Ottilie Patterson born 31 January 1932

Ottilie Patterson (31 January 1932 – 20 June 2011) was a Northern Irish blues singer best known for her performances and recordings with the Chris Barber Jazz Band in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She has been called the godmother of British blues and the greatest of all British blues singers, often surprising audiences with her large soulful voice and instinctive feeling for the genre. 

Born Anna Ottilie Patterson in Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, on 31 January 1932, she was the youngest child of four. Her father, Joseph Patterson, was from Northern Ireland, and her mother, Jūlija Jēgers, was from Latvia. They met in southern Russia. Ottilie's name is an Anglicised form of the Latvian name "Ottilja". Both sides of the family were musical, and Ottilie trained as a classical pianist from the age of nine, but never received any formal training as a singer. Aged 11, she wowed American troops at the nearby Clandeboye camp with a rendition of 'Boogie woogie bugle boy'. 

After the family moved to Avondale Gardens, Newtownards, County Down, Ottilie was educated locally at the Model Primary School and the Regent House School. She had a talent for drawing, and in 1949 won a scholarship to study art at Belfast Municipal College of Technology, where a fellow student, Derek Martin, introduced her to Bessie Smith, 'Empress of the Blues', Jelly Roll Morton, and Meade Lux Lewis and taught her to play boogie-woogie piano. 

In 1951, she began singing with Jimmy Compton's Jazz Band, and in August 1952 she formed the Muskrat Ramblers with Al Watt and Derek Martin. In the summer of 1954, while holidaying in London, Ottilie met Beryl Bryden, who introduced her to the Chris Barber Jazz Band. She joined the Barber band full-time on 28 December 1954, and her first public appearance was at the Royal Festival Hall on January 9, 1955. 

                                  

Between 1955 and 1962 Ottilie toured extensively with the Chris Barber Jazz Band and issued many recordings: those featuring her on every track include the EPs Blues (1955), That Patterson Girl (1955), That Patterson Girl Volume 2 (1956), Ottilie (1959), and the LP Chris Barber's Blues Book (1961); she also appeared on numerous Chris Barber records. She and Barber were married in 1959. 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Ottilie

When famous American blues artists toured the UK in this period, it was often the Chris Barber band that would accompany them. Patterson would thus sing with, for example, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In 1959, when on tour with the band in the USA, Patterson said that the night she sang, with Muddy Waters’ band at Smitty’s Corner, was her proudest moment. After a stunning set, a member of the rapturous African American audience called out: 'Hey lady, you sing real pretty. How come you sing like one of us?' 

In 1962, she performed with Barber's band at President Kennedy's Washington Jazz Festival. Touring and performing hundreds of gigs per year however, eventually took its toll on Patterson's health and marriage. In October 1962 had a nervous breakdown and began to suffer throat problems and mental health difficulties and ceased to appear or record regularly with Chris Barber, officially retiring from the band in 1973. During this period she recorded some non-jazz/blues material such as settings of Shakespeare (with Chris Barber) and in 1969 issued a solo LP 3000 years with Ottilie which is now much sought after by collectors. In 1964, she sang the theme tune for the British horror film, Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? starring Warren Mitchell. Patterson and Barber divorced in 1983. 

She divorced Chris Barber in 1981 but in early 1983, she and Barber gave a series of concerts around London, which were recorded for the LP, Madame Blues and Doctor Jazz (1984).  She sang her last engagement in the spring of 1991. Although another tour was arranged, Ottilie decided to quit as the travelling involved was too exhausting. Erratic health kept her off the scene since that time, living quietly in St Albans.  After a fall in 2007, her health declined and she moved in 2008 to the Rozelle Holm Farm Care Home in Ayr, where she spent her final years living in anonymity until her death on 20 June 2011. 

Ottilie is buried in Movilla Abbey Cemetery, Newtonards, Northern Ireland in the Patterson family grave. Her gravestone, marked Ottilia Anna Barber, is by the wall adjacent to the car park. In Feb 2012 a plaque marking her birthplace in a terraced house in Comber was unveiled and the same evening a sell-out musical Tribute was performed at the La Mon Hotel, Comber.  

