Label: Blue Moon
Release Date: November 16, 2004
Releases: January 1, 2013 (Blue Moon Rhythm & Blues)
Recording Time: 72 minutes
Styles: Piano Blues, Regional Blues, West Coast Blues, Boogie-Woogie, Early R&B
Credits: Cecil Gant - primary artist.
Tracks: 1) I Wonder (Master); 2) Last Goodbye; 3) So Soft and Mellow; 4) It's All Over; 5) Goodbye Baby; 6) Original Cecils Boogie; 7) I Wonder (Alternate Take 1); 8) Cecil Boogie (Master); 9) I Wonder (Alternate Take 2); 10) I Wonder (Alternate Take 3); 11) I Wonder (Alternate Take 4); 12) Cecil Boogie (Alternate Take 1); 13) Cecil Boogie (Alternate Take 2); 14) Cecil Boogie (Alternate Take 3); 15) Wake-Up, Cecil (Master); 16) Wake-Up, Cecil (Alternate Take 1); 17) Wake-Up, Cecil (Alternate Take 2); 18) You're Going to Cry; 19) Cecil Knows Better Now; 20) Cecil's Mop Mop; 21) Boogie Blues (Master); 22) Boogie Blues (Alternate Take); 23) Put Another Chair at the Table (Master); 24) Put Another Chair at the Table (Alternate Take); 25) Cecil Boogie No.2.
by Big Road Blues Show (12/27/09):
Cecil Gant, who went by the moniker the G.I. Sing-Sation, was an army private who allegedly got his first break while performing for a war bond rally in 1944. He scored a massive hit the same year with “I Wonder” the first release on the new Gilt-Edge label. The record’s huge success prompted others to form record companies devoted to black music. Gant was a first rate ballad singer in the vein of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown but he was also a superb bluesman who could lay down some storming boogie-woogie. Gant recorded prolifically for the L.A. labels Gilt-Edge and 4 Star and in Nashville, which was probably his hometown, for Bullet, Dot and Decca, meanwhile playing in nightclubs throughout the country. Between 1944 and 1951 he waxed over 150 sides before his untimely death in 1951 at the age of 38. The Blue Moon label has provided an invaluable service by issuing all of Gant’s recordings across seven CD’s.