BUS DRIVER’S U-TURN TO ROCK STARDOM

When the local Catholic church and school held its recent bazaar in this suburb across the river from New Orleans, the featured entertainer was their school bus driver, a short, cherubic-looking 47-year-old who occasionally plays Top 40 music on weekends.

The driver, C. J. Cheramie, lip-synced a couple of old rockabilly records. Everybody cheered. A few of the parish’s elderly women playfully grabbed at him like rock fans.

And then Cheramie went home to make plans--not for his bus route, but for a European tour where he’d play those songs for real.

Because overseas, Clayborne Joseph Cheramie isn’t known as Mr. C.J., as he is when he sits behind the wheel of the bus he’s driven for 15 years. Instead, he’s Joe Clay, a rockabilly singer who really was a rock star some three decades ago. Through a twist of fate and a two-year trans-Atlantic manhunt, he may be a rock star once again.

“I’m doin’ shows in England and Sweden and Holland, I got a call from an agent in Los Angeles who wants to make a movie of my life, they’re putting out an album in Europe, I’m gonna do commercials and I got a call from the ‘Tonight Show.’ . . .” Sitting in the den of his comfortable suburban house, Joe Clay shook his head in amazement. “Every morning when I get up, I think, ‘Is this really happening?’ ”

He glanced outside, where Bus 418 sits in the driveway. Then he used his favorite adjective. “I tell ya, man, it’s crazy .”

Crazy is a good description of the music that started the fuss. On Clay’s early recordings--including his minor hits “Ducktails” and “Sixteen Chicks”--he compensated for his somewhat thin, high voice with a wild abandon that would be comical if it weren’t so raw and infectious. (An album was just released in Europe; locally, it should soon be available at Tower Records and other stores with extensive import and oldies sections, some of which currently carry “Rockin’ Rollin’ High School Vol. 5,” an anthology with four Clay tracks.)

Those songs were recorded when C. J. Cheramie was a 17-year-old country singer who’d scarcely ever been out of Harvey, one town over from Gretna. Looking for acts for its new Vik label, RCA heard a demo tape and took Cheramie to Houston, where he recorded a few songs and changed his name.

A second session took place in New York City. The youngster went on to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” play some gigs with Elvis--including two where he substituted for Presley’s ailing drummer--and watch two singles become modest hits. Then management troubles stalled his career, RCA lost interest, and C. J. Cheramie retired Joe Clay.

“I just gave it up,” he said with a shrug. “I got me a little band and played music five, six nights a week, but I didn’t think about making records. And then when I got my bus I didn’t play that six-night stuff anymore. I just played on weekends, doin’ hotel work, conventions. . . .”

When he did play, it was usually Top 40 or country. “I’d play just about anything you want to hear, but I didn’t do rockabilly that much.”

Then Bear Mountain, a West German record company specializing in reissues, released a compilation of obscure rockabilly tunes. And for the cult of British fans who listen devoutly to old rock ‘n’ roll, a new star was born.

“I first heard his records and realized the guy was hot a few years ago,” said promoter William Jeffrey, who specializes in bringing veteran rockers like Ronnie Hawkins and Buddy Knox to Britain. “Several English promoters tried to find him to bring him over, but we weren’t even sure he was alive. The last clue I had was that he was in Houston in 1960.”

For more than two years, Jeffrey tried everything. “I made phone calls, tried adverts on radio stations, put out an appeal to anybody who knew Joe Clay’s whereabouts. . . .”

Finally, a friend of a friend had a friend in Texas who knew a studio manager who knew Cheramie--and, crucially, knew of his alter ego.

Cheramie didn’t believe it, but all the same he called Jeffrey. They talked for an hour, while Jeffrey told him how popular his old records were and asked about a possible tour. Then a local reporter wrote about him in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. A movie agent called, as did video producers, ad agencies, booking agents.

Even the bus route was never the same.

“The day the story ran in the paper, there were people on the corners waving their newspapers as I started my bus route,” he said. “Usually when I get to a stop there’s three kids, but this time there were like 20 or 30 people saying, ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ I said, ‘Man, I didn’t know it either!”

Then he got to school. “Man, the whole school came to the bus. Four hundred kids, and they were chantin’ ‘Joe Clay, Joe Clay. . .’ I mean, my hair stood up.”

Since then he’s been a local celebrity, to the delight of his wife and four children, ages 9 to 24. Local radio stations have been asking for the records, but he can’t help them--all he’s got is a tape. Meanwhile, he’s been riding his bike and jogging to get in shape for the European shows next month, and then a possible U.S. swing.

In early May, he performed as Joe Clay for the first time in almost three decades, taking the stage of a local rock club as the guest of a young New Orleans rockabilly band. His solid build, thinning hair and round face made him an unlikely rock star--but he lit into the rockabilly chestnuts with such undisguised glee that the collegiate audience was immediately won over.

And when the year’s unlikeliest born-again rocker finished his second encore, the chant started. It was the same chant the kids at school had used--and it was, assuredly, a chant that Cheramie hadn’t heard in a long time: “Joe Clay, Joe Clay, Joe Clay. . . .”