Claude Gray
b. 26 January 1932, Henderson, Texas, USA. During his school days, he showed more interest in music than sports and learning to play the guitar, he began to perform locally. By the late '50s, he was playing venues over a wide area, for a time he worked as a disc jockey on WDAL Meridian, Mississippi and made his first recordings for Decca. However, it was in 1960, on the D label (a subsidiary of Mercury), that he gained his first US country chart hit, when his recording of Willie Nelson's Family Bible peaked at number 10. This success led to him being moved to the major label and in 1961, he scored major Top 5 hits with I'll Just Have Another Cup Of Coffee (Then I'll Go) and Roger Miller's song My Ears Should Burn (When Fools Are Talked About). In 1966, after further Mercury successes, he recorded for Columbia and charted with Mean Old Woman, before returning to Decca. He formed the Graymen, which became a very popular touring band all over the States, being especially popular on the nightclub circuit around Las Vegas. In the late '60s he had eight chart entries, including Top 20 hits with I Never Had The One I Wanted and the truck-driving song How Fast Them Trucks Can Go. He left Decca in 1971 but achieved a few small hits on the Million and Granny labels. In 1982 he had a minor hit with a duet recording with Norma Jean of Let's Go All The Way (a 1964 solo hit for Norma Jean). Known as The Tall Texan (for obvious reasons), Gray is much better as a performer, it is said, than as a recording artist. This perhaps accounted for his inability to maintain record chart hits. He is still active, his last chart entry was a minor hit with Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline in 1986.