Music from the Scat Cats!

You asked for it, you got it. After last week's Column I Never Got Around to Publishing post about the Scat Cats, I found these performances by Kingsport's legendary funk band of the fifties and sixties (and also seventies, eighties, nineties and aughts!) on YouTube.

  

"Nobody Else But You" by Kenny Springs andt he Scat Cats on the Spot Label

"Please" by Kenny Springs and the Cats on DeWitt Recrods (1963)

(Courtesy Lonnie Salyer)

"Let Nobody Love You" by Kenny Springs and the Scat Cats 

"Just Walkin' in the Rain" by Kenneth Springs on Columbia (1961)

(Courtesy Lonnie Salyer)

Two Big League Dads in one D-B Class, 1965

 After I published a column about big league exhibition games in Kingsport, I heard from my high school classmate Mark Haggitt. Mark tells me that the father of our classmate Barbara Diehl Williams, George Diehl, played major league baseball.

I think that makes our class – D-B ’65 – unique. Another classmate, Sharon Hillman Lake, is the daughter of former big leaguer Dave Hillman.

I wonder if any other D-B class had two big league dads.

I looked up George Diehl’s record. He was frequently called “Big George” because of his stature; he was 6’2”.

Diehl pitched parts of the 1942 and 1943 seasons for the Boston Braves (later the Milwaukee Braves, now the Atlanta Braves), where his manager was the legendary Casey Stengel!

And how about that. Dave Hillman also played for Stengel, in 1962, Dave’s one season with the Mets.

How did Diehl, a native of Pennsylvania, end up in Kingsport? Kingsport bookended his baseball career. He spent 1938, his first year in professional baseball, with the Kingsport Cherokees of the Appalachian League. His final season, 1950, was also with the Cherokees.

But a bigger factor in his staying in Kingsport after his baseball career ended might have been this:

The Kingsport Times reported that on New Years’ Eve 1939 he married Margaret Evelyn Coffey of 222 East Wanola.

Diehl was a highly regarded prospect who spent spring training of 1939 with the Boston team. In the end he played in only two games in the majors.

He explained what happened to cut short his big league career in a 1982 article in the New York Times. It seems in the spring of 1943 wartime restrictions on gasoline prevented teams from traveling to Florida as usual for training. So the Boston Braves trained at the Choate prep school in Wallingford, Mass. Diehl described the experience of training in 12-degree weather to the Times. “’When we weren't using their indoor cage, we worked out in the snow,’ said George Diehl, 64, a middle-inning relief pitcher with the Braves in 1943. ‘One day I was outside throwing sidearm and I felt something happen to my arm. It wasn't right the rest of the season.’”

After baseball Diehl worked in mortgage banking in Kingsport, first for Bennett & Edwards which would become Schumacher Mortgage.

The Scat Cats Are Still in Demand

Back in 2016 I got an email from Tobias Kirmayer of Tramp Records in Munich, Germany. “I am running a small record label here in Munich on which I re-release privately-produced soul music from the 1960s/70s.”

Tobias was trying to get in touch with Donnie Flack, the drummer from the Scat Cats, Kingsport’s seminal funk band of the sixties.

“I would be interested in licensing a song from Mr. Flack for a CD/vinyl LP compilation album. The song to which I refer to was released on 45 RPM single on an independent label called Trail Records.”

(That would be “Souling USA.”)

I gave Tobias what I had, a phone number and a mailing address for Donnie, plus an email address for the band’s booker and business manager.

He tried all three with no luck.

I think Tobias was aiming to include the recording on “45 Single Collection Analogue Recorded Funk and Soul,” a series Tramp calls “rare grooves” that is up to 10 volumes thus far.

You can wander around on the website, tramprecords.com, and listen to tracks from many of the albums.

I was most intrigued by two tracks on Volume 9: “Helpless Girl” and “Steppin’ Stone,” both by Little Mary Staten, who recorded – what little she recorded – on the Los Angeles label GME. I can’t find much about her except she was from San Diego and her music was produced by Ervin “Big Boy” Groves.

And she’s no relation.

