Pianist Cecil Gant seemingly materialized out of the wartime mist to create one of the most enduring blues ballads of the 1940s. Gant was past age 30 when he burst onto the scene in a most unusual way -- he popped up in military uniform at a Los Angeles war-bonds rally sponsored by the Treasury Department. Private Gant proceeded to electrify the assembled multitude with his piano prowess, leading to his imminent 1944 debut on Oakland's Gilt-Edge Records: the mellow pop-slanted ballad "I Wonder," which topped the R&B charts despite a wartime shellac shortage that hit tiny independent companies like Gilt-Edge particularly hard. Its flip, the considerably more animated "Cecil's Boogie," was a hit in its own right.
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