The Larks

This ensemble of vocalists, distinct from both Don Julian’s post-Meadowlarks trio that scored the 1965 R&B smash “The Jerk” and the unrelated Philadelphia soul act also called the Larks, traces its origins to the earliest period of recorded harmony singing and draws directly from gospel traditions. Its standout member was the prodigiously gifted Eugene Mumford. The group’s history opens in late-1930s Durham, North Carolina, where core founders Thurmon Ruth, Allen Bunn, Junius Parker, Jimmy Gorham, and Melvin Coldten—already overlapping in the Selah Jubilee Singers, the Southern Harmonaires, and the Jubilators—cut sides for Decca between 1939 and 1944.

During the mid-1940s the singers encountered Mumford, then performing with the Four Interns. Plans to add him to the Selah Singers were halted when he was wrongly convicted of attempting to rape a white woman and sentenced to a long term. Mumford served several years on a North Carolina chain gang before receiving a full gubernatorial pardon in 1949. He promptly entered Thurmon Ruth’s newly formed Jubilators and relocated with them to New York in autumn 1950; the lineup now comprised Ruth, Bunn, David McNeil, and Pee Wee Barnes.

The quartet issued recordings under multiple aliases—Jubilators for Regal, Selah Singers for Jubilee, Four Barons for Savoy, and Southern Harmonaires for Apollo. Apollo executive Bess Berman, eager to enter the prevailing R&B “bird group” market populated by the Orioles, Cardinals, and Ravens, retitled them the Five Larks; the name was later shortened to the Larks on their debut release.

Initial Apollo singles failed to connect until the group revived the swing-era standard “My Reverie,” previously a number-one hit for Larry Clinton featuring Bea Wain; their reading became a regional East Coast success. The follow-up, Allen Bunn’s “Eyesight to the Blind,” reached the national R&B charts, broke through in the Midwest, and secured television slots on Spotlight on Harlem, The Chesterfield Show, and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. The subsequent jump-blues release “Little Side Car” also climbed into the R&B top ten that season, though Apollo marketed it as “Bobby Smith and the Larks.”

In January 1952 Allen Bunn cut a solo session for the label. The Larks continued issuing singles yet could not sustain themselves on one-nighters or generate further chart entries, leading to their dissolution later that year. Thurmon Ruth resumed gospel work, Raymond Barnes turned to session guitar, and David McNeil joined the Dominoes.

Apollo’s Bess Berman revived the Larks in February 1954 as a mainstream pop outfit modeled on the Crew Cuts, Hilltoppers, Ames Brothers, and Four Lads, retaining only Eugene Mumford from the prior roster. The new configuration—Mumford plus Orville Brooks of the Golden Gate Quartet and David Bowers and Isaiah Bing of the King Odom Four—recorded six singles for Apollo’s Lloyds subsidiary and appeared at the New York Festival of Music and Drama in Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Commercial traction remained elusive, and this second edition disbanded in 1955.

Mumford next sang with the Serenaders on Hy Weiss’s Old Town imprint, then replaced Jackie Wilson in Billy Ward & the Dominoes alongside David McNeil; the group scored two major hits fronted by Mumford—“Stardust” and “Deep Purple,” both in 1957. A solo career failed to materialize, though he reportedly performed with an Ink Spots aggregation during the 1970s until his death. Raymond Barnes and David McNeil are both still living; Thurmon Ruth hosts a gospel radio program in New York City. Allen Bunn later recorded with the Wheels, whose “My Heart’s Desire” on Premium became a sizable hit, before forming the successful R&B duo Tarheel Slim & Little Annie.