(Info edited from Wikipedia & Dictionary of Irish Biaography)

 

Tom McFarland born 30 January 1945

Tom McFarland (January 30, 1945 - September 3, 2004) was a well-traveled blues shouter, guitar player and composer who placed a vital role in reviving Seattle’s blues scene in the 1970s. 

McFarland was born in Los Angeles, California but spent much of his youth in the tiny rural community of Sunny Valley, Oregon, where his father worked as a logger. His entire family was musical, including his cousin, the late jazz great, Gary McFarland. At ten he began playing guitar and by age 12 was intently listening to the records of Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley, but a brief stay in Los Angeles while attending junior high school resulted in visits to Watts which changed his outlook towards life and music completely. Not long after that he discovered the music of B.B. King, which crystallized his musical ambitions. 

"B.B. answered all my questions. I knew I was meant to do something musically, but I didn't know what that was until l heard him." This discovery led to other guitarists, such as T-Bone Walker, Freddie King, Scotty Moore, Barney Kessel, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Kenny Burrell, all of whom have influenced McFarland's musical style. Out of this came the first of many groups, including a stint in 1962 with an authentic R&B band, followed by a hitch in the Army, which resulted in some performances around Europe. 

In 1966 he moved to Portland, where he formed the first of his many bands there and a long residency at the White Eagle, a bar where he developed a loyal following and more than a handful of newspaper clippings to prove However, by 1973, Portland's Vision had quite understandably become much too myopic for McFarland and he decided to move to Seattle. 

If Portland was a big town, then Seattle was a big city with a large port and a booming aircraft industry. Seattle also had a history of some blues activity with the former Oakland blues pianist George Hurst, and for a brief while, Sonny Rhodes. Albert Collins was and remains a frequent visitor and there were others, locals like Isaac Scott and L.V Parr. 

                    Here’s "Goin' Back To Oakland" from above album.

                                  

Scott and McFarland became close friends, and Scott, who recently recorded his first album for Red Lightning Records, paid homage to McFarland by recording his "Goin' Back To Oakland". Parr, a former guitarist with the Johnny Ace Band, had a great influence on McFarland's playing. If anything, Seattle seemed to mature and strengthen McFarland's commitment to the blues. 

Now with the release of this album, Tom McFarland appeared to have finally completed some of those long awaited goals. He certainly has captured the attention of the Bay Area music scene in two years with his superb performances both in the clubs like the Coffee Gallery and at concerts like the 1977 San Francisco Blues Festival, and while his memorable West Coast tour with Chicago great Otis Rush has garnered him some rave notices, it also established him as an outstanding new blues discovery. 

He eventually recorded his signature tune “Going Back to Oakland” on the album “Just Got In From Portland” in 1987. He later lived in Tacoma; Vancouver, Wash., Clinton, Miss.; Terre Haute, Ind.; Spokane, and the Salt Lake City area, playing in all the clubs and bars. In 1990, he released his biggest album yet, “Voodoo Garden” on Flying Heart Records. 

He had been unable to play for five years because of health problems, including an enlarged heart, and had a stroke six months before he died on September 3, 2004 in his sleep at his home in West Valley, Utah. He was 59 years old. 

(Edited from Sleevenotes, The Spokeman, L.A. Times & AllMusic)

Salena Jones (aka Joan Shaw) born 29 January 1930

Salena Jones (born Joan Elizabeth Shaw, January 29, 1930*) is an American jazz and cabaret singer. After performing and recording in the US as Joan Shaw from the late 1940s until the early 1960s, in various styles including jazz and R&B, she moved to England and from then on performed as Salena Jones. She has toured internationally and recorded over forty albums. 