But back to the Scat Cars…

For my generation the Scat Cats were made up of Sonny Sanders, Arthur Flack, Donnie Flack and Kenny Springs.

But the first mention of the group, a September 1958 ad in the Times News for a dance at the Civic Auditorium featuring “Sunny Sanders and the Scat Cats,” notes only three members: “vocalizing Sunny Sanders, Joe Manuel and Carolyn Rock.”

I talked to Donnie Flack about the group back in 2003. Here’s my story about the Scat Cats early days:

It must have been around 1962 because Donnie Flack, the drummer in the Scat Cats, says he and his brother Arthur were still students at Douglass High School, Kingsport’s black high school in the days before integration.

“There was this talent scout named J. Wolf passing through Kingsport and he heard Sonny playing guitar.” Sonny would be Sonny Sanders. “He asked Sonny if there was anybody else around who could play and Sonny said, ‘Yeah.’”

Sonny introduced Wolf to the Flack brothers and a singer named Joe Manuel. According to Donnie, Wolf dubbed them the Scat Cats - hepcat was a term for a cool guy at the time - and bought the group members uniforms. “And he never asked for anything in return. He just went around the country doing stuff like that. He moved on.”

But the Scat Cats stayed in their hometown.

 “That first year we didn’t do a thing but play places in town. The Rollerdrome, I think it was called, this skating rink downtown. East Tennessee State, all the colleges, just about every high school. We did a lot of proms, VFW, Elks, the Teen Center we played quite a bit. I can’t think of a place we didn’t play.”

If you were a teen in Kingsport in the sixties, you saw the Scat Cats play. You knew how good they were. And you wondered how much longer Kingsport could hold on to them. Not much.

Donnie says that after the first year, “Then things really broke loose.”

After they opened for Ray Charles in Knoxville, a booking agent put together a two-week tour of the south with Johnny Nash, Lightning Hopkins and the Scat Cats. Donnie recalls, “The other guys were a lot older. Me and Arthur were playing in night clubs and we weren’t even supposed to be in night clubs.”

The tour wound up in Miami but Donnie says it was such a success “they did not want us to come home. We just had our pick of places to play.”

And they picked the Mary Elizabeth, a luxury hotel once famous in the jazz world for hosting Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Lena Horne. “Our club was open all day and all night and we did the night bar. This place drew everybody. All the stars and the performers came in after their shows.”

The Scat Cats were living high.

Mary Elizabeth Hotel in Miami

“There were these two guys lived on the top floor, singers. They were just starting. They didn’t have any records. When they would come back in from their shows, they could not wait to get on stage and sing with us. They had this little short bow-legged guy for a manager. ‘These guys need a good band,’ he told us. ‘They like you all; you’d make a good team.’ But the club owners told us to leave him alone, he was the biggest crook in town.”

So the Scat Cats turned the two singers down and returned to Kingsport. “It was about six months later they came to Johnson City to the Armory. We went to see them, me and my brother and Sonny to catch the show.”

The two guys the Scat Cats knew from Miami started their show off with “Soul Man,” followed it with “Hold On I’m Coming,” then continued with the rest of their hits.

“It was Sam and Dave. They seen us and they died laughing. They said, ‘We told you.’ Here we were back home not making any money and they had five or six hits. And that little bow-legged guy was still managing them. We made a mistake. We could have been their band. I told my brother we did a good one. We had a booking agent and they just told you where to go. If we’d had a manager, we probably would have been hooked up with them.”

But it wasn’t over for the Scat Cats. They kept playing in the area.

In the early seventies the Scat Cats traveled to Nashville for a recording session with Columbia Records. By now Manuel had left the group, replaced by Kenny Springs. “Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins sat on in the recording,” Flack recalls. The result was the single “Walking in the Rain” and it was a pick hit in Billboard, landing the Scat Cats bookings up and down the east coast. They later recorded for Spot Records under the name Kenny Springs and the Scat Cats, releasing “Nobody Else But You” backed by “Let Nobody Love You.”

But bookings fell off, life went on. The Scat Cats stayed in touch.

Joe Manuel moved to Oakland, California and opened a package store. “He got shot and killed when some guys robbed him,” says Flack.

