During his 40 years spent operating at the margins of the record business, Consolidated Productions founder Mel Alexander penned a total of 73 original songs. Across those same decades, he’d track hundreds of tunes for his Ajax, Angel Town, Car-A-Mel, City Lights, Emanuel, JGEMS, Kris, Libra III, New Breed, Simco, Space, Tyshawn, Us, and Velvet labels. Between stints spent naming this flurry of newly formed record companies, he’d also try his hand at distribution, setting up the S&M, Soul Record, and BAB outfits at addresses dotting Pico Boulevard, along Los Angeles’s Record Row. He’d log hours as an on-air personality for KORG radio, and establish a host of promotional firms with names like Retail Record Network, World Wide Enterprises, Macro Media Incorporated, Melohank and Roice Promotions, and Associated Talent Development Company. Until well into his seventies, he’d still be busy tinkering with a never-realized public works project: his Watts Blues Walk of Fame.
The tireless Alexander tended to uproot his office abode on an almost annual basis—from Hollywood to Gardena, from Compton to Watts, and even, for a time, from Southern California climes to those of Columbus, Mississippi. And as Mel moved endlessly on, his Consolidated Productions kept right on consolidating, contracting year by year, box by box, tape by tape, until each candid photo had duly faded and every dead-stock record had up and disappeared. By the time Numero arrived at Mel Alexander’s Long Beach, California, home in 2013, the remains of his once-sprawling wax empire could be comfortably contained by a clutch of common bankers boxes, strewn across the dank dirt floor of a low-slung crawl space. “Do you believe in the power of music?” the frail Alexander asked us, as we dug through the underwhelming remnants of his once-mighty record conglomerate. It was a good question.
We were hardly the first to darken Mel Alexander’s doorway. The British had planted earlier flags. Brighton-born author Opal Louis Nations’s 1998 “Movin’ With Kris” article covered Alexander for Blues & Rhythm magazine, paving the way for that same year’s Kris Records...Los Angeles’ Showcase of Soul CD compilation, released by Ace’s Kent Records imprint. Around the turn of the century, local collector Mike Vague also turned up; recognizing their owner’s precarious state, Vague offered to store Alexander’s precious master tapes in his own Long Beach garage, until a more permanent home could be secured. Mel offered us his best recollections about that transaction, although details were foggy to the man who spent most of his last few years of life in bed. He passed away in June of 2015. Seven years later, we’d shimmy up a ladder into Mike Vague’s attic and uncover those aforementioned boxes of tapes, shedding fresh California sunlight onto one of L.A.’s best-kept musical secrets.
The residue of Mel’s various enterprises revealed that he was much more than a quasi-successful record man. He was an advocate for the independent purveyor, especially in a business that was hostile to Black entrepreneurs. In a 1968 letter to his various partners, Alexander got right to his point: “It has been a direct conspiracy on the part of some distributors to attempt to freeze out a smaller label, or someone they are not sure of because none of them wants another Barry [sic] Gordy to slip through.”
Gordy’s Motown was the high bar that every Black music producer aspired to—a homegrown operation that promoted its own community’s top talent. Mel Alexander built from the Detroit company’s blueprint, but found himself a bit shallow-pocketed when it came time to pay the radio station.
His self-published “Save Our Selves” manifesto laid bare Mel’s concerns: “Our local independent record producers spend a great deal of money trying to produce an artist only to find that his local stations will reject his product regardless of its quality,” he wrote.
“Naturally if these conditions continue many of our local producers and record labels can’t survive.” Despite these difficulties, Alexander produced nearly 50 torrid blues, jazz, R&B, and soul 45s before the close of the ’60s, never letting a given record’s failure to break get in the way of his efforts to crack another. Underneath his prolific Kris label logo, Alexander often ran one of a few inspiring slogans, with the optimistic “Sounds of Success” tagline riding the most records—because Mel Alexander chose to believe when few others did.
The 30 sides collected by this first volume of Consolidated Productions output cover Mel Alexander’s time on L.A.’s burgeoning 1960s R&B scene. It was an era that saw Alexander, still in his thirties, scrapping and hustling his hardest, lending each song the raw immediacy of a man doggedly on the hunt for a hit. And it seems that Mel hunted best alongside a partner, as many of these songs might’ve gone unrecorded had it not been for still more belief brought to the table by Fats Washington, Jim Jackson, Sidney Jones, Kent Harris, and Larry Johnson. A second volume, focusing on the sophisticated work Alexander turned out during the Me Decade, is planned for a subsequent compilation.