A direct descendant of Crazy Horse, the Indian Sioux warrior, Joan Shaw was born in Newport News, Virginia and began singing in church and school before making her debut on life’s bigger stages.  As a very young girl, her career began in New York at Manhattan clubs and going on to Harlem’s Apollo Theater, when she won the amateur night singing “September Song”. Joan grew up in New York in the company of musicians who would become the legends: Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Bud Powell, Wes Montgomery, Chico Hamilton and Stan Getz, she met all these people, jamming with some of them and began making demonstration records for artists like Peggy Lee, Brenda Lee and Lena Horne, before getting her own recording contract. 

Based in New York, with her own “Blues Express Orchestra”, Joan toured widely across the US with “King” Curtis in her band, also working with Johnnie Ray, Laverne Baker, Arthur Prysock, and Frankie Lyman.  This rhythm ‘n’ blues period was the forerunner to rock ‘n’ roll and it is evident that Joan Shaw is revered today by aficionados of that important era, making 15 singles between the ages of eleven and fifteen years old.. Joan then worked regularly at the famous venues of the Village Vanguard, Minton’s Playhouse and Wells Supper Club. Leonard Feather, the noted jazz critic for “Downbeat” magazine, named Joan Shaw as one of his choices as “most promising newcomers”, together with “Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme”. 

Glamorous and beautiful, with her distinctive voice and relaxed style, by then she had met and sung with a array of great jazz names. Her photo album shows her arm in arm with everyone from Betty Carter to Cab Calloway, Billy Eckstine, Vic Damone and Lena Horne. However, wanting to expand her horizons, and concerned at racism in her native country, Joan Shaw bought a one way ticket to Madrid where, having sung one song at the “Whiskey and Jazz Club”, on the same night as her arrival in Spain, she was immediately engaged to sing nightly with Dexter Gordon. But London called, and arriving in 1965, her management recommended a name-change. She said, "I loved Sarah Vaughan so much and adored Lena Horne's elegance; I put them together as 'Salena.' It looked good. And I kept Joan in 'Jones.'" And that's how Salena Jones was born." 

                                   

She was soon booked to appear for the first time at Ronnie Scott`s for two weeks but, such was the audience reaction that she was held over for another week, and then another: eventually appearing for seven consecutive weeks – still a record after all this time for one of the most famous clubs in the world.   Salena has also appeared throughout Britain, touring with the Million Airs Orchestra, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Turkey, Austria and Bulgaria. 

She has also made numerous television and radio broadcasts in Britain, and throughout Europe, often supported by the BBC Big Band. She has also performed in Australia, Africa, South America, China, Canada, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan. Since her first visit to Japan in 1978 she has returned at least annually, memorably in the Unesco Save The Children Telethon (1988), and on a concert tour with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1992). 

Salena opened her own jazz club in London in 2001. Over the last five decades, Salena Jones has been a central figure on the British jazz scene and from her base here she has conquered the world. Early 2000 saw Salena starring at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Idaho, backed by the Hank Jones Quartet including such as Russell Malone, Lewis Nash, and also featuring trumpeter Roy Hargrove, singer Dianne Reeves and Freddie Cole. January 2001 saw Salena return to Israel for eight sell-out shows, and she took her trio to Japan in May for two weeks appearing for Cartier, the jewellers, at their trade fairs throughout the country. In May 2006, Salena sang again in China opening the Shanghai International Jazz Festival (opened in 2005 by Diana Krall). Salena opened with Lee Ritenour, and Tower of Power. 

On January 28, 2009, Salena married Keith Mansfield and they now live in the Ascot area of the county of Royal Berkshire. In her career to date Salena has recorded over forty albums, covering nearly five hundred songs, and sold over 500,000 albums worldwide and her album entitled "My Love" recorded in Tokyo won her an award in Japan for outstanding sales. Future concerts booked are at the Pheasantry, Chelsea, London in March and Ronnie Scotts, Soho, London in May 2024. 

(Edited form salenajones.com & Wikipedia) (*some sources give birth year as 1944 and others as 1938. I have opted for 1930 as quoted from Marv Goldbergs Notebooks & The Encyclopedia Yearbooks of Jazz by Leonard Feather.)

 

Rod Morris born 28 January 1919

Rod Morris (January 28, 1919 – October 6, 1980) was a country and western singer and songwriter. 

