THE BIRTH OF THE FOUR PALMS
by Nate Thomas

The Four Palms were a tremendously talented  doo-wop group of the late fifties and early 60s. They had a modest hit with “Jeanie Joanie Shirley Toni” on the Aladdin Records label in 1957-58 and a technical success with “Maybe Its Wrong” on the World Pacific label in 1960, under the new name, The Rainbeaus. The Four Palms were discharged from the U.S. Marine Corp in 1959, and the owners of the new label were afraid that some conflict would arise by using the Four Palms name. At the time of the Aladdin contract, they were all military members and only one member, the bass singer, Nathaniel Thomas (Tom) was 21 years of age, and could legally sign a contract.

Why is the saga of The Four Palms so important? Well, for one, they are representative of how talent was abused, mismanaged, or exploited in the ‘50s and, two the story is being told by a member of the group from the inside as opposed to some writers great project. Third and lastly, the group could have been great. Their records featured tight exquisite harmony, a clear distinctive lead voice, and to this day, many thought that they were a “white “ doo-wop group. Despite this, their comedic showmanship on stage was as unique as was their ability to interact with an audience as few have ever done without a huge big-selling record.

This story is told in four parts, the first part covers from meeting  in the Marines to appearing on their first television show 5 months later in 1957. Subsequent parts will encompass a transfer to a special service unit in Santa Ana, California, where, for almost 2 years they did live shows in high school, colleges, record hops as Marines while appearing as civilians on the weekends as recording artists and performers with a booking agency. The last part of the story chronicles their discharge from the service and the beginning of life in the real world of rock and roll recording. Trying to make it big there presented some obstacles the Four Palms found to be very difficult. 

But I am getting ahead of the story. Let me introduce you to some Marines at Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms, California --a military base placed far out into the desert so that when they fired off artillery, it wouldn’t hit any humans  for miles and miles. It is about 160 miles east of Los Angeles but we liked to joke that it was so far into the desert even camels would get thirsty. Upon assignment there one took a bus from Los Angles to Banning where you would take a stagecoach the remaining 60 miles. At Twentynine Palms Marine base, the recreation was going to the nightly movies. If there  was no movie you went to your company  rec room and either shot pool or goofed around.  Each company composed of A, B, C, & D batteries of about 200 Marines each, plus 200 men in what was called “ Automatic Weapons” had one rec room. Typically, on a Friday, if you owned or had access to a car, at 3.00 P.M. the base looked like a jailbreak was occurring.  Everyone got the hell out as fast as possible to go to L.A., San Bernardino,  Palms Springs, or wherever. Twentynine Palms was like being exiled into hell where, in the summer, temperatures of 110 degrees and above were normal.  That is why a normal Twenty-nine Palms workday was from 7:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M. I recall many days when we marveled as sweat turned to salt before we could wipe it off our foreheads. 

MCB Twenty-nine Palms was a part of Camp Pendleton, located some 200 miles away but, as of January 1, 1957, MCB Twenty-nine Palms officially became an independent base, under the command of Gen. McFarland. The U.S. Marine Corps, for those who don’t know, was, and still is a part of the U.S. Navy. Each a year the Navy held a world wide talent contest in each of its 14 Naval Districts. Camp Pendleton sent contestants each year to the 11th Naval District Finals in San Diego but Twentynine Palms was never represented. The winners of the base competition went to the district. One to three of each district winners were flown to New York City for the world finals, which were held at St. Albans Naval Hospital in front of one–two thousand, disabled veterans and active sailors. The winners plus whoever Marlo Lewis, Ed Sullivan’s producer, selected to fill out the show would appear on the Ed Sullivan All-Navy show. 

Twentynine Palms Special Services decided that, as an act of independence, they would send an act or acts to San Diego for the 11tha Naval District Finals, after holding a contest at the theater on the base, which meant that on that particular night in March, 1957, there would be no movie. Boy, were we mad!