Sonny Sanders moved to New Jersey. “He was in for the Fourth of July. He had an accident working in a factory so he can’t play guitar anymore. But he has a deejay service with six guys he contracts out.”

Flack says Kenny Springs now lives in Bristol. “He had a son, Kenny Junior, they call him Scat. He’s got a band down in Nashville doing commercials. He sings just like his dad.”

Donnie and Arthur are still in Kingsport.

The Scat Cats story does have a happy ending. The group is now back together: Donnie, Arthur, Kenny. “And we’ve added the Wells Brothers from Bluff City.” The Wells Brothers are another group from the sixties. “They mostly played in Virginia; Roanoke and that end. They never did do any recordings.”

The group has been practicing for about a month now. Donnie says, “We rehearsed the other day. Oh, what a good feeling.”

Post Script to my original column:

Joe Manuel died in 1976. In high school at Douglass he was voted Most Popular, Best Looking and Best All Around. He was student director of the 40-voice Douglass Choral Club. He was also a basketball and football star.

Arthur Flack died in 2006.  He was on the Douglass basketball team in 1961-62.

1962 Douglass High basketball team; Arthur Flack is front row, far left

Kenny Springs died in 2007. His son, known as Scat Springs, became a recording artist in Nashville. And Scat’s daughter Kandace Springs is also a singer.  She appeared on the David Letterman show in 2014. She records for the legendary jazz label Blue Note.

Charles “Sonny” Sanders passed away in 2017 in Toledo, Ohio. After serving in the Navy, he had worked at Jeep in Toldeo.

If anyone sees Donnie, tell him Tramp Records is trying to find him. Tramp wants to make Donnie and the Scat Cats famous again.

Scat Cats lineups over the years (spellings and misspellings as listed in thenewspaper):

1958 (from ad in Times News): Sunny Sanders, Joe Manuel, Carolyn Rock. (I think there were other musicians who weren't listed in the ad.)

1963 (Times News story about opening for Ray Charles in Knoxville): Donnie Flack, Arthur Flack, Fletcher Hutcherson, Sonnie Sanders, Bobby Smith and Kenny Springs.

1970 (from Times News story): Donnie Flack, Arthur Flack, Lewis Symington, Freddie Horton.

1971 (from Times News story): Donnie Flack, Arthur Flack, Freddie Horton, “Bug” Horton, George Smith.

1994 (from live CD): Donnie Flack on drums, Brian Dennison on bass, Marshall “Guitar” Davis on guitar, Arthur Flack on sax, Kenny Springs on vocals. 

When Taylor of Dobyns-Taylor Came to Kingsport

It was called Dobyns-Taylor Hardware but in actuality the downtown retail landmark sold just about everything, from jewelry to toys to sporting goods, even high school letter jackets. And of course hardware.

In 1949 G.W. Taylor, one of the founders, told the Kingsport Times that his first trip to Kingsport, in 1919, was almost his last:

It was a cold, wet, bleak night when the train pulled into the Kingsport station and Mr. Taylor alighted. He had come to Kingsport in the interest of a Chicago firm to sell hardware.

The train was late getting in - very late in fact and when Mr. Taylor glanced at his watch he found it was 1 a.m. The next thing was to find a hotel to spend the rest of the night. He started towards the Kingsport Hotel, located in what is now the building occupied by the Elite Hotel

Young Taylor wandered into the lobby. One dim bulb cast eerie shadows about the room but no one was there. He ascended a flight of stairs, pausing to knock on the first door he came to in the hope of getting some service.

He got an answer. A deep, booming voice said "You can’t get in here, we're four deep here already.”

Slightly daunted he retraced his steps and emerged once again on the street. He knew nothing about the town or where to try next.

A faint glow against the sky caught his eye and be thought -- there's fire over there, at least, and struck out across the open field. His feet got stuck in the mud but be kept going until he arrived at the glow. It was the brickyard.

Philosophically, Mr. Taylor decided that this was better than nothing for a roof over his head, and certainly better than braving the mud flats again. So he spent the night in a brick kiln.