Rodney (or Rogene) Morris was born into a musical family in Brookfield, Missouri and apparently reared west of there in Excelsior Springs, northeast of Kansas City. He was playing music from age ten, hopping freights to see the world by age 14. By continually entering amateur contests he achieved a name for himself and about 1937 had his own radio show at KITE in Kansas City. 

He served in the European Theater during the war and came home with a German wife, Anna. He organized a band called the Missourians and played mostly in his home state and the Upper Midwest. He cut his first single on Liberty (not the later more famous label) followed by three in 1949 on Central Records, both local companies. He signed with Capitol in 1950, but his first session did not take place until October 1951.

Sioux Falls

Johnny Sippel told The Billboard readers in February 1952 that Rod had joined radio station KSOO in Sioux Falls where it seems that Fred Stryker of Fairway Music brought Rod to the attention of Ken Nelson at Capitol. Rod left Sioux Falls sometime in June 1952 to tour extensively with other Capitol artists such as Hank Thompson as reported in The Billboard June 28, 1952. The other artists on the tour included Skeets McDonald; Gene O'Quin; Tex Carmen; Boots and Idaho. 

                                   

By November, he had re-formed his band and moved his radio base to Norfolk, Nebraska and radio station WJAG. Then he went on to Ottumwa, Iowa. He recorded for Capitol through 1954, but his best song "Bimbo" from October 1953 did much better on Jim Reeves' cover version. Another one of his compositions "North Wind" also became a hit for Slim Whitman. BMI awarded a 1954 Citation Of Achievement to Rod Morris and other writers for their "great country and western song hits" of the year.

Rod Morris & The  Missourians

Rod then moved to the Eureka, CA area around 1957 where he was quite popular. Whilst there he formed his own label, Ludwig Records, named after his son, Rodney Ludwig, for which he recorded ‘Alabama Jail House Blues’, ‘Ghost Of Casey Jones’, ‘I Lived With The Angels’, ‘Bony Eyes Of Blue’ and ‘Heartbreak Letter.”  He did numerous personal appearances. He was also on the first broadcast of the new television station KVIQ, channel 6. The station was initially to be affiliated with the NBC and ABC networks. The station televised its dedication ceremony. Rod Morris, a star of the Big Six Jamboree was to provide special entertainment that day. The manager of the station, Caroll R. Hauser had previous experience in radio - both technical and administrative. He was the former owner of radio station KHUM. The station was located on Humboldt Hill. 

In the early 1960's, his career seemed to be taking him back to the midwest. He was doing appearances in Hawarden, about 40 miles north of Sioux City, Indiana. It was a bit north and west of LeMars, where the Traditional Country Music Festival was held. Morris and The Bimbo Boys recorded one single for the Blue Bonnet label in 1975 and in 1976 he recorded on Jim Hall’s Deadwood label out of North Caldwell, New Jersey, cutting an E.P. He drifted further into obscurity. His first marriage apparently dissolved and there was at least another to a singer named Delia (possibly a stage name for wife Sharon). He died a few years later on October 6, 1980.

Despite the lack of any hits, Morris still had an engaging and fruitful association with Capitol Records. He may have cut no classics, but Morris did cut some good timey, semi-western swing. Some of it was more pleasant than arresting, but the songs were catchy and above average, the band was good and the singer was strong. Although he achieved some renown briefly in the 1950s, Rod Morris is, today, obscure to say the least. 

(Edited from Hillbilly Music.com & Bear Family notes)

Milt Raskin born 27 January 1916

Milt Raskin (January 27, 1916 – October 16, 1977) was an American jazz pianist, conductor and arranger. 

Born Milton William Raskin  in Boston, Massachusetts, he played saxophone as a child before switching to piano at age 11. In the 1930s he attended the New England Conservatory of Music. He worked on local Boston-area radio before moving to New York City in 1937, where he performed with Wingy Manone at the Famous Door and recorded with Ziggy Elman, whose Love is the sweetest thing (1939) is a good example of his early style. 

