Anthony Randall didn't know much about his dad, a US airman stationed in England in the Fifties. After 47 years, he realised he had to find his roots - and his journey led him to Los Angeles, to a new family and, finally, to an understanding of the man who had walked out of his life, changed his name - and become a doo-wop star.
Flamingo on stage at The Den nightclub, Norwalk, LA, 1961 The plane going into Los Angeles banked and sank, and although I had never been to this city before, I edged forward to study the phenomenal sprawl and the moving ribbons of freeway as if I might see something I should recognise. The passenger next to me was a young man named Dennis, part Latino, part black. I told him I had come to unearth a mystery about a singer named Johnny Flamingo.
'Johnny Flamingo?' Dennis said. 'Wasn't he one of those old-time guys?'
'That's right,' I said, 'in the Fifties and Sixties. He lived here. He had some hits, he used to sing doo-wop.'
'Yeah,' he said, 'they still play that stuff on the radio. You're from England and you think he was your father?'
'Well, yeah,' I said. 'He might be. I'm not sure yet, I have to talk to some people to find out.'
'Well, I hope you do find out, man. I wouldn't like it if my kids didn't know who I was.'
It was March 2003, a beautiful afternoon on the West Coast. I'd travelled 6,000 miles on a hunch, hoping I might find the man I had been looking for since the day I was born. Why couldn't he have been like Dennis? Instead here I was, 47 years old, a greying boy still trying to find his dad.
I needed one last push, a piece of luck. Surely he couldn't be so hard to find, not with a name like Johnny Flamingo.
Melvin Broxton. My mother wrote the name down on a slip of paper that I kept in a jumble of paraphernalia in a small plastic crate. On the second line she had written 'Airman, RAF Molesworth'. I'd stare at the words, imagining an American air base in Britain in 1955. I'd think about a council house in the Huntingdonshire village of Spaldwick the day my white, teenage English mother had to admit to my grandmother that she was pregnant - to a black American airman. It always made me think of a novel. But here I was, real.
Then I would put the paper away again.
Betty Randall was working behind the counter at Woolworth's in Huntingdon when a friend told her there was more fun and money to be had on the civilian staff at the nearby American air base, and as the friend's dad did the hiring, she was in.
Until then, Betty had spent most of her life being bombed or rationed. What a difference this was - these Americans came from an impossibly glamorous world, and when they weren't on duty all they did was enjoy themselves.
Melvin Broxton told Betty he came from Los Angeles. He was going on 20, a year older, and a handsome, charming, light-skinned black man. He saw her working at the base store and asked her out. That was a real risk. Segregation had ended in the US military a couple of years before but racism was a dominant social force.
Betty never saw her suitor as a second-class citizen. He was just a nice guy who treated her with respect, and he was fun. They would talk and share a soda on base; he would take her to the Hippodrome in Huntingdon to see a movie; once they went to London - first class on the train - to see Carmen Jones; they went to raucous parties where Ray Charles and Fats Domino were preferred to 'Rock Around the Clock', and Melvin's friends were always welcoming. He was for ever smiling. On her birthday he threw a party and a few of the guys he was in a vocal group with sang for her. This was the only man, she said, that she had ever truly loved.
And then it all exploded.
I was a big mistake. In 1955, coming home to a small village pregnant and unmarried at 19 was a scandal, perhaps survivable if the father did the right thing, or the child went for adoption.
But to be carrying a black baby! And Melvin didn't do the right thing. Some say the air force wouldn't let him because of the US attitude towards miscegenation, but in any case how would they have coped in South Central LA? Wasn't Melvin simply exercising common sense by not bringing a young white English girl into that world?
Maybe, but probably not. Marriage had never been his stated aim.
The singers at the birthday party were good, and by now they had won an air force talent contest and were regular performers at US military bases across Europe. The relationship was over. The pressures of youth, culture, nationality and race were too great.
Despite the twitching curtains, Betty fiercely wanted to keep her child. Her parents were hurt but they stood by her, saving me from an adoption home.
Then, a few weeks after I was born, Melvin chanced upon us when my mother visited the base on business. It was cold. Perhaps I was asleep. But perhaps I saw his dark blur of a face and bright teeth. I would have heard the lulling voice that would make him special, and felt his rough uniform as he held me for the only time. And perhaps I cried while my mother watched a father and son amid the dreary huts of the air base.
