Charlie Reynolds had remained at the Flash Record store at 623, East Vernon Avenue, in Los Angeles after Leroy Hurte had given up his interest in the shop to build up Bronze records in 1939. He ran the store with the help of his wife Daisy and son Danny. The Flash Record Company had been dormant until, in 1955, Reynolds re-activated the business. Between 1955 and 1959, he recorded a series of Blues, Doo-Wop, Boogie-Woogie, and R&B tracks, issuing over thirty singles from the Flash premises. Most of them have become rare, expensive collectors’ items, but, thanks to the release of a double CD compilation of Flash recordings in 2011 by Ace Records (UK), it is now possible to see the full scope of Reynolds’ work.
The Ace Records compilation
The mid-fifties saw Reynolds issue a series of dance tracks, including “Please Baby” by James Curry & his Orchestra (Flash 110) in 1956. There are four more tracks featuring James Curry’s orchestra on the Ace compilation.
The second band to record with Reynolds was the Gus Jenkins’ Orchestra. There are five of their tracks on the compilation. “Pay Day Shuffle”, “Hambone” and “Stand By Me”, (Flash 123, 124, 126) were issued in 1957 and 1958. The “Stand By Me” track isn’t the Ben E. King song but it’s a good R&B dance track, nonetheless. Charlie Reynolds wrote many of these early songs, often in partnership with Mamie Jenkins or Gus Jenkins. They are simple but effective.
Gus Jenkins came from Birmingham, Alabama. He was a pianist who played on tour with Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Review and later backed Percy Mayfield and Big Mama Thornton. By the end of the 1940s he was in Chicago, where he played with Blues singers including David “Honeyboy” Edwards, before cutting a few tracks for Chess Records. In 1953, he came to Los Angeles and recorded with several labels. He cut several tracks for Specialty under the name Little Temple, then recorded “I Miss My Baby” for Combo, before arriving at Flash. Jenkins also teamed up with Frank Patt, a guitarist, to record “Blood Stains On The Wall” as a duo for Specialty.
Frank Pratt was a Blues singer. Four of his songs are included on the compilation, the best of which is “I’m Your Slave”, with two versions on offer from Ace.
Guitar Shorty (David William Kearney) was the second Blues singer to record with Reynolds. His singles were released on the company’s second label Pull Records, with “How Long Can It Last” appearing in 1959 and two further singles issued with no date known. Kearney was born in Texas or Florida but grew up in Florida, where he learned guitar while very young. He was leading his own band in his teens and picked up his Guitar Shorty nickname around the age of sixteen. He played regularly at the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans, crossing paths with Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker and Little Richard. At nineteen, he came to Los Angeles, where he played with Ray Charles’ band for a while and also with Sam Cooke. He made his first recording for Cobra Records in Chicago at the age of twenty-two.
His Pull Records singles each have one slow Blues with orchestral backing. His voice is strong, and his rich guitar sound is very much to the fore. “How Long Can It Last”, “Hard Life” and “I Never Thought” are excellent songs, well recorded. They sound very modern! The three songs paired with them are more up-tempo but less effective. Kearney wrote three of the six tracks, with Reynolds contributing the remaining three.
In 1962, Kearney married Marsha, who was Jimi Hendrix’ stepsister, and continued building his career. With Blues music out of fashion in the seventies, he worked as a mechanic by day and a musician by night. In the new century, he made a couple of very good albums for Alligator Records.
Guitar Shorty died in 2022 in Los Angeles.
B. Brown and the McVouts contributed two tracks to the ace compilation. “Mambo For Dancers” is a solid instrumental, competent but unexceptional, but it is paired with “Good Woman Blues”, an excellent vocal Blues with a hint of Chicago.
Sidney Maiden was born in Louisiana in 1917 or 1923 (sources disagree). During the early forties, he moved to California and sought to build a career in the music industry as a singer and a Blues harmonica player, He was inspired by Sonny Boy Williamson.
He found recording opportunities at Down Town Records and Imperial on the West Coast, but his best song was recorded at Flash. “Everything Is Wrong” is a slow Country Blues that demonstrates Maiden’s expressive voice and smooth harmonica playing. He wrote some excellent songs too, including “Eclipse of the Sun” from 1948, which the K. C. Douglas Trio recorded for Bob Geddins at Down Town with Maiden taking lead vocal. He can also be heard playing harmonica on the A-side of that single, the excellent “Mercury Boogie”.