"I didn't sleep." he said.

"My first thought: when is the next train out of here?" Mr. Taylor chuckled. "I was told that there wasn't another one until late that afternoon, so I decided I might as well sell some hardware."

The little experience was adequately made up for by Mr. Taylor's clients, M. R. Hillenberg and Will Kenner, who operated a hardware store at that time. They were so hospitable and made the remainder of Mr. Taylor's stay here so enjoyable that he even delayed his departure for a whole day.

Later young Taylor, a native of Lynchburg, Va, decided to make Kingsport his home and took a job in the hardware department of the Kingsport Stores (J. Fred Johnson’s everything store, originally located at the corner of Main and Shelby Streets). He subsequently became manager of this department and remained in that position until in June, 1922, he and Flem Dobyns established their own hardware store.

Hollywood Oops!

All the talk after the “Game of Thrones” return wasn’t about the Game but about a little oops: a Starbucks coffee cup on a table in one scene.

That reminded me of a story I wrote for the New York Daily News in 1995.

I’m posting it as a bonus.

Let's face it, folks, Hollywood has never been known for getting history straight.

I don't even have to mention Westerns, which took punks like Billy the Kid and alcoholics like William Cody and turned them into heroes.

Bonnie and Clyde were a couple of small-time bank robbers and hoods until they were glamorized by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in "Bonnie and Clyde.”

So today let's talk about some of the textbook errors the movies have made in presenting history lessons.

Let's begin with "Jungle Raiders,” which is set, according to the opening credits, in “Malaysia 1938." I hate to bring this up, but there wasn't a Malaysia until 1963.

Speaking of duh ... in "The Scalphunters," runaway slave Ossie Davis talks about the planet Pluto. "The Scalphunters” is set in the 19th century. Pluto wasn't discovered until 1930.

In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit," the Toontowners worry that their burg will be torn down for the world's first freeway - the Pasadena Freeway. Roger Rabbit was set in 1947; the Pasadena Freeway was built in 1940.

"The Sound of Music" is set in prewar Austria. So how is it that when Julie Andrews takes the Von Trapp kids to the market, they march past a crate marked "Jaffa Oranges - Produce of Israel"'? The state of Israel was created in 1948.

The quaint little 1984 Red Scare melodrama, "Red Dawn" was sold to moviegoers with this advertising slogan: "In our time no foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now." MGM/UA had to apologize to Alaska after some extra bright fifth-grader wrote in to remind them that Japan occupied the Aleutian Islands during World War II. But they didn't bother to change the ads, they just explained it away, saying "in our time" didn't extend back to the 1940s.

In "Emma Hamilton," a historical romance set in 1804, you can hear Big Ben striking a full 50 years before it was built.

A character in “Cruisin' '57' - set, logically enough, in 1957 - has on an Evel Knievel T-shirt. The daredevil didn't get his own T-shirts until the 1970s.

And talk about prescience, in “Annie," which is set in 1933, Daddy Warbucks buys out Radio City Music Hall to take Annie to see "Camille." "Camille" was released in 1936.

"The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal," which is based on the true story of a 1911 manufacturing plant fire that killed 145 people, shows a group of sweatshop women amusing themselves with imitations of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp. Chaplin's first film was made in 1914.

Sometimes Hollywood has no respect for the speech patterns of a historical era, preferring to magically impose modern idioms on historical periods. "Harlem Nights," which is set in the Depression, finds Eddie Murphy saying such '80s (or '70s actually) kinds of things as "I'll let you have your space" and "get my head together” and - worst of all - "Yo!"

One of the worse offenders when it comes to history is Kevin Costner. In his medieval epic "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," set around 1100, some characters use gunpowder, which didn't arrive in Europe for another 150 years when Marco Polo brought it back from China. The character Azeem (Morgan Freeman) uses a telescope, a nifty little device that Galileo (or Lippershey) didn't invent for another 400 years. Then there are those neatly printed "Wanted” posters, tacked on trees throughout Sherwood Forest and Nottingham some 200 years before Guttenberg invented the printing press.

