Columnist Jerry Fink: In fifth decade, Checkmates still going strong

Friday, July 19, 2002 | 9:15 a.m.

The Pussy Cat A Go Go was one of the hottest nightclubs in Las Vegas in the '60s. It was located on the Strip, south of where the defunct Desert Inn now sits.

That's where Marvin Smith acquired the name Sweet Louie.

Sweet Louie and Sonny Charles, childhood friends from Ft. Wayne, Ind., who have been the soul of The Checkmates for more than 40 years, were playing at the Pussy Cat in 1964. It was their first gig in Las Vegas.

"We were there for eight weeks," Smith recalled. "One of the songs I sang was 'Louie, Louie.'

"A black lady named Mary came in every night to see us perform. Whenever she came in I would greet her with 'Hello, Mary. You look nice.' And one night she said, 'You know, you are so sweet. I'm going to call you Sweet Louie.' And the name stuck."

He liked it so much that he wears glasses whose frames spell out "Sweet Louie."

The Pussy Cat holds a lot of memories for Smith and Charles, who formed a doo-wop group in high school in the mid-'50s that eventually turned to R&B. The group was so close, the five members joined the army together in 1959.

"After we got out of the service (in 1962) we were playing at the Black Hawk Club in Salt Lake City," Charles said. "Our guitarist had a girlfriend whose dad was a big-time lawyer who knew the entertainment director of the Thunderbird casino in Vegas."

The connection led to an audition at the Thunderbird, but The Checkmates were rejected.

"They said we didn't have an act," Charles said. "Back in those days you had to have an act, with comedy hats, skits, a schtick. We were basically a dance band. So we went back to the Black Hawk and started staging our show. We started doing stuff."

They still do their stuff today. Charles and Smith are consummate showmen from Las Vegas' old school of entertainment -- singing and dancing onstage as they draw their fans to the dance floor night after night; cutting up for comic relief throughout their performance.

After developing their act, The Checkmates returned to Las Vegas and won a gig at the Pussy Cat. They were there, off and on, for three years, at the same time performing at other venues on the Strip -- the Sands and Caesars Palace among them.

"The Pussy Cat was the place to go to dance," Smith said. "It was the most notorious place in town. It would be packed 'til eight in the morning. All the show people on the Strip would go there. Sly and the Family Stone performed there."

Charles said The Checkmates were the first band to make R&B succeed in Las Vegas.

"People were eating it up," he said. "We were doing Ray Charles, James Brown, Brook Benton, Marvin Gaye -- all the groups that were popular."

The Checkmates also were responsible for integrating the Pussy Cat, said Smith and Charles.

"This was during the time of the first Watts riot (1965)," Charles said. "It was a tense situation everywhere.

"There was a citywide policy of segregation. At the Pussy Cat, the black folks sat in one section of the room and the whites in another. They could dance together and meet at the bar, but there was no mixing of people sitting at the tables."

The Checkmates were one of the first integrated groups in the country. There were three black musicians and vocalists, and two white members. It's why they chose their name.

"We came out one night and looked at the room and said, 'Hey, this just isn't going to go on. We have empty seats on this side of the room and you won't let people come in,' " Charles said. "The owner of the club said the hell with it, and the next thing you knew everyone was sitting where they wanted -- and no one complained."

The Pussy Cat was the launching pad for The Checkmates, who became Las Vegas icons.

It's where singer Nancy Wilson caught their act and signed the group up with her management team.

"She came in and liked what we were doing and asked if she could manage us," Charles said. "The next day she flew in her lawyers, they sat through our show and signed us up."

"She got us on most of the national variety shows of the time -- Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson," Smith said. "We did three Ed Sullivan shows and 'Playboy After Dark.' There was a lot of national touring."

Wilson got them a contract with Capital Records, but after several unsuccessful records The Checkmates signed with A&M in 1968.

A&M recorded the group's most successful single -- "Black Pearl," which was released in the summer of 1969. More than a million records were sold. It was the theme song for the Miss Black America Pageant for several years.

But just as it looked as if The Checkmates' career was going to soar into the stratosphere, the group crashed.

"By January 1970, the whole ride was over," Charles said. "We broke up and went our own separate ways."

The members could handle struggling to succeed, but not success.

"People in my camp were telling me I was better than those guys, and people in their camps were telling them they were better than the other guys," Charles said. "We were young. Our egos got in the way."

Charles did a solo act and Smith created another band, but they were only apart for three years and then the two lifelong friends got back together. They have parted and reunited several times over the years.

Now they seem to be back together for good, often performing in local lounges as Sonny Charles & Sweet Louie and The Checkmates. Their primary gig for the past couple of years has been at Arizona Charlie's (East and West), where they are a popular dance band that still does schtick.

On occasion they leave town, playing showrooms or corporate events. But mostly they are satisfied performing in Las Vegas, even though things have changed dramatically since the days of Pussy Cat A Go Go.

"Lounge acts don't get any respect anymore," Charles said.

"Steak and eggs get more advertising than we do," Smith growled.

Lounging around

The Manhattan's singing pianist Howie Gold will perform tonight at the Tuscany's Piazza Lounge, 255 E. Flamingo Road. Showtime is 8 p.m. He will host an open mike session at 11:30 p.m.

The Jimmy Lee Smith Band will be at the Sand Dollar Blues Lounge 3355 Spring Mountain Road July 27.

Singer-songwriter-guitarist-Hadden Sayers, known for his hard-rocking bar music, performs at the Boulder Station's Railhead Thursday night for the Boulder blues series.

Jazz guitarist Raj Rathor, vocalist Diana Smith and bassist Justin Vogel perform 8-11 p.m. Thursdays at the Jazzed Cafe on West Sahara Avenue near Durango Drive.