Perhaps. But then he was gone, for ever.
In the spring of 2002 I sat at a computer. For a couple of years I'd been making concerted efforts to find out what became of Melvin Broxton. Behind me lay a sometimes feckless life, a disastrous stepfather, a daughter, two marriages, myriad other relationships and a huge fleet of moving vans.
When I first wondered where this intense interest in finding my father was coming from I made no connection with my untethered past. I assumed it was simply me recognising I was nearer the end of my life than the beginning - so why not find out about the dad who left me behind? 'Not that I let it get to me,' I'd say, if anyone asked. I was kidding myself. I'd always needed Melvin Broxton. I began to crave closure.
And then I found an American web page for old-time R'n'B. There was his name: Melvin Broxton. At that moment the rest of the world stopped.
I read hungrily. Some vocalists in the US air force in the 1950s met a tenor who wanted to become their lead singer.
They turned him down. A shame, said the story, because Melvin Broxton went on to become Johnny Flamingo. Johnny Flamingo?
I ran a search, found another site, and a picture flooded the screen. My stomach tightened. I was looking at an imperfect reflection of myself, aged about 22. There was a title: 'Celebrating the life of a legend, Melvin James Moore, aka Johnny Flamingo, January 13, 1934 to December 24, 2000.'
Melvin Moore? Hold on. Where did that come from? And he had died? Don't tell me I'd found him and lost him again. I read it slowly. He was born Melvin Moore, but he had a stepfather named Broxton. Later he reverted to his birth name. In the late 1950s he left the air force, became an acclaimed singer in LA and married another singer named Jeanette Baker. And, yes, he was dead. It fitted. Surely this was it.
But wait a minute. Nowhere did it say this man was in Europe. The picture wasn't proof. And suppose I contacted his wife - suppose she scoffed and put the phone down? How could I let her know who I thought I was without perhaps blowing everything?
I did more reading, I phoned contacts in LA, but the only answer was to go and find out.
When I arrived on the West Coast I called Dick 'Huggy Boy' Hugg. He was the LA DJ who first recorded Johnny Flamingo. I told him I thought I was Johnny's son, and that I really wanted to make sure.
'You came all the way here for that?' he said.
'Well, yes,' I replied. 'It's important to me. What I really want is to speak to Jeanette, his wife.'
'Well, why don't you phone her?'
I told him it was delicate. He said: 'I'll talk to a friend who worked with 'em for years. He can get to Jeanette. I'll call in the morning.'
He didn't, but at least I had a lunch date in Long Beach with Steve Propes and his wife, Sylvia. Propes, a big, friendly bear of a man, is an author and record collector, the oracle on the groups in Southern California who drove doo-wop's boom in the late 1950s.
Propes had known Johnny and Jeanette. We talked about the music, the shows Flamingo played with acts such as The Penguins, Little Richard, Sam Cooke and Richard Berry and the Pharaohs.
'Johnny most liked to sing in that soft Nat King Cole style,' Propes said. 'He had some West Coast hits, but he never got the nationwide hit. His producers gave him songs to cover that had already been big in the East. He was a gentle kind of guy, the thing he loved was the music. You know,' he added, 'you do look a little like him.'
I told Steve that to finish this jigsaw I had to go to the family.
'You have a tough job there, Tony,' Propes said. 'Jeanette's not always the easiest person to talk to about Johnny. She's very protective of his memory. I don't know how she'll react.'
'I need a go-between, Steve, to break this to her gently.'
'I'd like to help you,' he said. 'But I don't really know her well enough to be comfortable about that.'
I nodded. Silence.
'Well, Tony,' Sylvia said. 'I've met Jeanette too, and she was real nice. If you can't get to her any other way, I'm willing to give it a try.'
I was so grateful. Her husband was uneasy.
'OK, honey,' he said, 'but remember, the guy's only got one shot at this.'
We got up and I asked them for directions. Propes saw my map. He told me to drive to a nearby bookshop and buy a better one. I said goodbye. I found the bookstore and wandered for a while, browsing. Then, on the intercom: 'Tony Randall, please come to the information desk.'
I had obviously misheard; nobody in LA knew me. I went to the desk anyway, and the assistant handed me the phone.
'Tony, it's Steve. We just got home. Thank God you're in the store. Listen to this.'