In Costner's even more epic "Dances With Wolves," there's a little hairdo problem with actress Mary McDonnell. McDonnell's character, Stands With a Fist, is said to have lived with the Indians since she was a child and yet she has that nice shag haircut and all the other Indian women have braids. Huh?

In Hollywood's defense, I should note that anachronisms weren't invented with the movies. Shakespeare had a character in "Julius Caesar" refer to a clock. The play took place about 100 B.C. That's sundial time!

Kingsport in 1916 - When Jimmie Hamlett (cofounder of Hamlett-Dobson) First Arrived

Everyone in Kingsport knows the name Hamlett, thanks to the city’s oldest funeral home, Hamlett-Dobson.

The company was founded by Jimmie Hamlett, who came to Kingsport a year before the city was chartered. In 1929 he wrote a letter to the editor of the Kingsport Times, Howard Long, describing what it was like when he first arrived.

“I came to Kingsport May 1, 1916, arriving here about 6 p. m. I went to the Kingsport Hotel, thinking I could get a room there, but was told everything was full up. A man by the name of Callahan, lived in what is now the Poston house on Five Points. He told me he was full up but could give me a room for the night. The next day I went in search of a place to stay, but every place was full. I went back to my friend Callahan, and he said the best he could do was a cot on the side porch, so he fixed me up and I kept the place for seven weeks. Houses were very scarce, but finally one of the houses on Cherokee Street became vacant and I moved my family here. I was working in the Big Store, and going to and from my work I usually went across the fields, if they were not wet, which they usually were, for I believe we had more rain that year than I ever saw before. After a very heavy rain to get to Five Points, one would have to go around by the Baptist church. Some of the boys would wear their bathing suits to wade through the water on Market street.”

The Kingsport Hotel was on Main Street. The Big Store was a block and a half away at the corner of Main and Shelby.

“About the only electric lights we had then were in the homes on Cement Hill, and the only paved street was Main Street from Cherokee to Shelby. I believe that the only car in town was a Ford that Uncle Tom Hurst used. He certainly had that car well trained. He could jump ditches or mud holes and climb any kind of grade.

“I have a picture of Kingsport showing the Cement plant, the old depot, the Big Store, the Bank of Kingsport and the old Roller place, with the large frame building. That ground is now covered by the Fifty houses. This lot of houses were built about that time. For water we had to depend on wells in and about town.

“It seems wonderful what a change has taken place during the short time I have been in Kingsport. The building where the Presbyterian church now is, was used for a school and for worship on Sundays. On Sunday afternoons we would take our children for a walk, usually going up through the sage brush and small trees where the Dobyns-Bennett high school now stands, and over the Cement hill to the river.

“A great many travelling men visit our city now and time after time these men have told me what a wonderful city we have, so well laid off, clean and right up to date. In my travelling experience I have not been able to find any city that has anything on Kingsport. We have a fine class of people making up our city, and schools and best of all we have a group of churches which any city can be proud of. As to scenery, Kingsport can't be beaten for beauty and grandeur, and our city is located in the garden spot of East Tennessee.

“Looking back to the year when I came to Kingsport in 1916, when there were no paved streets, no electric lights and no water system, it is marvelous the improvements that have been made, and the wonderful changes that have been brought about. Then I found a new town with its thousands of inhabitants living in tents and small rough houses, with no conveniences whatever. I was talking with a travelling man before I came here, and he told me that at night you could stand at the Big Store and see the houses all lighted up on the hill. He had seen the Cement houses for those were about all the lights we had.

“Today we have a city that is right up to date and nicely laid out. A city government under an efficient manager and capable aldermen and a splendid force of policemen. As to schools, they cannot be beaten, our churches of which we are all proud, and in fact everything that goes to make a fine city.

“Yours very truly,

“Mr. J. M. Hamlett.”

This is Kingsport in 1918, shortly after Jimmie Hamlett arrived. 

The Original Hammond Bridge?

If you’re from Kingsport, or ever lived in Kingsport, you remember the original Hammond Bridge, that dreaded narrow, two-lane span that crossed the Holston River just west of Ft. Patrick Henry Dam.

