinterest in booking Presley for his show, although he relented in July 1956, and presented Elvis in the first of three of his "really big shews" in September. Meantime, young Joe, despite beating La Pelvis to the Sullivan Show, had to settle for a rendition of 'Only You'.

C.J. kept playing as Joe Clay throughout the golden years of rock 'n' roll, appearing with the likes of Carl Perkins and LaVern Baker. But finding that New Orleans R&B took preference in popularity over the more raucous stripped down sounds of rockabilly, he quit the business and retired his Joe Clay persona in 1960. Relating an incident in which his manager left town with his earnings, Joe was quoted as saying, "I [had] started playing on Sundays with a hillbilly band when I was 12. It was Hank Williams stuff. I was playing the stuff since I was itty-bitty. We just played what we felt - we didn't copy off anybody. But I had a label behind me too. I had a contract signed for 20 years. In those days we didn't know nothing - they just said "Sign here." Joe tried and failed to get away from his restrictive manager, he says, claiming that he lost his recording contract as a result. Disgusted, he shifted back to his real name and spent the next 15 years playing six nights a week on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

The C.J. Cheramie Trio continued to work, mainly at the 544 Club, and over the years Joe backed up many legendary local rhythm 'n' blues and rock 'n' roll names such as Frankie Ford, Smiley Lewis, Mac Rebennack, Fats Domino, Freddy Fender and Skip Easterling. Sometimes with union staff bands, and sometimes with his own band. Around this time C.J. started driving school bus route 418 through the Gretna suburb of New Orleans, becoming a favourite and popular driver to generations of kids, allowing them to listen to top 40 radio on his bus, while he often sang along. It was not until 1986 that any of these kids would discover their driver's secret identity, as the wild rockabilly entertainer, Joe Clay. But again we're getting ahead of ourselves again.

Joe remembers recording some tracks in 1960 for the tiny Samter label out of New Orleans. These cuts were issued under the name of Russ Wayne, and seem not to have been issued until between Summer 1962 and Spring of the following year. They were cut in a Swamp Pop style, and featured our hero in yet another disguise. The session was held at the legendary Cosimo's Studio and featured the likes of Mac Rebennack in the band. Check out the hilarious story about the two European researchers interviewing Joe about Russ Wayne in our enclosed interview.

In the early seventies, a generation of new rockabilly fans snapped up bootleg copies of both Joe's Vik 45s, wondering at the awesome power emanating from all four sides. While original copies started to change hands for large chunks of weekly salaries. A faded photograph of Joe standing next to Elvis Presley and Luke McDaniel at the Louisiana Hayride in 1955 added to the intrigue. Who and where was this man? In 1983, the Bear Family record label of Germany cleared for re-issue all the Joe Clay sides cut for RCA, and in the process found and released some wild unheard takes from both the Houston and New York sessions. Some of these out-takes quickly became favourites at rock 'n' roll clubs, unknown to the man who sung 'em, four thousand miles away. Rockabilly fans had their appetites slated and whetted at the same time. Now where was this man?

'Wild' Willie Jeffrey, a rock 'n' roll promoter, had been searching for Joe for three or four years. His problem, unknown to him, was that C.J. had not been known as Joe Clay since 1960! So, although a visit to New Orleans would quite easily uncover the man working the clubs as C.J. Cheramie, who knew he was one and the same? Musicians returning from the UK to the States with the instruction to put the word out for Joe Clay, were met with shrugged shoulders. C.J.'s guitarist, Scott Guido, held down a day job in a local studio, when a Texan musician came to use the studio, and asked the question he had been asked to ask if and when he were in New Orleans. Ever heard of Joe Clay? He happened to be asking the man who played guitar in Joe's trio, a man who also knew of C.J.'s fifties alter-ego, Joe Clay. The whole story can be heard as told by Joe himself on the accompanying interview.

Eventually, in 1986, a tour of England, Sweden and The Netherlands was set up, and crowds of ecstatic fans turned up to welcome the 'return' of Joe Clay. The first London venue was The Mean Fiddler in Harlesden. Joe had been accompanied in Europe by a New Orleans newspaper team, and back home he made the front page. Meanwhile, Joe Clay was still driving his school bus, and upon returning to work he was greeted by the families of the school kids he drove waiting in the yard and waving copies of the newspaper. The kids asked him to explain what it was all about. "What is your music? What did you do?" One evening, following many of these enquiries, Joe pulled over the bus and started singing to them. They had never heard anything like it, and Joe let them know, "That's rockabilly."

Every year Joe plays the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans; in fact he opened the first one. He has also rocked the house at many other U.S. festivals since the return of Joe Clay. He is no longer New Orleans' best kept secret!

After many successful returns to Europe, including topping the bill at Hemsby Rock 'n' Roll Weekender more than once, El Toro Records of Barcelona figured it was definitely time to get Joe to cut a new album. With a return to Hemsby in October 2004 coming up, a recording session was arranged in London with an international crew of musicians, who would also back Joe at the Weekender. With Jose Espinosa at the controls, and all the taping done live, the result is THE LEGEND IS NOW. And here's a thought. Herman Diaz Jr. waited nearly fifty years for his long lost distant grand-nephew, Carlos Diaz, to produce the next Joe Clay record (only kidding!).

Roy Lancaster 2004