House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (19 page)

He said, “I guess so.” . . .

We’d never rehearsed on it or anything. So I say, “Well, okay, you start it off , and when you get ready for me to come in on the tenor [saxophone], let me know. Just bow your head, and I’ll come in.” . . . And the fi rst time, he came in, played with the drummer and the rhythm behind him and everything, and then after he played it, told me to come in on the saxophone. Then he came back and played another chorus and played it out.

And the man [Quinn] that was over the studio shouted, “Whoa, that’s a hit!” [Laughs] The fi rst time down! And that’s how I recorded Albert Collins.

Hoping to emulate Daily’s model of success, Hayes planned to capitalize on the fervent initial reaction to this release by enticing a major label into a lease agreement. However, before he could do so, that plan fell through.

When the local mogul Robey observed the frenzy over “The Freeze,” he quickly recorded a blatant cover version performed by guitarist Fenton Robinson (1935–1997) and his band. Robey rushed to issue it on his Duke label (#190),
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Albert Collins, publicity photo (by Benny Joseph), early 1960s backed with another instrumental titled “Double Freeze.” Years later Collins recorded “The Freeze” again elsewhere. But as for the original track of that song, Hayes bitterly asserts that Robey “just killed that record”—and with it, the Kangaroo label’s best chance for a breakthrough hit.

Of the six songs recorded by Hayes on that fateful fi rst session as a Kangaroo Records producer, two by the Dolls were issued fi rst (#101/102), followed by a pair from Collins and then the two from Hughes. The next two releases, credited to Henry Hayes and Orchestra, featured the songs “Two Big Feet” and “Call of the Kangaroo” (#107/108) and “It Takes Money” and “Stop Smackin’ That Wax” (#109/110). The fi nal Kangaroo release was by Little Joey Farr performing two Christmas songs, “I Want a Big White Cadillac for Christmas” and “Rock ’n’ Roll Santa” (#111/112).

Though Hayes would remain active as a session player and bandleader into the 1990s, he soon gave up on his Kangaroo Records experiment, convinced that Robey’s powerful infl uence over radio DJs, record distributors, and the black Houston music scene in general would make further eff orts futile. But thanks to his relationship with Quinn and Gold Star Studios, as well as that unforeseen chance to record Collins’s original articulation of “The Freeze,” Hayes had made music history, if not much money, with his little label that “jumped.”

Conversely, Quinn’s late-1950s affi

liation with Kangaroo Records only

added to his already impressive legacy as one of the most important sound
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engineers ever to document Texas blues, especially as performed by postwar African American singers and guitarists in Houston. Having recorded seminal fi gures such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lil’ Son Jackson, and others in his original studio in the late 1940s, Quinn brilliantly (even if unknowingly) ac-centuated his behind-the-scenes role in blues history by also being the fi rst to engineer sessions for Collins and Hughes, their worthy successors. In the span of ten or eleven years, Quinn thus made some of the most relevant recordings for tracing the evolution of Houston blues guitar.

Sometimes he did so on debut recordings that were unfortunately never released or even pressed. Such was the case with yet another stalwart of the Texas blues guitar sound, Pete Mayes (1938–2008). Playing in a style heavily infl uenced by his role model T-Bone Walker (1910–1975), with whom he fi rst performed on stage at the age of sixteen, Mayes worked with numerous other blues giants from the mid-1950s into the start of the twenty-fi rst century. Some of those who used his talents on stage include Big Joe Turner (1911–1985), Lowell Fulsom (1921–1999), Percy Mayfi eld (1920–1984), Junior Parker (1932–1971), and Bill Doggett (1916–1996). Moreover, Mayes recorded as a session player with numerous groups over the years, and he released his own W. C. Handy Award–nominated album,
For Pete’s Sake,
on the Austin-based Antone’s label in 1998.

Yet like his good friend Hughes (with whom he collaborated on the album
Texas Blues Party, Vol. 2,
issued in 1998 by the European-based Wolf Records), Mayes fi rst recorded at Gold Star Studios under the technical supervision of its founder, Quinn. That virgin experience occurred in 1960, and Mayes would not return to the site again until 2006, when he recorded tracks with the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra for the album
Houston Is the Place to Be.