He played in the big bands of Gene Krupa (1938-9, 1941-2), Teddy Powell (1939-40), Alvino Rey (1940), and Tommy Dorsey (1942-4), recording with all but Rey; he may be heard to advantage as a soloist on Dorsey's Well, Git it (1942). Raskin then moved to Los Angeles, where he recorded with Artie Shaw and Billie Holiday (both 1946), Woody Herman and Manone (both 1947), Sarah Vaughn (1951), Georgie Auld (1952), B.B. King (1959), Stan Kenton (1963, 1965), and others,  but concentrated on work as a studio musician and musical director. 

                                   

 Like Drasnin, Wilson, and many of their contemporaries, Raskin spent most of his time creating good old Hollywood film music. He began playing piano in MGM studio orchestras. Eventually, he moved to the front of the orchestra, conducting orchestras recording soundtracks and incidental music for Disney and Columbia movies. He worked as a lyricist on Artistry in Voices and Brass, on which Stan Kenton and Pete Rugolo turned Rugolo's old instrumental hits for Kenton into vocal numbers. 

Milt Raskin is best remembered among exotica fans for what he himself may have considered one of his less memorable efforts: the 1959 album “Exotic Percussion”, also released as “Kapu”, on the notorious Crown Records. Unlike many of Crown's releases, which packaged public domain performances or uncredited cuts from far-earlier sessions and packaged them to take advantage of whatever musical trend was getting sales at the moment, Exotic Percussion is a suite of Raskin originals, apparently recorded specifically for the release. 

He was a regular among Capitol Records' house arrangers and conductors, and led ensembles backing such singers as Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson, George Shearing and Vic Damone and occasionally wrote lyrics for pop songs. He also collaborated (usually without credit) with Bill Russo, Stan Kenton, Billy Strayhorn, Andre Previn, and other jazz and jazz-influenced arrangers, often handling the orchestration (writing the individual parts for the instruments called for by the arranger for each section of melody, harmony, and chorus). 

He worked on numerous television series, including "Naked City" and "The Fugitive." He did get credited on occasion, as in his arrangements for the soundtracks of "The Agony and the Ecstacy" and "Lawrence of Arabia." 

Raskin died 16 October 1977, Hollywood, California, age 61years. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, Spaceagepop & Online Archive of California) 

Dave Rowland born 26 January 1942

Dave Rowland (January 26, 1944 – November 1, 2018) was a country and gospel singer, better known to many in the music business as the founder and lead singer of hit-making group Dave & Sugar. 

L-R-BillBaise, Ed Enoch, Dave Rowland, JD Sumner

Rowland was born in Sanger, California, and raised in Los Angeles. Before forming Dave & Sugar, Rowland was part of J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet. The gospel outfit toured and recorded with Elvis Presley between 1971 and 1977; Rowland would wear a gold lightning bolt on a chain with the letters "T.C.B.," a gift from Presley. The Stamps Quartet was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1988. He later toured with the Four Guys and also was a prominent member of Country Music Hall of Fame member Charley Pride’s road show. 

By 1975, with Pride looking for a backup band, Rowland hired Jackie Frantz and Vicki Hackeman, and Dave & Sugar was formed. After signing on with Pride’s management team, Dave & Sugar signed with RCA Records and recorded their first album. The trio’s first single, “Queen of the Silver Dollar” (written by Shel Silverstein) broke into the Top 25 of Billboard magazine’s country singles chart in early 1976. Their second single “The Door Is Always Open,” shot straight to the number one spot on the country charts, a driving, lushly produced track which expertly combined Rowland’s resonant baritone with soaring harmonies. 

                                  

Two successive singles, “I’m Gonna Love You,” and “Don’t Throw It All Away,” used the same basic formula as “The Door Is Always Open,” and also became huge hits in 1976-77. Their peak run garnered nearly one dozen Top 10 singles, including two more No. 1 hits – “Tear Time” (1978) and “Golden Tears” (1979). Overall, Dave & Sugar charted 16 times on the Billboard country charts. Jackie Frantz was replaced by Sue Powell in 1977, who in turn was replaced by Jamie Kaye in 1980, while Vicki Hackeman was replaced by Melissa Dean (Etta Britt) in January 1979. 

