Crown Prince Waterford (Charles Waterford, October 21, 1919 in Jonesboro, AR - February 1, 2007, Jacksonville, FL) was a rhythm and blues singer. Charles Waterford was from Jonesboro, Arkansas, born there on 21st October 1919 to musical parents who encouraged young Charlie in his singing career. According to his King publicity file, his first professional job was with Andy Kirk's 12 Clouds Of Joy at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago, but he was also known to have fronted the KC-based Leslie Sheffield's Rhythmaires at Oklahoma City's Ritz Ballroom as far back as 1936, where he shared the bandstand with a rhythm section comprising Charlie Christian, Abe Bolar and Monk McFay. Sometime around early 1945, Waterford, by now billing himself as "The Crown Prince Of The Blues", scored a top job with Jay McShann's Orchestra as a replacement for the unreliable Walter Brown. Waterford was a blues-shouter in the modern post-war mould; emotional and expressive. He stayed less than a year, recording just three songs with McShann's new sextet during the summer of 1945 (cf: Classics 966) before striking out alone. For the rest of the 1940s he was subjected to a series of one-shot recording sessions (for Freddie William's Hy-Tone label; for Aladdin, backed by Gerald Wilson's powerful orchestra; and for Capitol, with an all star quintet led by Pete Johnson). By the end of the decade he had joined King Records, which seems to have been the label of choice for all the best blues shouters, recording just two contrasting sessions with Harold Land's bop sextet and with Joe Thomas' jump combo. After being dropped by King in 1950, apart from Bob Sutton's Dallas-based Torch label unearthing a couple of old West Coast recordings with Jay McShann in 1952, he had to wait many years for his next release on Ernie Young's Excello Records (1955) and for subsequent releases on Orbit (1959 and 1962) and Stampede (1965). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.