There was a fumbling noise as the Propes' answering machine came on.
'Steve,' said a woman, like she was half crying. 'This is Jeanette Baker. I just got home and there was a message from Huggy saying Tony Randall was in town. Steve, I have to speak to him, tell him to call me, tell him I'm not going anywhere until I hear from him.' Surely I was dreaming.
'I guess you better call her,' Steve said.
I walked to the nearest phone booth, shaking. I had spent a long time imagining this moment, but now it was here my mind was a blank. 'Jeanette wants to talk to you,' I told myself, and dialled. Half a second later she answered.
'Tony,' she said. 'I knew all about you. Melvin told me all about you.'
The wash of relief was overwhelming.
I told her how afraid I had been of upsetting her. She told me I should come to her as fast as I could. Then I was on the I-710 heading for Eagle Rock, to the house on a ridge over Dodger Stadium where Johnny Flamingo lived until cancer killed him on Christmas Eve, 2000, his dusty gold Cadillac outside. I re-ran the conversation with Jeanette in my mind, and two words kept coming back:
'You just don't know,' she had said. 'You just don't know how much your daddy would have wanted to be here to see you now.'
'Your daddy,' she said.
As I drove my eyes filled up. I looked for the nearest exit, pulled off the road and stopped the car.
Jeanette had told me to meet her at a McDonald's parking lot on North Figueroa St so she could guide me up to her home nearby. As I stepped out of my car a voice said: 'Tony?' We walked to each other, Jeanette looked at me hard and held out her arms. 'Mel sent you here,' she said. 'Since he's been gone I've been so low, and now here you are, a part of him.'
That night was spent hearing stories, listening to Jeanette - a big-haired diva of doo-wop - play a medley of Johnny's songs on her baby grand, and going through Melvin Broxton's scrapbook from his time in the air force. I found a picture of my mother wearing pedal-pushers, smiling by my grandparents' front door. I wanted to know if my father had ever wondered what might have happened to me. 'Oh, he did,' Jeanette said, 'and I would tell him we should find out about you. But we didn't really know where to start.'
I could tell Jeanette was sugaring the pill. I am sure Melvin Broxton would genuinely have loved to see me at his front door, but I'm not so convinced he was a man to go looking.
My arrival was a bombshell for her. Later she explained how difficult it had been to decide what to do about me. l learnt that Jeanette was my father's second wife, and I had four siblings from his first marriage. I was only going to be in town for two days. Should she phone them right away or break the news to them gently? Jeanette chose the latter, to give them time to consider whether they wanted to make contact with me.
The next afternoon we went to Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. 'Johnny Flamingo', read the plaque on my father's grave, and underneath: 'Melvin James Moore.'
She left me on my own. It had been 47 years since we were this close together. I didn't know what to say, but it started with 'hello.'
Most people, if they're lucky, have a north, south, east and west in their lives. It helps them navigate their way through. When I was closing in on Johnny Flamingo I realised how much I had always been lacking some crucial point of reference. Without it I had cobbled together a half-baked credo of chippy self-sufficiency and an irritating need to be recognised. Now I was beside my own missing link, the man who was supposed to be my North Star, and I didn't feel any resentment or frustration about him at all. I felt balanced and relieved. My only question was, what now?
The answer did not arrive there and then. But between leaving Los Angeles and turning the key in my door in Edinburgh a voice lodged in my head. 'Now nothing,' it said. 'You're OK. Stop worrying so much.'
A year disappeared before I went back to California. In that time one after another of my newly discovered family was in contact. They wanted to meet up as much as I did, and with their help the portrait of Melvin's life began to take shape.
When my father returned home after leaving the air force in 1956 he knew he wanted to be a singer, so he took a head-first dive into the raucous world of pop-driven R'n'B - only later was it dubbed doo-wop - simply because it was where the work was. The streets of central LA were bouncing with young vocal groups, mostly black or Hispanic; kids who'd been singing for fun at high school and in talent shows, getting gigs at dances then maybe trying out in one of many tiny neighborhood recording studios. Some of their names, like the Turks, the Saxons, the Cobras, sound like the gangs who terrify those same areas of town today, but then it was all optimism, energy and enjoyment.