As is customary for our Eccentric Soul series, there simply were no chart hits to include. “In the annals of music, some records make it big, others do not. Whatever the reasons, we leave the gods of music to unravel the answer to these mystifying questions,” Alexander has said. “Success, in my opinion, is the ability to capture quality and hold on to it until it becomes notable by others, regardless of the time span.” It was April, 1964, when the first Kris single captured its own quality, now 60 years ago, and counting. And that’s long enough.
Born in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, on April 7, 1929, Mel Alexander was just 11 days old when Mamie Jessie, his mother, died. Frank, his father, saddled with the weight of three other young children, shipped Mel off to New Orleans, where he’d be raised by his aunt Lucille. After mustering out of the army in 1949, he parlayed his potato peeling skills into soul food restaurant ownership and began immersing himself in the Crescent City scene. “I [was] inclined towards music, namely blues and doo-wop, and New Orleans was a musical hotbed, infested with all kinds of music,” Alexander told Opal Nations in 1998. Singing alongside Leroy Bishop, Frank Dixon, and his brother Frank Jr., Alexander formed the street corner-ready Arrows a cappella group and spent considerable amounts of time at Cosimo Mattasa’s J&M Recording Studio. With radio hits by Little Richard and Fats Domino churning out of the studio on a weekly basis, J&M provided the education Mel desired. After connecting with producer Bumps Blackwell, Mel was infected by a fever for the west coast, inspiring him to plot to his relocation to Los Angeles.
One by one, each Arrow moved west, culminating in the group’s first and only session for Charlie Reynolds’ South Central-based Flash enterprise in 1958. And while the native-sploitation “Indian Bop Hop” didn’t catch on north of West Adams, it did provide Mel his first run in with postman-turned-engineer Ted Brinson and his garage studio at 2190 West 30th Street. What Brinson’s studio lacked in air conditioning and insulation was offset by his rock bottom prices, and Mel was a frequent customer throughout the 1960s. It was likely here that he ran across the wheelchair-bound Fats Washington and began his next apprenticeship.
Flush with cash he’d made from penning Johnny Ace’s 1954 smash “Pledging My Love,” Fats doubled down, establishing the Movin’ label in 1961. According to Mel’s session logs, the Invincible Songbirds’ “Too Close” b/w “Three Steps” was his first production, tracked on August 15, 1961, although he went uncredited on the resulting Movin’ Records 100 disc. A reconstituted Arrows 45 arrived on Movin’ in early 1962, trading under the name The Convincers on the Alexander-Washington co-writes “Rejected Love” and “Go Back Baby.” By June, Mel had his first solo single on the market and his first individual writing credit on the bluesy “What A Friend,” a song he’d revisit several times over the next decade. His final vocal contribution to Movin’ landed in late ’63, with Mel trying on his Acey Alexander alias for the jazzy R&B number “That Girl’s Not Bad.” And while none of Mel’s Movin’ singles received even nominal airplay, each was a valuable lesson in both record making and in nurturing the connections required for survival in L.A.’s cutthroat music business.
Given the Movin’ label’s habit of issuing no more than a half-dozen 45s a year, Mel found himself the owner of ample free time. In 1964, he struck out on his own with two originals, “The Time Has Come” and “My Assurance,” setting up his Prompt Music Publishing and Kris Records in quick succession. Brothers Frank and James Foster and their backing band The L.A. Untouchables were Kris’s inaugural guinea pigs, the nondescript white-labeled 45 landing in April with a thud. And although the 45 stalled out, Alexander identified the Foster brothers as the main issue, jettisoning both but keeping the backing tracks, which had been arranged by 23-year-old piano prodigy James Carmichael.
Carmichael had made the trek west from Gadsden, Alabama, in 1960 to study medicine at UCLA, planning on putting himself through school by plying the piano trade. “That’s not the way it happened,” Carmichael told the Gadsden Times in 1984. “I thought I would use it to get through school, but when I saw how lucrative it was, I had to make a decision.” Prior to connecting with Alexander, Carmichael’s fingerprints were left on 45s issued by the Vine Street, Progress, Lummtone, Cyclone, and 4 J labels, and after Kris he’d work for Mirwood, Audio Arts, and finally Motown, where he won two Grammys producing The Commodores and Lionel Richie. In 1964, however, he worked exclusively for Mel. Their second team-up came via Emanuel Jenkins, with whom Mel had struck up a partnership after hearing his demo of “Shut Up,” sung by teenager Marilyn Calloway. Issued on their on-off Ajax imprint, “Shut Up” b/w “My Lover” was the first record to bear one of Alexander’s trademark confident slogans: “When Better Sound Is Made.. We Will Make It.” Jenkins and Alexander kept the catchphrase going on their Emanuel label, which launched in June 1964 with Houston transplant B.B. Carter and continued throughout the summer with the saccharine girl group sounds of The De Velles and rhythm & wop from Herb Bailey. Mel would later convert “Shut Up” into Carter’s “Cool It Baby” and track “My Lover” with both Carter and The Hill Sisters.
