Cliff Japhet

Cliff Japhet (1909-2007) was a Country & Western singer songwriter, guitarist and bassist. Born on October 20, 1909 in Cortland, NY, he began his musical career in high school in the 1920s. By the late 1930s he became a founding member of The Broncho Busters (performing on New York's WMFF) and in 1940 he performed with Polly Jenkins and Her Musical Plowboys on Waterbury, Vermont's radio station WDEV. Greatly reducing his musical performances to work for the American Locomotive Company in the early 1940s during the war years, Japhet kept a connection to music, writing songs, and working as an announcer and performer for the weekly radio station show "Cliff Japhet and his Guitar". After the war, in the mid-1940s Japhet moved to St. Albans, Vermont and together with the brothers Joe Mayo (2) and Jimmy Mayo (2) he became a founding member of The Western Aces (2). Working for General Electric in Burlington, Japhet married Harriett Casselman and began to lay down roots, becoming active in the First Baptist Church of St. Albans choir. Japhet served as Church school superintendent and Deacon. He became a Boy Scout master, and became a member of numerous musical associations and fraternal organizations. In the mid-1950s Japhet formed "The Bunkhouse Trio" with Lyman "The Old Sheriff" Meade and Alfred "Pee Wee" Arsenault to perform on Burlington, Vermont's WVMT-TV. After Harriett's death in 1967, Japhet remarried in 1970. Japhet's second wife, Charlotte Kirby, died in 1987. His son Cliff Japhet, Jr. (who had performed with his father under the name Yodelin' Skippy as one of The Western Aces) died in 2000. Throughout his lengthy musical career, Japhet became a founding member of numerous other hillbilly groups including The Saddle Pards, The Rodeo Kings, and The Dixie Stars. The last musical group in which Japhet performed was the Green Mountain Barbershop Chorus of Burlington where he sang during his later years. He died in Burlington at the age of 97.