A few years later, he recorded “Hand Me Down Baby” with Al Simmons and Slim Green for Dig Records and then, in 1961, saw the release of his only album, “Trouble an’ Blues”, recorded on the East Coast for the Prestige Bluesville imprint with K. C. Douglas on guitar.
Haskell “Cool Papa” Sadler came from Denver, Colorado. He came to California in the early sixties, singing Blues in the San Francisco Bay area, before recording a couple of good up-tempo songs with Charlie Reynolds. “Do Right Mind” and “Gone For Good” are both built on a vibrant interplay of guitar and harmonica.
Cool Papa
Source: Mark Safarti (Wikimedia Commons)
Judge Davis played Boogie-Woogie piano and also sung Blues songs. Four of his tracks are on the Ace compilation, including two slow Blues, “Explain Yourself” and “Can’t Sleep at Night”, and two Boogie-Woogies, “Sawmill Section” and “Mr. Boogie”. Davis’ piano sets the beat, often joined by saxophones, with an orchestral backing.
Nip Roman contributes a couple of romantic ballads.
Maurice James Simon, a Jazz saxophonist, delivers a couple of sloe Blues instrumentals, with his languid saxophone solos leading the orchestra. “Blue Light” also features an effective organ solo!
The same organ and saxophone turn up on tenor saxophonist Lorenzo Holden’s “Walking Down Swing Street”, an orchestral Jazz piece.
Two female Blues singers also recorded at Flash; both are worth a listen.
Sheryl Crowley recorded “My Devotion”/ “It Ain’t To Play With” (both written by Ernestine Smith) with the Lorenzo Holden Orchestra in 1956. The B-side is much stronger than the Pop ballad on the A-side. It features a strong Boogie-Woogie piano line to accompany Crowley’s rich voice. The result is excellent, sophisticated and smooth, and a real foot-tapper.
Sheryl Crowley
Crowley teamed up with the James Curry Orchestra for two more tracks, “Just A Night Girl” and “I’ll Be Seeing You”. The first is a smooth Cocktail Blues song, while the second has more swing.
Mamie Jenkins was the other female artist. She is also listed as Mamie Perry, presumably her maiden name before she teamed up with Gus Jenkins. Her style of Blues was rather different. “Hambone” is a bouncy Jump Blues. “Jump With Me Baby” is slightly faster, with solos from a punchy saxophone and a smooth guitar, ideal for jiving.
Mamie Jenkins
The final group of artists to feature on Reynolds’ Flash roster were the vocal harmony singers. There are six groups representing the popular fifties Doo-Wop style, the Jayhawks, Emanon 4, the Poets, the Cubans, the Arrows, and the Hornets.
The Jayhawks came together in 1955. The original members had attended two different schools, where they had sung in similar Doo-Wop groups. Carlton Fisher, Dave Govan and Cleo White were students at Foshay Junior High in Los Angeles, while James Johnson, Rene Beard and Carver Bunkum attended Dorsey High School. The two groups amalgamated (minus Dave Govan) and began practising at various places in South Central Los Angeles, including the Flash Record Store, where Charlie Reynolds offered to make a recording with them at his expense. He also suggested they hire Al Curry as their manager. Curry was from Kansas City, where all the university sports teams are named the Jayhawks. That was the name he chose for the new group.
In October, Reynolds thought that the group was ready. Four tracks were recorded and a single release soon followed. “Counting My Teardrops”/ “The Devil’s Cousin” (Flash 105) are slow Doo-Wop ballads, that require a very accurate pitch for the various notes in the harmonies. The boys were not spot on, and the single made little impression.