Haunted by his own melodies, Mel repeatedly returned to songs, tirelessly believing he was one vocalist away from a hit. He reinvented “That Girl’s Not Bad” as the instrumental flip “Acey Ducey” to Frank Clemons’ first stab at “If I’m Dreaming,” another song he couldn’t quite get away from. “My Assurance” had another hook Alexander could not shake, and by the fall of ’64, he and Carmichael were back in the studio working with melodic baritone Harvey Lee Jones on the definitive version. “This man could have been one of the greatest singers alive with a break or two,” Alexander said. “He had a smooth stylistic approach to music.” Credited to Jones’s Lee Harvey alias, the late-1964 single “My Assurance” b/w “If I’m Dreaming” was the first to bear Mel’s “Sounds of Success” slogan, although two more offerings under the Harvey name failed to stick. Convinced that the Lee Harvey name was being dragged down by association with America’s assassin dujour, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jones and Alexander shifted to the less radioactive Lee Jones for his 1967 and ’68 follow-ups “I Got To See My Baby,” “I’m Gonna Make It (Up To You),” and “What Is It? (That You Are Afraid Of).” Cursed by Oswald or otherwise, none of the Harvey Lee Jones-sung 45s resonated, and beyond a few fliers and his five singles for Kris, precious few traces of his career remain.
James Carmichael wasn’t the only future star to come up through Consolidated Productions. Before co-founding Black Jazz Records in 1969, pianist Gene Russell and the rest of his Trio (Bill Hillman, Woody Baptiste) raced up and down the west coast on the fumes of the dying cool jazz scene.
A student of Hampton Hawes and The Three Sounds’ Gene Harris, Russell pawed at the soulful edges of be-bop, tracking two sessions with Alexander that produced a pair of 1965 singles: “Foggy Bottom” b/w “Doin’ The Snake Hips” and “Jet Set” b/w “Feelin’ Good.” Russell parlayed his half-decade of L.A. hustling into a deals with Dot and Decca Records, issuing Takin’ Care of Business in 1966 and Up And Away the following year, before abandoning the major label system entirely.
By the middle of 1965, Mel Alexander had finally opened his first office on Record Row, ushering in a world of new opportunities and partners. The first to take advantage of Mel’s 8 youngblood energy was Chapman Distribution’s Al Chapman, who signed an exclusive agreement for Ann Stacy and Elliott Shavers’ vocal and instrumental takes on “Boy Don’t You Fool Me.” The tune was shopped to Alexander by Rogers & Van Buren Music Publishers, who had their talons deep into Shavers’ two dozen compositions. A hot tenor saxophonist who cut records for a handful of micro indies throughout the ’60s, Shaver made his last appearance on 45 with “Boy Don’t You Fool Me,” but it’s Ann Stacy’s bluesy basement beehive rendition where Mel’s magic can be heard.
Across town at Movin’, Mel had made partner. Washington’s most recent discovery was a 31-year-old electric blues singer-songwriter from Vicksburg, Mississippi, trading under the name Little Joe Blue. Born Joseph Valery on September 23, 1934, Blue landed in California after detouring through Detroit, Reno, and faraway Korea, working straight jobs while gigging on the weekends. After a rejected 1964 session with Modern Records founders the Bihari Brothers, Blue wound up collaborating with Mel Alexander on what proved to be a first and last taste of chart success for the both of them. Cut in Ted Brinson’s garage in 1965, “Dirty Work Going On” wormed its way up to #40 on the Billboard R&B charts via an upstream to Chess. While on the Movin’ clock, Mel also produced early sessions for future Consolidated mainstays Jimmie “Preacher” Ellis and Roy Milton.
“After the Little Joe Blue escapade, I began to move on to a label of my own,” Mel said of his 1966 departure from Movin’. And while ’66 had been Mel’s least-productive year musically, it was the year in which he set Consolidated Productions in motion. With former Arrows/Arpeggios/Convincers tenor Sidney Jones, he boot-strapped S&M Distribution and moved to 2992 West Pico. The first and only release to bear the dubious S&M mark was Spider Walker’s “I’m Mad” b/w “You Gotta Make A Change.” The company soon changed its name to Soul Record Distribution and split for 2847½ West Pico—not even a full storefront. This new concern lasted a little more than a year, and in that time only a few 45s appear to have carried the “Soul Record Dists.” byline. Ty Karim’s storming 1967 northern soul classic “Lighten Up Baby” was the most notable. Karim came to L.A. in 1964 at the age of 17 with a baby on her hip, but soon fell in with Romark Records impresario Kent Harris. After a few false starts on the Romark and Senator labels, Harris approached Mel Alexander about bankrolling his young bride’s critical third single. The tasty sounding Car-A-Mel label was created for this one release, after which a falling out between Harris and Alexander resulted in “Soul Records Dists.” being redacted on later pressings.
