Claude Jeter: 1914-2009

Reverend Claude Jeter, longtime member of gospel group The Swan Silvertones, passed away Tuesday (Jan. 6) at age 94. With a voice that bent and snapped like a lithe twig between his soulful tenor and screaming falsetto, Jeter led a life that was likewise all-encompassing. At turns a coal miner in rural west Virginia and the king of Chicago's gospel scene, Jeter spent his twilight years as a pastor in Harlem, N.Y.

In 1938, Jeter lived in Coalwood, W.Va. and worked as a coal miner.  He started the gospel quartet Four Harmony Kings to divert himself from the dark shafts and coal dust of their jobs, and the group began singing at weekend gatherings. In 1942, The Four Harmony Kings moved to Knoxville, Tenn. to appear on WBIR’s Sunday Gospel Channel. With a new home came a new name: the Swan Silvertones. 

In 1946, they signed to King Records, then to VeeJay Records in 1955. As '50s rock exploded American music, the Swan Silvertones faced a tough choice; stay with their traditional sound (spirituals draped over four-part harmonies) or morph into the upbeat rhythms of '50s Doo-Wop. They chose to change.

But despite their rhythmic shift, their lyrics were still pure, unalloyed Gospel. The 1959 release "Mary, Don't You Weep," a spiritual reworked into a call-and-response ballad, was the band's biggest hit. Jeter's line; "I'll be a bridge over deep water, if you trust my name" inspired Paul Simon to write his '60s classic "Bridge over Troubled Water."

Jeter was ordained a minister at Detroit's Church of Holiness Science in 1963. He felt increasingly torn between his devotional duties and pressure to enter a blues rock career. In 1967 he left the Swan Silvertones and moved to the Harlem section of New York City to work as a minister.

In a 1992 New York Times interview Jeter said, "I promised my mother I would never sing nothing but for the lord. The devil, he's over there singing the blues, and I'm over here singing gospel. Even though he's got true words, I've got true words too." He passed his final years living the words he'd sung.

Related links:

The Swan Silvertones Biography
Daily News: Legendary singer Claude Jeter dies

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