House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (49 page)

While the Cash Money sessions at SugarHill Studios yielded a lot of material, we have never ascertained most of the titles or details of subsequent publication. “I am quite certain that some of the songs that we started and some that we fi nished wound up being released—and may even have been hits in the rap world,” says Workman. However, given its lax documentation of session details and titles, Cash Money has left us clueless. “Their organization did not take the time and care that Sony [owner of Columbia Records]

and Destiny’s Child did to keep track of what was recorded and where,” he explains.

Christensen

off ers some additional details:

The fi rst people [to record] were producer/drum programmer Mannie Fresh, keyboardist Wolf, and bass guitarist Rick Marcel. None of the songs was cre-m i l l e n n i a l d e s t i ny

2 4 3

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 243

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

ated offl

ine beforehand. Baby and Slim, the owners of Cash Money Records, were real good at keeping the rappers, the posse, and various other visitors away down the hall or outside while this crew was working. From an engineering point, it was cool working with the music bunch. They approached it like a band creating a song. In four hours we would have four songs done, recording to twenty-four-track analog. That took us to midnight. So then those guys would split until the next day.

Then in came the rappers and vocal producers. Everything changed at that point. The guys were all jerks. But they were outstanding rappers and got the job done. . . . We worked on songs for Mack 10’s upcoming CD release
Bang or Ball,
which featured Lil’ Wayne, Turk, and B.G.

One of the few results we have been able to trace, the
Bang or Ball
album from Cash Money/Universal Records, made it to number four on the
Billboard
R&B/hip-hop albums chart in January 2002.

In addition to the Cash Money crew, a Jamaican-born reggae-dancehall rapper also cut a hit record at SugarHill Studios in 2001. Robert Minott, sometimes billed only by his surname, had recorded there in the late 1980s, but when he returned in the new millennium he brought with him tracks on analog tape, Pro Tools fi les, and other digital platforms. Over a period of about six months we worked on fi nishing seventeen songs. Six had been recorded in Jamaica, four were created at SugarHill, and the rest came from dif-ferent programmers in Houston. We did the vocals for most of the songs in Studio B, with mixing done in Studio C. Errol McCalla, who had programmed

“Independent Women” for Destiny’s Child, also worked on this project, which resulted in Minott’s album
Playing the Game Right
on the World Beat Records label. The sound of this record blended Jamaican pop with contemporary urban infl uences, including hip-hop. Minott scored a Top 10 hit with the track

“Playa Playa (Playing the Game Right),” which peaked at number eight on the
Billboard
rap singles chart in September 2001, while simultaneously hitting number sixteen on the separate
Billboard
R&B/hip-hop singles chart.

Thus, in the early phase of RAD Audio ownership, SugarHill Studios asserted its continuing relevance through best-selling projects featuring new R&B or hip-hop music and mostly younger, African American performers. By late January 2002, Destiny’s Child, Mack 10, and Robert Minott all simultaneously had singles and/or albums on the
Billboard
charts.

Though times and tastes had changed, the facility—in its sixth decade of operations—was still a house of hits.

2 4 4

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 244

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

24

Still Tracking in

the Twenty-first Century

hile a new generation of hit performers
infused

SugarHill Studios with fresh styles of contemporary urban

music to start the new millennium, the facility also retained

its no-zoning tradition. That is, the company regularly record-ed—and still does—music from a multicultural mix of genres, including country, blues, jazz, rock, pop, Celtic, gospel, classical, Latin, R&B, rap, and other forms and mutations. In addition to working with hundreds of artists from the Houston scene, in recent years the facility has continued to host a diverse roster of high-profi le visitors. Those range from R&B and rap sensation Brian McKnight to alt-rocker Frank Black to the mysterious experimental composer Jandek to Texas folk hero Willie Nelson to veteran pop singer Ann-Margret to country singer Clay Walker, and many others.

Walker (b. 1969) was one of the biggest country stars of the 1990s, a Beaumont native who seemingly went straight from obscurity to the national limelight. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes in
All Music Guide,
“Walker immediately established himself as a commercial success . . . racking up no less than fi ve number one singles in the fi rst three years of his career.” From his 1993 debut through 1999, Walker had released a total of six albums (including a
Greatest Hits
compilation) on Giant Records, all recorded elsewhere.

Then in 2001 he came to SugarHill Studios to record some vocal tracks for his last Giant project, the CD
Say No More,
which reached number fourteen on the
Billboard
country album chart. Dan Workman explains some details of those sessions:

Doug Johnson was the head of Giant Records and also Clay’s producer.

Doug . . . fl ew down to Houston and brought his favorite microphone and Bradley_4319_BK.indd 245

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

preamps and an engineer by the name of Chip Matthews. . . . Among the songs that were recorded for that album are “Could I Ask You Not to Dance,”

“She’s Easy to Hold,” and “Texas Swing.”

Matthews returned a few months later to mix the audio tracks recorded during Walker’s recent performance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo—a concert that was sold to Direct TV for satellite broadcast. Then in 2003 Walker staged vocal sessions at SugarHill for his album
A Few Questions,
produced by Jimmy Ritchey and released on RCA. This one rose as high as number three on the 2004 country album rankings by
Billboard.