At this point, Rene Beard and Cleo White left, to be replaced by Dave Govan from the Foshay Junior High group. A second recording session was arranged, at which the new quartet recorded “Love Train” and “Don’t Mind Dyin’”. Meanwhile, the remaining two tracks from the first session were paired and released in May 1956. “Stranded In The Jungle” begins each verse with a spoken section which slides into a catchy tune, and “My Only Darling” is more up-tempo with a similar spoken section. To help promote the single, the boys appeared on the Johnny Otis TV show to sing the A-side. The plan worked, as sales began to rise, and Flash Records soon had its first (and only) national hit. “Stranded In The Jungle”, co-written by James Johnson and Ernestine Smith, climbed to number nine on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and to number eighteen on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. Sadly for the Jayhawks, both Modern and Mercury put out covers, and the Cadets took their version to numbers four and fifteen on the two charts, thus creaming off some of the boys’ success.
Now it was Carver Bunkum’s turn to leave. He was replaced by Don Bradley, and a fifth voice was added when Richard Owens joined, restoring the group to a quintet. Reynolds issued the group’s third single, pairing the two tracks from the second recording session. When that failed to impress and recordings diminished, the boys decided to move to Aladdin. Things didn’t go well there either, but they persevered and did build a twenty-year career in the music industry, as the Vibrations, the Vibes, and the Marathons.
Flash Records issued a fourteen-track compilation album of the Jayhawks songs.
The Emanon “4” contributed two tracks to the Ace Records compilation. “Blues For Monday”, a slow Blues with an unusual falsetto lead vocal, and “Oh That Girl”, a swinging Blues that has an out-of-tune lead vocal but a good saxophone solo.
The Poets contributed two more tracks, more Doo-Wop with some novelty value but again staying in tune was a problem.
The Cubans are much better singers. The members of the group were David Johnson, Johnny Simmons, Early Harris, Leroy Sanders and Curtis. They have five tracks in the Ace collection, although only single was issued by Reynolds, in 1959. “Tell Me (Will You Ever Be Mine)” is a slow Doo-Wop ballad with Early Harris on lead. The B-side “You’ve Been Gone So Long” is more Gospel than Doo-Wop, with David Johnson on lead vocal and a Jazzy saxophone solo. The three extra tracks presented by Ace are similarly in Gospel style.
The group disbanded by the end of 1959. David Johnson signed with Lummtone Records, where he formed a new group, the Upfronts, who later renamed themselves Little Caesar & the Romans.
The Arrows came from New Orleans but switched to the West Coast in 1957 in search of opportunities. They had started out as a Gospel group, calling themselves the Arpeggios. The members of the group were Leroy Bishop, Mel Alexander, Frank Alexander, Frank Dixon, and Malvin Perkins. When they decided to move to secular songs, they changed their name to the Arrows and tried to get noticed by offering their services as backing singers to Bumps Blackwell and other producers at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M studio in New Orleans. What they really wanted, however, was a contract as the Arrows, and for that Los Angeles seemed a better bet. Their first port of call in Los Angeles was at Aladdin Records, where Eddie Mesner listened to them but offered nothing. They next tried Charlie Reynolds at Flash, who cut one single with them.
“Indian Bop Hop”/ “Annie Mae” (Flash 132) was recorded with Paul Clifton’s Band and released in 1958. The A-side, written by Ernestine Smith, is a novelty song with a Native American dance beat. The B-side is more conventional, well sung but not original enough to catch the attention of the market.
The group moved on, later becoming the Convincers at Movin’ Records and the Arpeggios (again) at Aries Records.
The Hornets also came to Flash to record just one single. The group was a quartet of servicemen who were serving on the USS Hornet, an American aircraft carrier based in San Diego. One weekend when the four were on leave, they drove up to Los Angeles and recorded “Tango Moon” and “Crying Over You”. Both songs were written by Nat McCoy Jr. who was a local songwriter/ producer (and later owner of Carolyn and Sotoplay Record companies). “Tango Moon” is a swinging Pop song. The B-side, “Crying Over You”, is much better. A gentle, late-night romantic ballad with a Doo-Wop backing.
All of the Flash vocal harmony recordings were put together by Relic Records for the Flash Records entry in their Golden Doowops series.
The Relic Records compilation of Flash vocal harmony groups (1995)
By the end of 1959, Charlie Reynolds decided to cease his recording business. It has been suggested that he was tired of dealing with the demands of payola and frustrated by the record distribution companies who held back income from one single until the next one began to sell. Flash was active for four years during the fifties, during which made its mark on the popular music of Los Angeles and beyond.
