House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (15 page)

There were also several smaller analog tape decks that were used to create the relatively new echo technology for vocal processing. Engineers had discovered that if you split the vocal signal off to a tape recorder that was rolling in record mode, and then brought that signal back from the playback head to the mixing board, you would have a slightly delayed signal which, used with discretion, could enhance the original vocal. This technique is often referred to as slap-back echo or delay, used frequently on early rockabilly, country, and rock ’n’ roll records.

The control room monitors were JBL, and the studio had Altec A7 speakers. Outboard gear in the early 1960s consisted of some large passive equal-t h e b i g s t u d i o ro o m e x p a n s i o n

6 3

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 63

1/26/10 1:12:13 PM

izers, made by a company called Pulteq or custom designed. In 1964 Gold Star would add equalizers to the Ampex MX-10 and MX-35 mixers. The most common microphones in use at the time were the Neumann tube U-47 or U-67, various RCA ribbon microphones (like the DX-77 and DX-44), an Altec/

Western Electric 634, and other smaller Electro Voice and Altec dynamic microphones.

Directly below the control room is where the reception area was located (and still is today). There was also an area that housed an acetate-cutting lathe (later replaced with a Gotham/Grampian lathe in 1965). That space is now the SugarHill Studios front entrance room.

The new studio and offi

ce space marked a signifi cant upgrading of

Quinn’s Brock Street recording facility and the types of projects it could support. Though there was no concerted eff ort among other Houstonians, Quinn—with fi nancial support from Daily and perhaps also from Robey—

was doing his part to bring serious studio recording space and services to the city. Musician Clyde Brewer explains the visionary motivation for Quinn’s expansion:

Bill Quinn built the large studio big enough to be used for television shows and commercials, as well as to cater to the many Daily recording projects. . . .

He built the new Gold Star studio to be used as a sound or TV stage, in the hopes that he would be able to do local video and audio production. I remember . . . comedian Jonathan Winters had come into Gold Star to do a TV commercial while he was on tour performing in Houston.

Musician Glenn Barber adds another insight: “Originally the reason he wanted a room that size was that he wanted to record high school and college marching bands in there, and also big orchestras and such. He was trying to bring in new business and create a new market.”

Slick Norris says the strategy worked: “J. L. Patterson got in with Quinn in, like, 1963 and made his money cutting high school big bands.” Another example is Ed Gerlach’s Big Band, which recorded the album
The Big Band
from Texas
(Dored Records) there in 1964, engineered by Walt Andrus. That seventeen-piece group, even with an extra singer, fi tted easily into the new studio. Back when most recordings were done in relatively small rooms, engineering such a session in Houston would have been diffi

cult. Thus, Quinn’s

ambitious expansion redefi ned the possibilities.

Nevertheless, despite its relatively grandiose scale and Quinn’s desire to expand his clientele (which he did with some success), in the late 1950s and 1960s Gold Star Studios continued primarily to record blues, country, and rock bands or other small combos. Given Quinn’s apparently low-key per-6 4

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 64

1/26/10 1:12:13 PM

sonality and working-class graciousness, his enlarged studio facility became a gathering place for many players in such groups. As Sleepy LaBeef put it during a 2004 tour of the building,

It is like coming home. This place still has the same feel that it did when I recorded with Bill Quinn in the ’50s and ’60s. Bill Holford over at ACA was a great recording engineer, but Quinn was less formal, and Gold Star was a much better hangout for the musicians. Most of the players who came here to record in those years also felt like they were at home at Gold Star and

[with] Quinn.

One of those who had accompanied LaBeef there on various sessions was musician Dean Needham, who recalls his fi rst, awestruck impression of the place, circa 1963:

I had been to studios before, but I had never seen anything like this before. It was this huge room with a plank wooden fl oor. Everybody else had egg-crate cartons on the walls and carpet on the fl oor. And I’ve never been in one since that looked like that big room here at Gold Star.

