Stark whiteman biography

http://youtu.be/tq6hUkPm7XoIn a town where the question “where’d you go to high school?” is as ubiquitous as “would you like that dressed?” it is appropriate that the Crescent City has its own traditional R&B graduation song, and for thousands of New Orleanians, that anthem is Stark Whiteman’s “Graduation Day,” dripping though it is with sickly-sweet sentimentality, teenage melodrama, and high school clichés.

This is the dancefloor dirge that launched 10,000 belly-rubbers for teenage lovers in the New Orleans of the 1960s.

According to Times-Picayune columnist Angus Lind, Stark Whiteman’s 1960 hit was “written by bass player Henry Schroeder and saxophonist Roy ‘Big Daddy’ Wagner.

It gained Whiteman, a bass player and a lead singer with The Jokers, a lot of popularity. It was recorded on the White Cliffs label at Cosimo Matassa’s studio in 1959 with three female singers from Nicholls High School who never sang professionally.”

Yat cottage-industry kingpin Benny Grunch, in