In October 2006 the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame singer-songwriter Johnny Bush returned after a twenty-one-year absence to record the CD

Kashmere Gardens Mud: A Tribute to Houston’s Country Soul.
Produced by Rick Mitchell, this fourteen-track concept album features Bush originals and classic covers that all connect in some way to the city. These songs cover a spec-trum of stylistic shadings, including a fi ne treatment of “Born to Lose” (written by Houston native Ted Daff an) with the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra.

“I have never been part of a session that big in my life. They had a rhythm section, fourteen horns, and a string section,” Bush marvels, adding, “And it was all being done in the same room where Mickey Gilley and I recorded

‘Ooh Wee Baby’ in 1956!”

Some of the other noteworthy guest performers on this album include Willie Nelson, Jesse Dayton, Bert Wills, Paul English, Dale Watson, Frenchie Burke, Brian Thomas, and Bush’s brother, the Rev. Gene Shinn.

The

well-received

Kashmere Gardens Mud
led directly to a country music

summit of sorts at SugarHill Studios. It involved three alumni of the 1950s-era band known as the Cherokee Cowboys—its leader, singer Ray Price (b.

1926), Nelson, and Bush. The resulting album,
Young at Heart,
is a collection of standards (arranged by Owens, English, and Nelson Mills). Bush explains its origin and concept:

When we fi nished the
Kashmere Gardens Mud
album, I played the two big band songs that we recorded with the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra to Willie. His ears perked up, and his eyes kind of sparkled and he said, “You know, we need to do a whole album of songs like that. . . . old established hit records that are recognizable.” . . . This album is not old country or new country. It’s not really pop music. It is a hybrid of pop, jazz, and country in a big band situation.

Slated to be released on Nelson’s Pedernales Records label and distributed by MCA, this recording is a direct by-product of the cross-cultural musical environment that Bush discovered at SugarHill.

2 4 6

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 246

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

Other notable country artists to record at SugarHill in recent years include singer Kelly Schoppa, whose
Let’s Go Dancing
was released in 2005. There was also the fi ddle player and singer Jeff Chance, a Nashville veteran who had formerly recorded on the Mercury and Curb labels. He paired with guitarist Randy Cornor in 2007 to cut tracks for an album project. The country-folk singer-songwriter Glenna Bell recorded her 2007 CD
The Road Less Traveled,
featuring a duet with Bush, at SugarHill. Meanwhile, the Honky Tonk Heroes and their special guest James Burton (b. 1939, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist) came there to record 2008’s
Paybacks Are Hell.
In the last few years SugarHill has also hosted sessions by the River Road Boys, a western swing ensemble that includes fi ddler and singer Clyde Brewer.

The versatile John Evans has been grounded in country music and rockabilly, both as a singer-songwriter and a producer. But drawing from other in-fl uences he has also crafted a rock sound, as evidenced on albums recorded at SugarHill, such as
Circling the Drain
(2004) and
Ramblin’ Boy
(2006)—which engineer Christensen describes as “the fi rst of his big production rock records.”

In the blues genre, one of the most prolifi c clients was the late maestro and trumpeter Calvin Owens. In a professional career that reached from the 1940s till his 2008 death, Owens worked with numerous major fi gures, most famously with B. B. King. But Owens fi rst recorded in the late 1940s at the site where Bill Quinn founded his historic recording enterprise. Though Owens did some Duke-Peacock 1960s session work there and some early 1990s overdubbing too, it was not until the twenty-fi rst century that he came there to produce and perform on projects featuring the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra and many special guests.

His

fi rst major undertaking at SugarHill Studios was the 2002 album
The
House Is Burnin’,
released (as were all of his projects) on his own Sawdust Alley label. Owens coarranged the selected songs with trombonist Aubrey Tucker and saxophonist Horace A. Young. In addition to the horn-heavy nineteen-piece band, members of the Houston Symphony string section and guest soloists such as saxophonist Grady Gaines augmented the instrumentation. Featured vocalists, besides Owens, were Trudy Lynn, Gloria Edwards, and Leonard “Lowdown” Brown.

The 2004 CD called
The Calvin Owens Show
showcased his orchestra with singers Edwards and Lynn, plus special guests saxophonist Wilton Felder (b. 1940, a founding member of the Crusaders), guitarist Bert Wills, harmonica ace “Sonny Boy” Terry Jerome, and the then eighty-eight-year-old Conrad Johnson, who delivered a masterful alto saxophone solo on “The Hucklebuck.”

Around this time, I also helped remix Owens’s debut solo CD,
True Blue.

Originally released in 1993, the remastered version was issued in 2005.

s t i l l t r a c k i n g i n t h e t w e n t y - f i r s t c e n t u ry
2 4 7

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 247

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

Among the many distinguished guests to appear on
True Blue
are the guitarists B. B. King and Johnny Copeland, as well as jazz star David “Fathead”

Newman (b. 1933) on tenor sax.

We then remixed a set of tracks Owens had previously recorded with rappers such as South Park Mexican, Big Snap, and Valdemar. Some of these were originally released on the 2000 album
Stop Lyin’ in My Face,
an unusual fusion of rap with Owens’s big band blues. However, Owens had used guest rappers on several other CDs too. The remixed compilation was issued in 2006 on the European label called Sabam Records.