Career
Darryl Vincent and the Flares was formed in Meridian in 1956, and Cummings joined the group in 1959. toured clubs in Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, before settling in Biloxi as the house band at the popular 800-seat Gus Stevens Restaurant, the first Gulf Coast supper club to offer upscale entertainment with such headliners as Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, Mel Tormé, Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren. moved to Chicago, but Cummings soon decided to form his own band in the New York area. Cummings found fame with, the group he named and founded in Union City, New Jersey in 1968. Cummings brought the nineteen-year-old Dennis Locorriere into the band as a bass player.
While playing the "Bandbox" club in Union City, The owner asked George what the name of his band was, and on the spur of the moment, he wrote down ", Straight from the South, serving up Soul Music".
They recorded their debut album for Columbia Broadcasting System/Columbia in 1970, and sold a million copies of their single, "Sylvia"s Mother," when it was re-released in July, 1972. The group was caricatured on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Cummings sang the bass-register lead vocal on the second verse of "The Cover of the Rolling Stone", as well as playing the comical lead guitar on the instrumental break in concerts (Locorriere actually played it on the recording). He also sang "Makin" lieutenant Natural", "Penicillin Penny" (both written by Shel Silverstein), and "I Got Stoned and I Missed lieutenant" (co-written by Cummings with Silverstein).
In 1978, at the Muscle Shoals Studios, he collaborated with the legendary Delta bluesman Big Joe Williams on one of the singer"s last albums, The Final Years: Big Joe Williams.
Produced by Cummings, Joe B. Stewart and Ken Hatley, this album was released in 1993 by Gitanes Jazz/Verve. In 2003, Cummings worked with Ken Hatley on the soundtrack for Florida City, a film drama about advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. In the spring of 2004, the Flares were reborn in Lebanon, Tennessee when Cummings joined original members, guitarist Jim Pasquale and drummer Norman "Knobby" Lowell, along with Nashville singer-songwriters Scotty Cothran, Harold Hutchcraft, Jack Bond and Forest Borders, to cut the comeback album, lieutenant Is What lieutenant Is.
In September 2005, Cummings began recording a solo Civil Defense, working with Pasquale and Hutchcraft.