As a number of us sat around the rec room that night awaiting our turn to play “bid whist” or to shoot pool, others were over in the corner singing although we didn’t know one another. We had doo-wop in common. Six of the singers stood out, more or less: 
o  Pfc. Reddick, a short non-descript, young man from Cleveland, had an awful voice but he was enthused. 
o  Pfc. Ervin Lucas, from Danville, Illinois had an infectuous smile and could sing,but it was also said that he was one hell of a tap dancer.  He was going to tryout  for the talent show. 
o Pfc. Louis Faison from Detroit was good at tenor or bass. He was a classical good-looking young man of medium build who was obsessed with neatness, cleanliness and his personal appearance. Even the denims he wore were creased. He loved girls and they loved him, but Twentynine Palms and the absence of women was a curse to Louie. 
o Pfc. James Jackson, from New Orleans claimed to be a drummer and he was no pretty boy, but he could sing any part any time, and could find the missing harmonic part in an instant. 
o Pfc. Hasker Nelson from Cincinnati took it upon himself to lead since no one else seemed to want to. He seemed to take himself far more seriously than others because he came across as somewhat more of a spoiled brat than a mean-spirited person.  The thing he did have was amazing vocal range although he had problems with rhythm. 
o Cpl. Nate Thomas, from Chicago, the author of this story, had just reported to the base in mid-January and was immediately sent out on special maneuvers as a radio operator. He had sung with 4 or 5 different groups overseas and  was just trying to meet people as the new guy on the base. He was a natural bass talker and singer and knew harmony inside out. He loved to sing and had a somewhat intellectual demeanor until it came to performing.

After singing “Crazy Little Mama” (At My Front Door) for the 5th time, Lucas suggested that we come to the theater and sing in the talent show.  Well…. After some discussion we decided, why not?  Hell…. what if we won and got a free trip to San Diego. It would be nice. While walking the 3 blocks to the theater we decided to sing “Crazy Little Mama” and “Without Love,” Clyde Mcphatters big record being played all over the country.  Our version was different.  We had a baritone rather than tenor lead and we sang acapella.  We also were not very good. 

When we arrived at the theater, Cpl. Bell, the Special Services assistant was so relieved he almost canonized us. Lucas would do his tap dancing act after playing the bongos in the dark with luminous green coloring on his hands. We would sing.  The only other acts was a singer and a not-very-funny comic. We called ourselves, the Five Boondockers. We were bad, but not so bad as the other three acts, so we took first place, Lucas was second.

We cornered Cpt. Bell and pleaded with him that we had 5 weeks to get ready for San Diego, and could he arrange for us to get time off from our regular duties to practice singing.  He informed us that we could get the mornings off for practice, which meant that we could avoid the dreaded morning physical exercise and running that 400 yards around the parade grounds each day.   He also informed us that the group competition was limited to four singers so we would have to get rid of one-singer.  That gave us an excuse to get rid of Reddick. He was shorter than the rest of us at 5’3” whereas, Jackson, Faison and Nelson were all 5’7” and me, I ‘m 5’10” tall. More importantly, Reddick was tone deaf and, absolutely, could not sing and everyone was too nice to tell him. 

Practicing everyday we began to get good. We began to get very good and to build up a repertoire of songs, including some humorous, some serious and some non-descript. We developed choreography and discovered that we liked one another.  We knew that we couldn’t win in San Diego but we were not going to be embarrassed. 

Three weeks before San Diego Cpl. Bell arranged for us to entertain for free at the Smoke Tree Supper Club in Smoke Tree, California, a little community right outside of Twenty-nine Palms. The club held about 50 people when packed and on the Thursday night, when we were to perform about 30 people were present. We were more concerned about the free food spread we were admiring than the sparse audience.

We sang most of what we had rehearsed and received polite applause, but at the intermission one young lady approached me and said,  “I have a lot of records but you guys really sound different. You are going to win in San Diego."  When she left we said, “Right!”  “And the Navy is going to let Marines win all its competition-especially unknown Marines.”  That audience was enough to inspire us to practice even harder each day in the shower of the Special Services lavatory.  That Saturday in April 1957 we were tense as we jumped into the station wagon to drive to San Diego’s downtown YMCA, where the event was to be held.  Johnny Mathis, a singer we had never heard of was singing “Wonderful Wonderful” on KFWB a just released a record, and Louis remarked that we should sing those types of songs.  We had made a major change in our presentation.  I suggested that “Bin Bam Boom” (At My Back Door), told a better story, with a punch line, which “Crazy Little Mama” did not have.   They did not know the song so I taught it to them.  We tried it out at the Supper Club and it went over big so we made the switch, and developed some very tight choreography to support the words of the song. It was tough since neither Jack nor Hasker were good dancers, but they managed to learn well enough to appear in-sync.

