- George Cummings
George Cummings, born
July 28 ,1938 inMeridian, Mississippi , is a guitarist and songwriter based inBayonne, New Jersey andNashville, Tennessee in recent years.Darryl Vincent and the Flares was formed in Meridian in 1956, and Cummings joined the group in 1959. In the 1960s, Cummings was a member of the Chocolate Papers, along with
Ray Sawyer , Bill Francis, Bobby Dimingus, Popeye Phillips and Jimmy "Wolf Cub" Allen. The Chocolate Papers toured clubs in Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, before settling in Biloxi as the house band at the popular 800-seatGus Stevens Restaurant , the first Gulf Coast supper club to offer upscale entertainment with such headliners asElvis Presley ,Andy Griffith ,Mel Tormé ,Jayne Mansfield andMamie Van Doren . The Chocolate Papers moved on to Chicago, and shortly after that, Cummings decided to form a new band in the New York area.Cummings found fame with
Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show , the group he named and co-founded inUnion City, New Jersey in 1968, and several members of the Chocolate Papers joined the new group. They recorded their debut album for CBS/Columbia in 1970, and sold a million copies of their single, "Sylvia's Mother," when it was re-released in July, 1972.For health reasons, Cummings left the Dr. Hook group in August, 1975, moving from San Francisco to Nashville, where he collaborated on songs with guitar legend
Lonnie Mack while performing with The Raven and other Nashville country and rock bands.In 1978, at the Muscle Shoals Studios, he collaborated with the legendary Delta bluesman
Big Joe Williams on one of singer's last albums, "The Final Years: Big Joe Williams". Produced by Cummings, Joe B. Stewart and Ken Hatley, this album was released in 1993 by Gitanes Jazz/Verve.In 2003, Cummings worked with Ken Hatley on the soundtrack for "Florida City", a film drama about advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. In the spring of 2004, the Flares were reborn in
Lebanon, Tennessee when Cummings joined original members, guitarist Jim Pasquale and drummer Norman "Knobby" Lowell, along with Nashville singer-songwriters Scotty Cothran, Harold Hutchcraft, Jack Bond and Forest Borders, to cut the comeback album, "It Is What It Is". In September, 2005, Cummings began recording a solo CD, working with Pasquale and Hutchcraft.Listen to
* [http://www.jpasqualemusic.com/download.html The Original Flares:"Can You Still Rock" (2007)]
External links
* [http://www.georgecummings.net/ George Cummings official site]
* [http://www.doctorhook.com/interview.html Keith Green interview with George Cummings in 2003]
* [http://www.doctorhook.com/georgechat.html Online chat with George Cummings (28 July 2001 )]
* [http://www.wirz.de/music/willjfrm.htm Illustrated Big Joe Williams Discography]
* [http://www.jpasqualemusic.com Jimmy Pasquale's official site]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.