Claude Boone

He was born on 18 February 1916 near Asheville. His first records were made for Victor at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 19 February 1937, at a session for the singer and guitarist Walter Hurdt: Boone sang duets with Hurdt on “I’m Ridin’ Now” and “The Hobo Blues,” issued on Bluebird, and the same day recorded duets with James Scott, “Memories of a Shack on the Hill” and “Carolina Trail.” Back at the Hotel Charlotte on 4 August 1937 he played guitar for Cliff Carlisle, the steel guitarist and singer, and sang duets with him; “The Gal I Left Behind” came out under Boone’s own name on Bluebird B-7290 at the end of that year. On 3 June 1938, again in Charlotte, he played guitar and sang behind Carlisle and his son Sonny Boy Tommy on a Decca session with the fiddler Leon Scott, and he and Scott recorded eight gospel and sentimental songs of their own that day, among them “Think of Mother,” “Prepare! Prepare!” and “Jesus Hold My Hand.”

When Carl Story came out of the Navy in 1945 and put the Rambling Mountaineers back together, with Jack and Curley Shelton and the banjo player Hoke Jenkins, Boone was his bass player, and the band spent about five years on WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee, on the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round. He played bass on Story’s first Mercury session, in Knoxville on 14 September 1947, which produced “I’ve Found a Hiding Place,” and sang as well as played on the next, at Castle Studio in Nashville on 21 December 1947. Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, with Red Rector, Cotton Galyon and later the Dobro player Ray Atkins, he was the bass singer in the quartet that made Story’s gospel records: Galyon, Story, Rector and Boone sang “Four Books in the Bible” in February 1951, and Rector, Story, Atkins and Boone sang “Are You Walking and a-Talking with the Lord” in August 1952. When Story moved to Columbia, Boone played guitar on his Castle Studio sessions with the producer Don Law, from 1 June 1953, when the band cut “My Lord Keeps a Record” and “Lonesome Hearted Blues,” to March 1955, and he was back on bass and bass vocals when Story returned to Mercury.

“Wedding Bells” was published under Boone’s name in November 1947. Bill Carlisle recorded it first, for King that year, and Hank Williams cut it at Castle Studio on 20 March 1949; MGM issued it that May and it rose to No. 2. Texas Jim Robertson and Jesse Rogers also recorded it for Victor in 1949, and in March 1950 Robertson recorded “Memories of Wedding Bells,” also credited to Boone. The song is often said to have been bought outright for $25 from the Knoxville songwriter Arthur Q. Smith, who sold the rights to many of his songs for small sums.

Boone stayed with Story through the move to Starday in 1958 and the run of gospel albums that followed, playing bass with the brothers Bud and Willie Brewster on banjo and mandolin. He is on Everybody Will Be Happy, recorded in December 1960, on Mighty Close to Heaven (1963), recorded in November 1962 with Tommy Jackson on fiddle, which includes “Rank Stranger” and “Amazing Grace,” and on an August 1967 Starday session in Nashville, the last of his recordings with Story in the session files. He died on 23 February 2007, five days after his ninety-first birthday.