We arrived in San Diego hoping that in our brief stay we could at least visit the famous sites. At the YMCA we almost passed out when we saw the program for the talent show. There were 64 acts appearing!  We were 60th !  It is difficult to estimate the number of people in the audience that night. Every seat and every bit of space was occupied in the auditorium.  My guess is about 1100 people. As we watched each act appear, especially other groups, we took note of how we could improve our act, and we would go backstage to do it or practice. That night, before we went on, we went backstage for the following reasons:
1) We didn’t have fancy outfits, and had worn our military uniforms.  We removed the jackets in order to appear neater.
2) To make the uniform fit into the act we decided to put the military “delayed cadence count” to music and to march out singing it.
3) We created a way to get off-stage by splitting up.  Two of us exited stage left and two stage right.
4) We demanded two microphones.  We noticed that one microphone was not picking up the background voices clearly in the other groups that sang. 

We saw and heard an abundance of talent from the 11th Naval District, which is comprised of most of the west coast. The 6 other doo-woop groups sounded outstanding to us. We waited and waited and began to get fatigued from waiting to perform. Lucas had gone on 24th and was now joking around. Most important as one pretty ballad followed another, the audience was getting tired and applause was getting harder to come by.  We thought that the renamed Four Palms, in the honor of the base, were “dead meat.”

When we marched out singing cadence, I don’t know if it was the timing, the music, or what, but something happened.  The audience perked up and the judges began to smile. When we broke into “Bim Bam Boom” we could hear ourselves over the silence, and when I said the punch line, “She looked like something from the Brookfield Zoo”, the audience exploded with laughter, and at the end of the song people were standing and applauding.

Before we started to sing “Without Love “ I heard one judge say to another (SOMETIMES ON STAGE YOU HEARD THINGS THAT AREN’T MEANT TO BE HEARD BUT YOU HEAR THEM). “ Where did they come from?  I’ve never heard of them”. As we began singing there was no sound from the audience. I wondered, “what the hell is going on? Is the mike off? Can we be heard?“ Still….silence. There we were singing our asses off and not a sound from the audience. But then, all four of us noticed as our routine turned us toward the judges. Ms. Moore, the female judge, was crying…, so was the other female judge. Man this was scary….but…at the end, Hasker’s last words….”Without Love I have Nothing At All”…the building exploded.

People were slamming seats up and down, stomping, whistling, screaming.  I felt the goose bumps all over my body. All we had to do was finish first, second, or third and we could go to New York. At that moment we knew we had a chance. The rules specifically said that the top-scoring 5 acts would come back for a brief 20-second piece of their act, after which the judges would announce the winners and runners-up. We were so sure that we wouldn’t win anything we had never prepared a 20 second routine. 

Not only did they call us as one of the top five but Lucas also made it with his bongo/ tap dancing. As the last act to be called we were still arguing as to what to do as the announcer called out, “And now The Four Palms”. We immediately began singing our Cadence and marching onto the stage. The rules said nothing about audience intervention, and as we marched out the noise from the audience was so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves. The audience kept yelling ”more, more” and we kept bowing once we reached center stage. As we left we kept asking each other “Could we possibly win this contest?”  Five minutes later the answer was a resounding “YES” and for a few minutes The Four Palms became weeping willows. 

We were going to New York to represent the 11th Naval District. There we would make our first trip to New York City- our first time staying in a fancy-hotel and for the first time we began to believe that maybe we were a lot better than we thought. Little did we know that this was only the beginning? 

By the way, Lucas came in fourth and was the first alternate if one of the top three could not make New York.

Link to Part II