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4 unusual facts about Jimmy Clanton


Al Arsenault

While still a teen, he backed many of the great 1950s acts at White City Park, including Bobby Darin, Jimmy Clanton and Jack Scott.

Jimmy Clanton

Clanton was inducted into The Museum of the Gulf Coast Hall of Fame, which also has inducted such performers as Tex Ritter, Janis Joplin, ZZ Top and B. J. Thomas.

His records charted in the U.S. Top 40 seven times (all released on Ace); his Top 10 records were: the song "Just a Dream," (Pop #4, R&B #1 in August 1958, credited to 'Jimmy Clanton and His Rockets'), "Go Jimmy Go" (peaked at number five in late 1959) and "Venus in Blue Jeans" in September 1962 (written by Howard Greenfield and Jack Keller).

Clanton became a disc jockey at WHEX in Columbia, Pennsylvania between 1972 and 1976 and performed in an oldies revue also in the 1970s, The Masters of Rock 'n' Roll, with Troy Shondell, Ray Peterson, and Ronnie Dove.


I'm Leaving It Up to You

Dale and Grace were in Dallas on the day of the assassination and scheduled to perform that night as part of Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars (with Bobby Rydell, Jimmy Clanton, and Brian Hyland), and moments before the assassination had waved to the president's motorcade from a vantage point near their hotel.

Vicki Spencer

She appeared as a teenage ingénue singer in two 1961 teen-oriented movies, Teenage Millionare (starring Jimmy Clanton) and Twist Around the Clock (featuring Clay Cole).


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