Here Mayes recounts how that inaugural 1960 session came to be and his memories of the place:

We were playing for Van Bevil [at the venue called Van’s Ballroom], and he thought we were great and off ered to pay for us to go into the studio to record a 45. My close friend Percy Mayfi eld, who lived in Louisiana, was hanging around and off ered his services for free to coproduce the project with me. So in either June or July—I know it was then because it was stinkin’ hot outside and it was great to be in a big air-conditioned studio—we went over to Gold Star. Big old room with a hardwood fl oor and high ceilings. We got a great sound with my band. Van paid for the session, and we cut a song called

“I’ll Tell the World” and an instrumental track.

Over forty years later, Mayes has no regrets about making that recording and says that he learned a lot from both Mayfi eld and Quinn. “I don’t know
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why, but we never got to release it,” he says, “and nobody knows where the master tapes or any of the acetate dubs went. . . . It was a great experience, but I wish we still had that master!”

Though few people probably ever got to hear that Mayes recording, the fact that it existed—even if only briefl y—underscores again the crucial role that Quinn and Gold Star Studios played in documenting African American blues players in the South’s largest city.

Similarly, Quinn’s studio was involved in recording tenor saxophonist and jazz bandleader Arnett Cobb (1918–1989). Though in the 1940s he had moved to (and recorded in) New York as a member of Lionel Hampton’s band, Cobb never lost sight of his Texas blues roots. Writer Keith Shadwick aptly characterizes Cobb’s style as marked by “blues phraseology and wild swoops and hollers.” As further evidence, in 1984 Cobb shared a Grammy Award for best traditional blues performance for his collaboration with B. B. King (b. 1925) on the MCA album
Blues ’n’ Jazz.

In mid-1963, while home from the East Coast, Cobb brought a band of like-minded musicians into Gold Star Studios to record. Included in the group was special guest Don Wilkerson (1932–1986), a tenor saxophonist best known for his own recordings on the prestigious Blue Note label, as well as for his acclaimed work on stage and on recordings with Ray Charles (1930–2004). Together Cobb and Wilkerson delivered a full session of musical improvisation. As far as we know, this was the only time these two artists ever played together in a studio-recording situation. The supporting players included Duke Barker on drums, Paul Schmitt on piano, Buel Niedlinger on bass, and Cleon Grant on percussion. The results were preserved on a tape that was archived at the studio and only recently discovered. Though material from that session has not been released for public consumption, the primary heir to the Cobb estate has been exploring options for issuing it as an album.

Based on the conversations (captured on tape) between the players and the technicians, we infer that this project was self-produced by Cobb. That may explain why it was not released, for not only did Cobb maintain a busy schedule of professional work nationwide and abroad (including numerous recording sessions for other producers), he also suff ered a series of health problems that could have caused him to shelve this project.

This intriguing reel of tape features about a dozen diff erent tunes, with multiple takes of some numbers, as well as some busted takes and interven-ing studio chatter. To hear Cobb and Wilkerson trading solos is remarkable, and the sonic quality of the recording is excellent for that time. We hope that someday soon it will be made available on CD, but as for now, it remains an unpublished yet valuable cultural artifact from Gold Star Studios.

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of the numerous small start-up labels that recorded at Gold Star Studios in the late 1950s, if they were not focused (like Kangaroo Records) on blues, they were most likely to be doing country or pop. One of the most unusual of the country-based labels was Sarg Records. Founded by a former U.S. Army Air Corps sergeant named Charlie Fitch (1918–2006), the company was based in Luling, Texas, located approximately 140 miles west of Houston. There he operated the Luling Phonograph and Record Store, which also served as the headquarters for his jukebox business. As Andrew Brown has documented in the richly detailed book that accompanies
The Sarg Records Anthology,
Fitch ultimately released 150 singles over a span of twenty-fi ve years, producing his fi rst session in December of 1953 and the bulk of his catalogue by 1965. In so doing, as Brown puts it, Fitch “single-handedly ensured that at least a portion of the music of South Texas at mid-century would be preserved, and the musicians themselves remembered.”