The bridge was so narrow that it became a test of a teenager’s driving skills. Could you negotiate the span in your father’s extra-wide ’59 Chevy with a car approaching from the opposite direction?

That bridge was so dreaded and feared that when Buck Van Huss took the basketball coaching job at D-B in 1968 his wife insisted they live in Colonial Heights so she wouldn’t have to cross the bridge to get back to Hampton, where Buck had previously coached.

The hazardous bridge dilemma was solved when the state added a second span for northbound traffic, turning the old bridge into a one-way highway.

Brenda Eilers found an intriguing photo of the bridge among her parent’s old pictures. “Written on the back was ‘Hammond Bridge.’ Do you suppose it is?? I can't figure out where it was snapped from if so.”

There was no date on the photo.

The bridge is in the distance. In the foreground are what appear to be construction materials: planks, a construction office.

But there are no cars and no people to help identify the time.

And to the right, barely in the frame, is what looks like a tall concrete support.

I originally thought it must have been the construction of Fort Patrick Henry Dam. But the dam wasn’t dedicated until 1953 and Hammond Bridge was built in 1930. The bridge in the picture is definitely not the Hammond Bridge that we know today. It’s a much different construction.

So I dug around...

Beginning in 1923 there was a Boy Scout camp in that area named Camp Hammond. And there was a bridge across the Holston called Camp Hammond Bridge.

In 1933 when Kingsport Stone & Sand opened for business, the newspaper story said it was next to “Hammond Bridge.” So I thought for a time that the construction work in the foreground might be part of the stone and sand company, which would mean the picture is after 1933.

Then I found a story about paving the new Johnson City Highway on the north (Kingsport) side of Hammond Bridge in 1931.

The more I looked at the picture the more I thought that could be the old Camp Hammond Bridge next to what may be construction on a new Hammond Bridge.

I called in my bridge expert, the legendary Bridge Hunter, author of two books about bridges, and Kingsport native, Calvin Sneed.

“Great picture! I believe this to be what the old timers have described to me as the original Pactolus Wooden Bridge, built to cross the river just downstream from where Kendrick Creek empties into the Holston River, South Fork. I believe there was formerly a ferry at that location as well. If you look at the U.S. Geological Survey map the black lines on either side of the river, just below the words ‘Holston Hills’ in the center of the picture. That’s exactly where the bridge in the picture you sent me is. It would have dead-ended at or near present-day Wesley Road, but obviously right at the river bank.

“This picture looks to have been taken from that upper bluff circa 1928 or 1929, near the present-day dam in a very narrow view of the area at where the Hammond Bridge arches are now…. Before the dam was built, all of the area in the bottom of the picture was always under water during a heavy rain, because before the dam, there was no flood control.

“But here’s the question that is stumping me something fierce. Look at that tall concrete structure in the extreme right of the picture…. You would think that it would appear to be one of the piers for the Hammond Bridge. But pictures I have taken show the center piers of the Hammond Bridge finished in 1930 are OPEN, not filled as the picture you sent me, shows.

“I had always heard that the bridge that replaced the Pactolus Wooden Bridge, was a 3-span, steel truss Pratt-style bridge that crossed the river just upriver from Pactolus. The piers for that bridge would have been filled, like the one in the picture you sent. I would think that pier at the extreme right in the picture, would be a pier for that bridge, and the present-day Hammond Bridge and its open-spandrel type piers would have been built later right beside it.

“But that begs the question…. Why would the highway department have left the Pactolus Bridge in place, when they had a newer steel truss bridge just upriver from it? Why wouldn’t they have torn the Pactolus down at that time, just like the steel truss bridge would have been removed, when the Hammond arches were finished?”

After digging a little deeper Calvin came up with another theory.

“I uncovered several writings that reference a steel truss bridge that preceded the Pactolus Ferry Bridge. It's mentioned in T-DOT historian Martha Carver's book on Tennessee bridges. It's for that reason that I now believe that the bridge in the picture you sent me was a service bridge built to transfer equipment and workers building the present-day Hammond Bridge.”

There’s a chapter for Calvin’s next Bridge Hunter book!