Dave & Sugar was a slick sounding, soulful vocal trio that during their heyday was labeled “the country ABBA.”  lthough their career was much shorter lived than that of Bjorn and crew, Dave & Sugar did share the Swedish group’s knack for catchy tunes, sparkling production, and full, rich, male/female vocal arrangements. Their touring took them throughout North America, Europe, New Zealand and Italy, where the group played a command performance for the Mayor of Rome. 

Rowland also toured with Conway Twitty, Hank Williams, Jr., Waylon Jennings, and Barbara Mandrell and was an opening act for Kenny Rogers for two years. Rowland disbanded the trio briefly during the early 1980s to try a solo.career, releasing an album entitled (appropriately) Sugar Free. Sue Powell also charted two singles on RCA as a soloist, and later went on to host the TV series Nashville on the Road.

Rowland later reformed the trio with two new sets of "Sugar" partners: Cindy Smith and Lisa Alvey, followed by Regina Leigh and Lori Mason. However, these second-era trios failed to gain the popularity the original trios had in the 1970s and the group disbanded for good after only minimal success. In 1997, former Sugar member Leigh formed the short-lived country duo Regina Regina with partner Regina Nicks. 

On November 1, 2018, Rowland died due to complications from a stroke in his Nashville home at the age of 74. 

(Edited from Country Music News International & Wikipedia) 

 

Floyd Smith born 25 January 1917

Floyd Smith (January 25, 1917 – March 29, 1982), sometimes credited as Floyd "Guitar" Smith, was an American jazz guitarist and record producer who covered much stylistic territory in his long and active career. 

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Smith's father was a drummer; the boy's entry to guitar was a ukulele and after switching up he went to the trouble of studying music theory in high school. 

He spent his early career in territory bands, playing in groups such as Eddie Johnson's Crackerjacks, the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, the Sunset Royal Orchestra, the Brown Skin Models, and Andy Kirk's 12 Clouds Of Joy. His composition "Floyd's Guitar Blues", recorded with Andy Kirk's orchestra in March 1939, has been claimed as the first hit record to feature a blues solo on electric guitar. 

                                   

Smith enlisted during World War II and was stationed in Britain as a sergeant. He also met and played with Django Reinhardt in Paris. Following the war, he rejoined Andy Kirk's band before forming his own small ensembles. 

He played with Wild Bill Davis in the 1950s, and Bill Doggett in the early 1960s, and also recorded occasionally with drummer Chris Columbo's bands during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  He toured Europe and in 1964 formed a new band with which he played in Indianapolis with bookings at the Hub Bub Club on 13th Street and the Pink Poodle on the South Side.

In the 1970s, Smith moved into writing songs and record production, working with Dakar/Brunswick Records in Chicago, for which he recorded a few singles. He produced two albums with R&B star, Loleatta Holloway for Aware Records of Atlanta, as well as two (one completed, but unissued when the label folded) with John Edwards, who later became lead singer of the Detroit Spinners. 

He produced two Top 10 R&B hits on Aware with Edwards ("Careful Man", No. 8 in 1974) and Holloway ("Cry To Me", No. 10 in 1975). In the late 1970s, he produced tracks on several albums with Loleatta Holloway for Gold Mine/Salsoul Records. He managed the former gospel singer and later married her. 

He died in Indianapolis, Indiana in March 1982 at the age of 65 and was buried in the New Crown Cemetery. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic and Indiana  Music Makers)

Here’s a clip of Floyd Smith with Bill Dogett Band live at the Festival de Jazz d'Antibes Juan-les-Pins 1963.

Zeke Carey born 24 January 1933

Zeke Carey (January 24, 1933 - December 24, 1999) was a tenor vocalist who came to prominence as an original co-founder of the American doo-wop group, The Flamingoes. 

