Claude King - Groove to the beat

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, as Claudeville Trevor Gombard, but has been using the stage name “Claude King” since he first started out a child performer. His father was German and his mother of Indian & St Helenian descent. At the age of 7 he started playing drums in his brother Andrew’s band and was soon labelled “the world’s youngest professional drummer” by the local newspapers. At the age of 10 he was given his first serious gig, performing in a South African musical called “African Jazz & Variety”, but wanting to become a better and greater artist, he learned to play the guitar, started singing and writing his own songs. His first recording was a 7” single “Slow Motion Bump” which was released in 1976 as Claudeville T. King, and in 1986 he released the album “Claude King” for which he wrote all the songs.

These days Claude is an accomplished lead and backing vocalist and composer / lyricist / songwriter, and he also plays the flute, saxophone, keyboards, bass guitar, lead and rhythm guitars, drums and percussion. In addition to this he can be considered to be a computer expert in his own right, both in hard- and software, and is a highly capable graphics designer, videographer, photographer and video editor.

He created his own demo recording studio which he upgraded to international broadcast standards in 1993, and 5 years later officially registered his own company, Claude King Media Productions. Here he personally does sound engineering and is considered to be one of the most accomplished and capable music producers in South Africa. Over the years he has been involved with many special music projects, such as advertising jingles, tv, film and stage show soundtracks, as well as producing many commercial albums and 7” singles.

Since 1999 Claude has been specializing in the creation of African musicals, strictly for European consumption, with two of his musicals having won the prestigious German Inthega Prize for Best Musical. He also expanded into video production, with his first broadcast project being the award-winning musical “In the Ghetto”, which premiered on DSTV on 16 December 2008.

In September 2008, Claude was requested by the South African Government to serve as a board-member of the National Arts Council of South Africa, which he did for 15 months, and in 2018 he started venturing into the commercial film business, with his first production being the short film “The Secret” for tv.

Claude King lives in Johannesburg.

This song is from the album "Claude King", released in 1986.