Jesse Belvin
b. 15 December 1932, San Antonio, Texas, USA, d. 6 February 1960. Raised in Los Angeles, Belvin became a part of the city's flourishing R&B scene while in his teens. He was featured on All The Wine Is Gone, a 1950 single by Big Jay McNeely, but his career was then interrupted by a spell in the US Army. Earth Angel, a collaboration with two fellow conscripts, was recorded successfully by The Penguins, while Belvin enjoyed a major hit in his own right with Goodnight My Love, a haunting, romantic ballad adopted by disc jockey Alan Freed as the closing theme to his highly-influential radio show. In 1958 Belvin formed a vocal quintet, The Shields, to record for Dot Records the national Top 20 hit, You Cheated. That same year the singer was signed to RCA Records, who harboured plans to shape him in the mould of Nat King Cole and Billy Eckstine. Further hits, including Funny and Guess Who—the latter of which was written by his wife and manager Jo Ann—offered a cool, accomplished vocal style suggestive of a lengthy career, but Belvin died, along with his wife, following a car crash in February 1960.