A MOST MAGICAL THREE MINUTES IN A LIFETIME/ How ‘60s Rock & Roll Group “The Uniques” Placed Hope Local Charles Flowers in Music History

Anyone with ears and a heart can be immediately be transported to another place and time when a familiar song comes over the airwaves. It’s always a song that stirs deep emotions that range from tears of joy to tears of sadness in only about a three-minute span.

So, this story is dedicated to what those songs mean not only to the listener but to the performers too, because those three minutes became the foundation of a stirring but brief career that brought a young man to difficult career and life decisions.

Many readers may not know that Hope (Spring Hill) native Charles Flowers was the bassist for a popular music group “The Uniques”, in the early 1960s. The group formed from four students from Southern State College (now SAU) in Magnolia and brought Flowers as the fifth member after a successful try-out.

Youth is a wonderful thing, especially when you have the world on a string.

In this case, it was a guitar string.

Most know Charles as the husband of Hempstead County Treasurer Judy Flowers. The duo is just about the nicest couple you could ever run into, representing another pair of what’s good about living in a town called Hope.

Now retired, most know Flowers represented Farm Bureau Insurance in our area for a total of 48 years, first working out of Texarkana as an adjuster driving more than 1,000 miles a week.

An original product of Spring Hill, born to C.V. and Leedee Flowers, the family was completed with a sister, Willidee.

Let’s put the tape on rewind and how the story begins.

“I’ve loved music all my life,” Flowers quickly remarks. “Back when I was five-years-old in Spring Hill, my sister was a good pianist and when we had company, she would stand me up by the piano and play while I would sing Eddie Arnold songs as long as people would stay there,” he says with a laugh like it was yesterday.

“In the mid-1950’s I was in the Hope high school band. I played a horn instrument and also the double bass (the big stand-up kind). Back then I was also in a dance band composed of some members in the Bobcat band.

“I graduated high school in 1960 and in April of that year, I made a choice to go to Southern State College.

“I went over for my college visit, and happened to take a lunch break over at the Student Center. They had a little stage inside and there were four guys practicing at the time. I listened to them awhile and thought they were some of the best I’d heard in my entire life.

“They took a break and I told them that they were really good, but where was the bassist?”

And as if fate had been waiting inside that Student Center for Flowers that day, they said “we were really looking for one,” Flowers states.

So, the door for Flowers was now cracked open.

“They ask me if I could play and while I said told them I could but that I didn’t have a lot of experience with an electric bass.”

So Flowers made them an offer.

“I asked them if they would keep the spot open in the band and when I got back for the fall semester, that I will own a bass and will be able to play it.”

“I was still living at home in Hope and when I got back, I ordered a Sears and Robuck Silvertone Bass and an amplifier to go with it.

“When I went back to school, the group said ‘let’s see what we can do,’. There wasn’t any transition problem at all after what I had been doing with the jam sessions that I had with my friend Jimmy “Bear” Barentine over the summer.”

And the group was formed.

“The group had already been playing around the area with proms and such. They were an all-instrumental group at that time playing Rock and Roll. And, in the fall semester of 1960, started playing together.

They were originally called the “Cut-Ups”, which fit the rock and roll culture for the time, but several members felt the moniker just wasn’t going to cut-it. So, somehow the group decided on “The Uniques” and got a professional-sounding name.

“I don’t know how in the world we came up the “The Uniques,” but it stuck,” Flowers chuckled.

And so, it wasn’t long that they were using that new name on the top of their first-ever recording contract.

“In the winter of 1960, we caught the attention of some guys in Hot Springs who had a recording studio, and called themselves the United Southern Artists,” Flowers recalls. “And, as the instrumental band, we produced a couple of recordings including one named “Renegade”.

By then, The Uniques had been playing in numerous contests around the state and even played for KARK television in Little Rock which featured a dance show fashioned much like “American Bandstand” with Dick Clark.

The skillet was hot for rock and roll in the early 1960’s. There was a teetering of styles in the earliest days of the genre after 1951, when the actual term “Rock and Roll” was coined.

But it was near the turn of the decade to the 1960’s when rock and roll bands became very “electrified” in their instruments, turning up the volume on regretful parents everywhere.

“We stayed busy,” Flowers continued. “We played and won contests, (such as the Columbia County Fair and the Arkansas Livestock Show talent event in Little Rock) and in the spring we’d play proms everywhere and at Christmastime we’d play at the country clubs.”

“There were some instrumental groups like us such as The Ventures who had a song titled “Walk Don’t Run” (Debut Album title too and song reaches #11 on charts). We sounded as much like them professionally as any other instrumental band of the day.”

The group would soon take a larger step in their careers by gaining an up-and-coming regional talent to basically become their front man.

Joe Stampley was a youngster from just across the state line in Springhill, Louisiana. He had befriended musician Merle Kilgore at the age of 15 and the two began writing music together.

When Stampley eventually joined the band in early 1961, the fuse to their musical rocket was lit.

“Stampley had been working in the business for awhile before we got together,” Flowers notes. “He had connections in Louisiana and we utilized them some.

“He was pretty much the front man, and even though I did some of the vocals, once we gained him, he did most of the vocals.

“We could learn and play almost anything that was on the charts. A song would come up on a hit parade and we’d only need to hear it a couple of times and we could play it pretty quickly.”

The talent was beginning to really take shape for the group and more offers would follow but Flowers was approaching a crossroads in his life.

It was going to be difficult choosing between a fast-paced music career or a stable job back near home.

“There were five of us back then and on a decent booking, we could usually get $100 apiece for four hours work,” Flowers says. “And, we were having enormous fun.

We didn’t get a whole lot of sleep back then.”

But there was something about going out to perform.

“When we got everything together and we hit that first note in a show, it was just wonderful. We were really in our element.

“And, the women would flock us,” Flowers admitted. “They were mostly teenagers who were out front in our shows,” he chuckles now.

“I started to get a vision,” Flowers now says seriously.

“In the summer of 1961, I had a job at the International Harvester place here in Hope. If one of the bandmembers had a booking, we’d get together and talk about it.

“This one particular booking that summer was going to be a sizeable variety show and we were going to be the front band for several stars. One of the star’s names that continues to stick in my mind was Ann Margaret.” Yes folks, that Ann Margaret.

“The guys in the band called me to talk it over and besides having to make some choices about being off and such, I could see us in my mind, go out there and maybe bigger offers would be coming.

“But also, the nagging thought in my mind was all that exposure wasn’t going to be good for a marriage. So, in that phone call, I said to them ‘Guys, let me call you back.

“And, when I did, I told them that I was going to leave and explained that since Bobby Stampley was dying to get in the band, I would sell him my equipment.”

Talk about a weighty decision for a young Flowers, but mature beyond his years.

“It was a bittersweet moment stepping away because I loved music so much and we all fit together so well,” Flower recalls.

“We still stay in touch some.

“Joe Stampley came to Hope to play the Watermelon Festival several years ago and he was staying in the Holiday Inn Express. I was able to go over and see him and took the kids to see him as well.

“I asked Joe that last time about how long would he continue playing and he said “They are going to have to haul me off”.”

A perfect contrast of two men, who were very young at the time, each making a single life-changing decision.

And so, for that figurative “three minutes” of a lifetime for Flowers may have meant the end of a song at the end of a show at the end of an abbreviated career that can be easily summed up by six words from Flowers.

“I wouldn’t take anything for that time in my life.”