Precisely when Quinn started conducting recording sessions in the big room is not clear, but oral testimony suggests that it was in late 1958 or early

’59. Norris says, “I cut my last record in the house studio in 1958. So I guess that the big room was built sometime after that; possibly in late spring or early summer of ’58. . . . I never cut any records in that big room.” LaBeef adds, “I recorded in both of Bill’s studios; in the small place on the ground fl oor of his house and the big studio next door. He built the big studio in, like, 1959.”

Glenn Barber concurs, “I think that big room was built in early 1959, and we were still doing sessions in the smaller studio while it was being built.”

Then, to illustrate Quinn’s prankish wit and down-home ingenuity—part of what made Gold Star Studios a cool place for many musicians perhaps—

Barber relates the following anecdote:

When they were building it, there was a young guy helping him do the construction. I think he was a musician. He was teasing and making fun of Quinn, [saying] “the old man” this and “the old man” that. [Saying] “He’ll want this, and that’s crazy.”

True to his reputation for a calm demeanor, Quinn ignored the youth’s insulting critiques—up to a point. Barber continues,

t h e b i g s t u d i o ro o m e x p a n s i o n

6 5

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 65

1/26/10 1:12:13 PM

Bill was going to hang a speaker, and he was going to use a turnbuckle to ad-just the angle of it as it hung. He didn’t have any at fi rst, but fi nally he found one that was all rusty and looked terrible. So the kid said, “So you aren’t going to buy a new one, are you! You’re going to use that one!”

Quinn said, “Come and hold on to this turnbuckle for me.” He then pulled a can of silver spray paint from behind his back and painted the turnbuckle all the way down to the kid’s wrist. Then he said, “Now that’s pretty, ain’t it?”

Despite such a capacity to humiliate an annoying hired hand, Quinn was evidently viewed by many of the musicians as a likable fellow. However, he was also often a curiosity. For example, Barber describes Quinn’s typical approach to positioning musicians to record during a session.

Bill had a strange way of recording in that big room. He had a great big circle painted on the fl oor. It was a big black circle about twelve feet across. . . . He had a Telefunken tube mic hanging out over the middle of that circle. You’d go up in the control room, and he’d have this little Roberts tape recorder. It was a stereo machine, and he didn’t have multiple tracks. He would set up the musicians in the circle, and he would move them around until he got it balanced the way he wanted. He would move the piano back and forth and the rhythm guitarist, and he had two isolation booths for the singer and background singers to sing in. He mixed as he went along on the session. He was a genius and very crude about what he did at the same time. But he cut hit after hit.

Again illustrating Quinn’s mostly nonverbal manner for making a point, Barber recalls another encounter.

I remember one session where he called down from the booth and said,

“Glenn, could you put a bit more treble on your guitar?”

Well, I didn’t like a lot of treble, but I said, “Sure, I’ll give you some more.”

Finally he came down from the booth and said, “Where’s your treble at?”

So I pointed, and he turned it full on. He asked then, “Where’s your bass?”

And again I pointed. He turned it all the way off . That was the way he made me play.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and that’s the way it was. A lot of times he would take a crude sound, something that was shrill and terrible, and make it something that the people wanted to hear.

6 6

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 66

1/26/10 1:12:13 PM

Regarding Quinn’s sound engineering skills, LaBeef adds these comments:

Bill was a genius at the electronic stuff . He could take small equipment, things that seemed insignifi cant, and get a lot of sound out of it. He was the only one that I knew of that could compete with the sound coming out of the Sun Records Studio [in Memphis]. He had a lot of smarts and seemed to know what he wanted and how to get it out of the equipment that he had.

Even though Quinn’s technical know-how was widely respected, his ability to pay for the expansion of his recording center was likely limited. Evidence suggests that Pappy Daily helped fi nance the remodeling. As previously cited, Ted Marek’s 1957 article identifi es Daily as a “co-owner” of Gold Star Studios.

However, the precise nature of the Quinn-Daily business partnership remains a mystery. Until his retirement from the studio business in 1963, Quinn was the only offi

cially acknowledged owner, judging from various business docu-

ments. But Daily’s prolifi c level of production, fi rst with Starday and later with D Records, made him Quinn’s major client from 1955 through 1963.