Some of those regional musicians who made their recording debuts on Fitch’s label would subsequently become famous stars elsewhere. Perhaps the best example is Willie Nelson, who did his fi rst work as a studio guitarist for a pair of two-sided Sarg recordings by Dave Isbell and the Mission City Playboys in August 1954 (#108 and 109). This session was produced at Houston’s ACA Studios and engineered by Bill Holford, Quinn’s friendly cross-town rival. Of course, Nelson would fi nally record under his own name a few years later when he joined the D Records roster, which led him to Gold Star Studios.

Another

fi gure who got started with Sarg was the almost equally legendary Texas musician Doug Sahm (1941–1999)—who would later come to Gold Star Studios to record (for another label) with his band, the Sir Douglas Quintet.

But Sahm had been, as described by James Head in
The Handbook of Texas
Music,
“a musical prodigy who . . . was singing on the radio by the age of fi ve, and was so gifted that he could play the fi ddle, steel guitar, and mandolin by the time he was eight years old.” With that background, Sahm made his studio debut at age thirteen on a Sarg single (#113) issued under the name Little Doug. That 1955 track, like much of the Sarg catalogue, was also recorded at ACA Studios.

Of the Sarg-controlled tracks recorded by Quinn at Gold Star Studios, some had actually been leased as fi nished masters from Nucraft Records, whose owner Boyd Leisy was in the process of shutting down. Among those were recordings by Link Davis, Floyd Tillman, Johnny Nelms, James O’Gwynn, Coye Wilcox, and Sonny Burns. From that bulk acquisition, Sarg actually issued only two records as new singles: Link Davis’s “Cockroach” backed with

“Big Houston” (#136) and Floyd Tillman’s “Baby, I Just Want You” and “Save a Little for Me” (#137). Unbeknownst to Fitch, however, two of those four
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tracks had already been released on Western Records: “Big Houston” (#1073) and “Save a Little for Me” (#1072)—a surprise that perhaps prompted him to withhold the other titles.

Apart from those Leisy recordings, Sarg staged its own Gold Star sessions that led to several releases in 1956, including three discs by Al Parsons and the Country Store Boys (#140, 147, and 154), plus others by Johnny Carroll (#144), Al Urban (#148), and Dick Fagan (#155). In 1958 and 1960 Al Urban returned to Gold Star Studios to record additional sides for Sarg (#158 and 174).

Though the Sarg label never scored a hit record, it produced sonic documents of historical value. Moreover, the fact that the majority of the Sarg sessions occurred in Houston speaks again to the professional reputations of those two important early Texas recording engineers, Holford and Quinn, and their respective studios, ACA and Gold Star.

For Quinn, such renown meant that he was regularly dealing with musically minded entrepreneurs such as Fitch or Henry Hayes, men with big ideas and minimal funding who nonetheless wanted quality sound engineering on the recordings they produced.

On the other hand, there were also guys such as Dan Mechura, the owner of Houston-based Allstar Records. That label operated from 1953 to 1966, issuing many legitimate recordings but also perhaps dabbling in the less than reputable business known in common music business parlance as “song (or song-poem) sharking.”

That practice involved advertising for and otherwise recruiting gullibly op-timistic amateurs who believed they had scripted words (as lyrics or poetry) worthy of being set to music and immortalized on record. The typical scam required the fl attered victim (whose ego had been pumped up by repeated declarations that his work was simply brilliant) to pay an exorbitant amount of money in advance to the shark-producer. These funds ostensibly went to hire a composer/arranger to create the musical setting for the words, as well as to pay studio musicians and one or more singers to perform the song at a recording session arranged by the shark-producer—and to cover the costs (all of which were infl ated) of renting the studio and engineering, mastering, pressing, distributing, and promoting the record.