January 11, 2025
Happy Clarence Clemons Day 2025! Today we have something extra-special for everyone to enjoy, as we remember and celebrate our beloved Big Man on what would have been his 83rd birthday. Our editor/publisher Shawn Poole has managed to track down some great images, stories, and even some recorded music from Clarence Clemons' college days at Maryland State College (a historically Black, land-grant institution now known as University of Maryland Eastern Shore,) where he also joined his first professional band, The Vibra-Tones.
To date, the most commonly known information about Clarence's college experiences has to do with his having played college football, most notably serving as offensive lineman for Maryland State's star running back Emerson Boozer, who went on to play with the New York Jets during their Joe-Namath-led glory days.
Clarence became good friends with Boozer, and the Big Man himself was offered a tryout with the Cleveland Browns, but an injury, sustained in an auto-accident on the day before his scheduled tryout, derailed any chance of a professional football career.
The legend is that his no longer being able to play professional football is what led Clarence to pursue a career in music, but in reality music already was an essential part of who Clarence Clemons was. Music Education was his major at Maryland State College, and, as stated above, Maryland State was also where he got to play R&B-style saxophone in The Vibra-Tones, his first professional band.
The Vibra-Tones was a floating assemblage of musicians that was started and led by Robert Batson, another Music Education major at Maryland State. Clemons and Batson had met previously as high-school students, when the director of Clarence's Chesapeake, Virginia-based high-school band, who had been a student of the director of Batson's Cambridge, Maryland-based high-school band, arranged a visit to Batson's high-school for a meeting between the two bands. Batson remembered how impressive Clemons' high-school band was, and how much Batson's high-school band began to improve after the encounter.
When Batson, a year younger than Clarence, arrived at Maryland State College in 1962, the two students quickly reconnected and their friendship grew stronger, especially since they both were Music Education majors. Together they often were active in various music-oriented programs at the college, including the college's choir.
Eventually Batson decided to take all that he was learning about music to another level, and founded the R&B-focused group The Vibra-Tones (not to be confused with any of the several other musical groups formed over the years under the moniker The Vibratones or The Vibra-Tones.) Batson played bass, and Clarence Clemons became one of the earliest members of the band's impressively large horns section.
Last September, Letters To You editor/publisher Shawn Poole met with Robert Batson and another surviving member of The Vibra-Tones, trumpeter Orlando Spry. Batson and Spry shared their memories of playing with the Big Man in his first professional band.
Batson initially formed The Vibra-Tones (with the group's name chosen by Batson's roommate Gerald Baltimore, who never played in the band) as just a fun little way for him and some of his like-minded classmates to apply all that they knew about music, and to enjoy playing the hits of the day, especially on the R&B charts. They quickly became good enough, however, to start scoring professional gigs locally: not just private parties and dances, but eventually nightclubs, outdoor beach clubs in the warmer months, etc., especially on "The Chitlin' Circuit," the historical network of venues that offered performance opportunities for African-American musicians and entertainers while racial segregation still operated so strongly and openly in the U.S.
"We got in a cycle," recalled Batson, rattling off the names of some of the towns and venues where they scored regular gigs: "Snow Hill... The Chicken Shack in Pocomoke..." They never scored any big money or fame, of course, and in fact sometimes their "pay" consisted mainly of free food and beverages at whatever venue they played that night. Nevertheless, this was a group of young men who were bonding, learning, having fun, and creating some great memories while delivering some exciting live, local music for folks to enjoy.
Members floated in and out of the group, as folks graduated and/or followed other paths. (Below is Robert Batson's handwritten listing of all people - both those who've passed and those who are still with us - who were Vibra-Tones members at one time or another during the group's history, totaling forty members in all:)
The lead singer or drummer might change from night to night, from gig to gig. And while the whole enterprise only lasted for a few years, it still was a very special time for many - if not all - of those involved.
Membership in The Vibra-Tones could sometimes have its privileges, too, as Robert Batson and Orlando Spry recently recalled amidst some laughter on the edge of tears. In the 1960s, as the Vietnam War raged on, Maryland State required its male students to take Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) courses, as so many colleges and high-schools did, during their first two years of college. It was yet another covert way to prepare the next round of potential draftees. "I was so glad to get out of it," said Spry about the end of his required two-year ROTC run, "that I didn't know what to do." But in Year Two of Batson's training, when one Clarence Clemons became an ROTC Flight Commander, and all of The Vibra-Tones' members still in ROTC ended up in the same Band Flight, to quote Batson, "Oh, we took advantage of that!" Suddenly, some previously mandatory tasks became a bit more... er, optional at times for Vibra-Tones members.
The Vibra-Tones even managed to do a bit of professional recording "up North" in Baltimore and New York City. Even if none of what they recorded ever saw any serious or even regional chart action, having a 45RPM vinyl single or two that could be handed easily to a local disc-jockey, venue owner, or promoter still could be an effective aural calling-card in helping to secure some more and better gigs for the band.
In the mid-1960s, Clarence Clemons participated in one of those New York City Vibra-Tones' recording sessions, and even played a sax solo on the song they recorded in that session, "I'm Begging You Baby," sung by the late George Johnson, who is given the official songwriting credit on the record (though Orlando Spry maintains that he actually was the writer, gladly allowing George Johnson to take the official credit out of a desire to avoid any potential music-business hassles.) The result, released by Candi Records in 1965, is the earliest known recording to feature a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo, and right now - on Clarence Clemons Day 2025 - you can click below to enjoy it, as embedded from our SoundCloud platform:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Just as we did last month with our special "Santa Big Man" Christmastime streaming treat, we are again asking our readers and listeners to, in lieu of paying anything to hear this music, please instead donate whatever you can to HomeSafe, a Florida-based child-abuse/domestic-violence-prevention organization that was strongly supported by Clarence Clemons for many years. Please click this link to learn more about HomeSafe and to make your donation.
The Vibra-Tones ended as the late 1960s approached. Orlando Spry continued his career as a social-studies teacher (which he had begun after graduating Maryland State in 1963, while still occasionally playing and recording with The Vibra-Tones through the rest of the band's duration,) and Robert Batson (Maryland State, Class of '65) eventually became a longtime, beloved music educator and bandleader for Maryland's Cambridge-South Dorchester High School. Of course, readers of this website are already well aware of what Clarence Clemons (Class of '64) went on to do in his post-college, post-Vibra-Tones years.
Happy Clarence Clemons Day 2025, everyone! Big Man forever!