Though by 1958 Daily was producing sessions in Nashville, he continued independently making records back in Houston, and Gold Star was obviously his studio of choice. By possibly paying for some of Quinn’s expansion costs, Daily could have been protecting his own interests as a local label owner—

and may have also been settling debts for previously rendered studio services.

The result was a modernized facility with space enough to host any kind of session—and one at which Daily presumably carried clout concerning scheduling, rates, and related services. Norris opines, “With as much stuff that Pappy recorded at the house studio, he probably owed Quinn quite a bit of money. That might have been how Bill got the money to build that big room.

I’d be more inclined to believe that it was pay-up time.”

LaBeef concurs that Daily probably helped fund the renovation but believes that Daily’s African American counterpart may have also been involved:

“Pappy Daily contributed quite a bit to the building, as well as Don Robey.

Robey had Duke, Peacock, and Back Beat and all those other labels. I’m pretty sure that Robey also contributed.” If Robey were involved, however, it may have been retroactively. There is no evidence to suggest that Robey recorded at Gold Star before 1959—that is, before the big room was built. However, starting that very year Robey suddenly began to use Quinn’s facility for many projects.

However he may have paid for it, Quinn’s new studio appealed, in size and amenities, to label owners and musicians alike. By the time he was engineering sessions there, he had been in the record-making business about eighteen years. He had come a long way from the former Telephone Road grocery
t h e b i g s t u d i o ro o m e x p a n s i o n

6 7

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 67

1/26/10 1:12:13 PM

store building where he had launched the Quinn Recording Company—and from simply recording on the ground fl oor of his residence. As the 1950s ended, Quinn was—for the fi rst time in his life—practicing his profession in a room originally created for that purpose.

sleepy labeef is the stage name of a musician who was born Thomas Paulsley LaBeff in 1935 near Smackover, Arkansas. After moving to Houston in 1954, he started performing on local stages. Eventually discovered and recorded by Daily, LaBeef became a regularly performing member of the
Houston Jamboree,
a popular Saturday night live radio show, where he joined an informal vocal quartet featuring George Jones, Sonny Burns, and Hal Harris. They sang old gospel songs recalled from their upbringing. With the six-foot, six-inch-tall LaBeef holding down the bass part, this quartet reportedly often closed the show to a standing ovation.

LaBeef spent much time at Quinn’s Gold Star recording facility—both before and after the big room expansion. Here he explains how he came to know the place—and jammed with its founder.

[After moving to Houston], I immediately went to visit the radio stations and recording studios to familiarize myself with the music of the city. I met radio personalities like Hal Harris, and of course he was a staff musician for Starday Records, and played on most all of their recordings. So I met Hal and went over to Gold Star to watch a few of the sessions, and I met Bill Quinn. . . .

Bill was a musician also and played the organ. . . . One day I was over at the studio doing a few things . . . just me and my guitar. Bill left the control room and joined me on the organ. . . . It was the fi rst time I ever heard of an engineer leaving the booth and playing on a session.

Performing in a style that drew from his country roots but also veered into rockabilly, LaBeef would go on to record at least thirty-three sides at Quinn’s Gold Star Studios between 1957 and 1962 for various labels, including Dixie, Gulf, and Wayside. Daily fi rst produced him for a May 1957 release on Starday (#292) featuring the songs “I’m Through” and “All Alone.” This disc was reissued on the Mercury-Starday imprint (#71112), as was a follow-up single that off ered the tracks “All the Time” and “Lonely” (#71179). Of the many songs LaBeef has recorded in his career, he is best known for his version of

“Tore Up,” which he recorded at Gold Star Studios in 1959 in the early days of the big room. It was originally released (under the name Tommy LaBeff ) on Wayside Records (#1654), and it resurfaced later on the 1979 retrospective album
Early, Rare & Rockin’ Sides
on the Baron label.

6 8

h o u s e o f h i t s