In this era, Mel took on new partners like the changing of the seasons. Jim Jackson’s Space label was brought in-house and eventually produced a number of 45s by Jimmie “Preacher” Ellis, Little Joe Blue, and Roy Milton, in addition to The Determinations, The Hill Sisters, and Lorenzo The Hat & The Mad Hatters. When Larry Johnson showed up with the Del Reys, they formed not one, but three new ventures; New Breed Records, Angel Town Records, and Associated Talent Development Company, which also published the music industry tipsheet People. In February of 1967, Johnson and Alexander ponied up for 10,000 45s and a few metal racks for the opening of a short-lived record store at 4125 West Washington Boulevard. It closed before anyone could even commit its name to memory.
Over on the Kris imprint, Mel’s luck wasn’t any better. Singles by Lee Jones, Billy Williams, and the Batman-baiting Dynamic Duo & The Penguiness fell flat despite a new catalog numbering system and label design. Much of the work of this period found Mel spelunking through his own personal tape vault to track new versions of the same songs he’d been pedaling for half a decade. The Dynamic Duo flips the backing track from Lee Jones’s “Prove It” into the mostly-instrumental dance craze cash-in “Turkey Trot” while Dynamic brothers Joe and Herman put a not-that-convincing Sam & Dave over Frank Foster’s “Only True Love” on Side A of Kris Records 1670. And Alexander returned again to the well he’d dug himself for Billy Williams’s “So Called Friend (Oh! What A Friend),” which reimagined his 1962 solo debut “What A Friend” as a funk workout. By the end of 1967, Alexander was operating out of a house at 2613 S. Hauser, just at the doorstep of “The Black Beverly Hills,” but a long way from Pico Boulevard.
Discouraged, Mel Alexander turned to radio, co-hosting KORG’s R&B Classics show five evenings a week as Big Daddy Kane—not to be confused with the East Coast rapper who named himself after characters from TV’s Kung Fu and Beach Party. Mel’s co-host was Bobby Sanders, an equally ambitious young Black record man who was working through similar airplay and distribution issues with his Soultown Records. Soon, the on-air pair began to discuss throwing in together. A torrid, rambling screed set in bold all-caps was fired off to the media, declaring war on the record business-as-usual, offering a full suite of services on offer from the upstart record company, including distribution, promotion, and the eyebrow-raising “ENTERTAINMENT AND CONSULTING.” But Mel’s aim was true. Inspired by the ongoing Civil Rights Movement, he led his own charge against the injustices that had rained down on independent record labels since the shellac disc days, a torrent that had fallen especially hard on minority operators. Consolidated Productions had been born.
The first artist to work under Mel’s experimental venture was one Alexander had discovered during his Movin’ moonlighting days. Jimmie “Preacher” Ellis was born in 1935 near the Texas-Arkansas border and spent his formative years singing in the church. “Where I was born, the country was so segregated,” Ellis said. “We had no recreation other than going to church.” Ellis spent his high school years as baritone with The Traveling Four, his voice booming from Louisiana to Alaska and on 78 for Aladdin’s Score Records imprint.
After a stint in the military and a doo-wop turn with The Centuries on Dootsie Williams’s Dootone concern, Ellis set his sights on Los Angeles in 1964. The following year, he fell in with Fats Washington and, under Mel’s tutelage, produced 45s for both Movin’ and its Ride subsidiary label. When Alexander split in ’67 to focus on Kris and Consolidated, he brought Ellis with him. That year’s “Two Tenors - A Tone And A Bone” b/w “(C’mon) Dance To The Drumbeat” was Kris’s first foray into straight blues, a path Mel would veer toward more and more as R&B evolved into soul, funk, disco, and beyond. “The blues is about living, it’s about people, it’s about things,” Mel Alexander told the People’s Tribune in 1991. “If you’ve never lived, you’ve never had the blues.” And Mel still had quite a bit of living to do.
“For a long time we have been pondering over our economic dilemma,” Alexander wrote in a letter to his many associates in 1968. “I feel togetherness is our only way out of this pitfall.” And it would be the only way, after a fashion. Across the next decade, Mel Alexander brought on an untold number of ambitious new partners, co-founding his next label or enterprise year after year, and changing his business address just as frequently. The next big hit seemed forever just around the corner—if only he and his Consolidated Productions cohort could turn up the right slogan, the perfect logo, the correct zip code, or that committed new colleague. All Mel asked was that you believe.
Ken Shipley, Los Angeles, April 2024
