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.