The Swan Silvertones are an American gospel music group that first achieved popularity in the 1940s and 1950s under the leadership of Claude Jeter.
[1] Jeter formed the group in 1938 as the "Four Harmony Kings" while he was working as a coal miner in West Virginia, United States.
[1] After moving to Knoxville, Tennessee and obtaining their own radio show, the group changed its name to the Silvertone Singers in order to avoid confusion with another ensemble known as the "Four Kings of Harmony."
[1] At this early stage, the Silvertones already embodied an amalgam of two styles: the close barbershop harmony that they had featured when starting out in West Virginia, and virtuoso leads supplied by Jeter and Solomon Womack.
When interviewed by Dick Cavett in April 1970, Paul Simon credited the group with inspiring him to write the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water, specifically Jeter's line in one song: "I'll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name"—with Simon confessing: "I guess I stole it.'