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Another great singer – Young Jessie<\/strong> aka Obediah Donnell “Obie” Jessie<\/strong>, who was one of Richard Berry<\/strong>‘s earliest musical collaborators, passed away on April 27th.<\/p>\n Obediah Donnell Jessie was born on December 28, 1936 in Lincoln Manor, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. His father was a cook, and his mother, who had a brief career as “Plunky Harris<\/strong>,” was a multi-talented musician that taught her son how to play piano and ukelele. Sometime in 1946, they moved to Los Angeles, California, where Obediah continued to study music at Jefferson High School, a virtual hotbed for a lot of talented jazz and blues musicians.<\/p>\n Richard Berry was one of the friends and musical collaborators that Obediah met at Jefferson High<\/strong>. Along with Cornell Gunter, Thomas “Pete” Fox<\/strong> and Beverly Thompson<\/strong>, these five high school kids assembled a vocal harmony group that got signed to a record deal at Modern Records<\/strong>, a family-owned record company that had success selling records by Hadda Brooks<\/strong> and B.B. King<\/strong>. An earlier version of this vocal group with slightly different personnel was called the Debonairs<\/strong>, and they also briefly called themselves the Flamingos<\/strong> until they found out about another band with the same name on the east coast. Joe Bihari<\/strong>, who signed this vocal group, offered them the name “the Flairs” as a namesake band for the new Flair subsidiary record label they’d be recording for. The band thought it was a good career move, and decided to be known as the Flairs.<\/p>\n In the course of a year, both Richard and Obediah found themselves doing more recordings outside the Flairs, eventually leaving the group to focus on their careers as solo artists. in 1954 Jessie signed a solo contract with producers Jerry Leiber<\/strong> and Mike Stoller<\/strong>, and began recording as “Young Jessie.”<\/p>\n He explained the name change:<\/p>\n “(The name) came about because I sounded like I was forty, like ancient for a boy of 17. I had this deep baritone voice and the Biharis wanted me to get close to the rock ‘n’ roll market. I could have called myself Obie Jessie but I didn’t want people to think I was old.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/flairs_crown_album_names.jpg\")
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