'Disc jockeys like Huggy Boy were riding on that wave,' Jeanette Baker told me. 'Putting groups together, signing them to their labels, pushing their records on their own shows. Huggy used to do a late night show in the window at Dolphin's ofHollywood's record store on East Vernon. I didn't have no group, but I'd booked a recording session, so I went down to see Huggy and told him I needed a tenor to sing on a record we were making tomorrow. He put my request on air, and that's how I met your daddy. He heard Huggy Boy's show and came to see me right away.'
She was forming a group called the Dots, and my father took on the male lead parts. Then Huggy Boy decided to start a record label, Caddy, and made their debut song, 'I Confess', his first release. 'We wrote it in the car on the way to the studio,' she said. 'Next thing Huggy put it on the radio and we had a little hit. A while later Paul Anka covered it.'
Now Melvin was part of the scene, hanging around in LA partying and singing. He stayed with the Dots for a few records, then he quit and went solo. Huggy Boy decided Melvin should have a hipper name, and Johnny Flamingo was born.
'That was the kind of time it was,' said Jeanette. 'Everything was always moving real fast, there was so much talent out on the street. Some people were making a lot of money out of it, but usually it was the producers and publishers and promoters, and all they wanted was a quick buck. Sometimes your daddy could be playing to a room full of kids and at the end of the night the promoter would say: 'I'll pay you later'. I hated that so much, I used to fight against it, but your daddy wasn't a man for confrontation; sometimes they took advantage of him.
'They took advantage of us all, they weren't really interested in the music, just the money. We had more talent in LA than they ever did in Detroit,' she said, 'but Detroit had Berry Gordy, so they got Motown. All we got was ripped off.'
Johnny Flamingo's stage persona - the silken-voiced boy singing soulful sweet nothings into a breathless girl's ear - was not a whole lot different from that of Melvin Moore. He was cool, and an out-and-out charmer. Naturally, the girls loved him. An added bonus was that he was hot in the Latino community.
The reason for that, Steve Propes told me, was the cruising culture of Fifties LA.
'The Latino guys would love to get in their cars and just cruise around with the radio on, meeting up, pulling in, talking to the girls. You needed some smooth sounds on the radio to go with that, and Johnny's records were perfect for it. They loved that sound.'
Things weren't going too badly; Johnny Flamingo records were getting a good reception around southern California. But Melvin had already found in England that real life isn't as easy to control as a song.
That first marriage was to a lovely woman called Juanita. He stayed with her for 10 years, and for six of them he held down a dance club residency at the Den in Norwalk. There were big dates at some of LA's major R&B venues and he recorded regularly - at one point Melvin and Juanita even put out a record together, calling themselves Jack and Jill. In Propes's words, 'it stiffed'.
They had four children, but sadly, the singer's nocturnal lifestyle began to clash too frequently with the mother's need for stable domesticity. When they parted Melvin took up with Jeanette, with whom he had a child. As a result my immediate relatives are three half-brothers - Jimmy, Danny and Bobby - and two half-sisters, Nina and Gladys, all living in the Los Angeles area. Between them they have seven children who call me uncle. Then there is my aunt in Pasadena, Melvin Moore's only sister, Jackie, and her daughter, cousin Felicia.
Initially we emailed each other, then came the phone calls, no one quite knowing how we were supposed to feel. 'When are you coming back?' they said. We waited, because in the autumn my wife produced another grandson for Johnny Flamingo and Betty Randall. And finally, last February, I met them all in California.
I have never known such a life-affirming week. One by one we siblings met, holding our breath as we came through the door, hugging each other, dizzied by what this all meant, staring with happy astonishment at how much we look alike. 'Big brother,' said Jimmy one night, 'you favour daddy the most of all of us. When I see you standing over there like that I think, "That's Melvin."'
The day I left town, there was a dinner at Aunt Jackie's. We sat at her long dining table, talking and laughing. Jimmy said a prayer and more than a few tears trickled down. I thought of a desolate day in the Eighties at the US consulate in Sydney. An officer told me I could not have a visa to go and live with my girlfriend, an Australian posted to New York. 'Blood or soil,' she kept saying. 'Your adoption certificate proves that the stepfather who adopted you was American, but it doesn't prove that your natural father was American, and because you weren't born in the US that's what you need.'
I said: 'This is all I've got.'
'Blood or soil, sir,' she said. 'You have to have proof.'
Twenty years later, at this table in Pasadena decked out like Thanksgiving, I had proof. Real, living proof: this was my blood