Ezekiel J Carey was born in Bluefield, West Virginia and raised in Norfolk.  Zeke and Jacob “Jake” Carey are often noted as being cousins, but they weren’t really directly related at all. The Careys lived in Baltimore (down the street from Sonny Til), and Zeke was taken in and raised by Jake’s uncle and aunt. He adopted the Carey name and from that time on they’d always refer to each other as “cousin.” 

In 1950, they relocated to Chicago, where they joined the choir of the Jewish Church of God and Saints of Christ Congregation on the city's south side. Through the choir the Careys met Paul Wilson and Johnny Carter, and together they began performing as a quartet, performing in the same neighborhoods as another future soul legend, Sam Cooke. With the addition of lead Earl Lewis, the fledgling group's lineup was complete, with Carter and Zeke Carey installed as tenors, Wilson as baritone, and Jake Carey as bass. At first they called themselves the Swallows, but about six months later learned of a rival group with the same name back in Baltimore. Carter suggested el Flamingos, which was quickly modified to the Five Flamingos and finally just the Flamingos. 

They released their first single, "If I Can't Have You," in March 1953 and "Golden Teardrops" in October of the same year. The latter song became a strong regional hit in Chicago and New York and later kicked off the doo-wop collecting craze when it became the first 45 to sell for $20 at the legendary Times Square Records stall in a Manhattan subway. "Golden Teardrops" is often quoted as the most perfect group harmony record ever released and regularly tops polls from aficionados of this style of music. 

                                    

Most prominent among a succession of lead singers were McElroy (1951–54) and Nelson (1954–60). The group had regional success with a number of rhythm-and-blues records before achieving national fame in 1956 with the ballad “I’ll Be Home.” They went on to help pioneer rock and roll with appearances in several Alan Freed-sponsored stage shows and in the films Rock, Rock, Rock (1956) and Go Johnny Go (1958). After moving to New York City in 1957, the Flamingos lost Carter but added vocalist-keyboardist Hunt and guitarist Johnson. 

Working with producer George Goldner, they registered their biggest hits: “Lovers Never Say Goodbye” (1958), “I Only Have Eyes for You” (1959), and “Nobody Loves Me Like You” (1960). 1959 to 1961 was the group's most prolific period chart and album-wise. End put out four LPs in four years, "Requestfully Yours", "Flamingo Favorites", "The Sound Of The Flamingos" and "Flamingo Serenade", along with such outstanding singles as "Love Walked In", "I Was Such a Fool" , "Mio Amore" , "Your Other Love" , and "Time Was" . 

By 1961, however, the group was falling apart. Tommy Hunt left for a solo career; Nelson and Johnson formed a rival group called the Modern Flamingos. In the spring of 1964 the Flamingos returned to Checker for a few sides. They recorded an incredible Latin-rhythmed version of Oscar Hammerstein's "Lover Come Back to Me" that would have established a whole new legion of Flamingos followers had radio given it a chance to be heard. In 1965 the veterans joined Phillips Records and released a funk/doo wop version of Bing Crosby's 1934 (number three) hit "Temptation." 

The Flamingos' last charter was a 1970 ode to the black cavalry soldiers of the 1880s titled "Buffalo Soldier"  They  released a few singles for Roulette, Worlds, Julmar, and their own Ronze label (including three LPs shifting between an old and new sound) and by 1976 the Flamingos were finished with recording. They remained a fixture of the casino circuit, however, and for close to a quarter century both the Carey cousins and Terry Johnson led competing Flamingos lineups to considerable box-office success. 

Although suffering from Cancer, Zeke’s last performance was during December 1999 with his group on public television broadcasts of a doo-wop special, featuring more than 100 performers and hosted by singer-songwriter Jerry "The Iceman" Butler. That same month Zeke died from a heart attack on the 24th at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington. 

Though they've had only one national US top 20 hit and only 11 national US charters all told, the artists they've influenced (including the Temptations, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Jackson Five, the Spinners, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and Gladys Knight and the Pips to name just a few) testify to their significance. Their timeless recordings live on forever. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic, Billboard &  Brittanica. Thanks to Marv Goldberg for the dated photos)