House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (50 page)

The passionate intensity that Owens brought to his many productions fueled a surge of new Sawdust Alley releases in the fi nal years of his life. His most characteristic album of 2006 was
I Ain’t Gonna Be Your Dog No More: The
Calvin Owens Show, Volume Two.
Owens also worked on, in his own words,

“another rap CD with Rasheed, Valdemar, and the Classic Thugs,” as well as “a Spanish-language blues album,” plus “an album featuring Trudy Lynn singing with the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra.” That last one, titled
I’m
Still Here,
garnered fi nalist consideration for 2007’s Best Soul Blues Album in the Memphis-based Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards. His burst of creativity not yet slaked, Owens went on to make the 2007 album
Houston Is
the Place to Be
with his full orchestra and special guests such as Barbara Lynn, Rue Davis, Pete Mayes, and others. That CD was released simultaneously with the debut album by an Owens protégé—the bilingual Mexico-born blues singer and saxophonist, Evelyn Rubio. Also recorded at SugarHill,
La Mujer
Que Canta Blues
was credited to Rubio “y Calvin Owens Orqestra Azul.”

The close relationship Owens had with SugarHill Studios caused him to recommend the facility to one of his former colleagues—the current bandleader and trumpeter in B. B. King’s band. So in January of 2007 James Bolden recorded his fi rst solo album there. Called
Playing to the King,
it is a tribute to the guitar-wielding bluesman he has backed for many years. Bolden tells how it came to be:

I live in Houston even though I’m on the road worldwide with B.B. for over two hundred dates a year. My cousin, Rocky White, who was the drummer for the Mercer Ellington Orchestra, also lives in Houston. So in mid-January of 2007 [B.B.] came into Galveston to play two dates at the Opera House.

This was a perfect opportunity to record, as we were in the area for about fi ve days. . . . [We] recorded ten great songs that were either B.B’s or my compositions. Rocky was the drummer, and the rest of the guys were from B.B’s band.

Highlighted by senior artists such as Owens and Bolden, SugarHill Studios recorded some impressively grand blues and jazz in the fi rst decade of the
2 4 8

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 248

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

Barbara Lynn and Calvin Owens, at SugarHill Studios, 2006

new millennium. But there were performers from the next generation too—

perhaps best exemplifi ed by the fi ne blues-rock singer Tommie Lee Bradley.

Supported by experienced musicians such as Erich Avinger, Bert Wills, Kenny Cordray, Paul English, Anthony Sapp, and Kelly Dean, Bradley recorded all the tracks for her 2005 album,
Soul Soup,
at SugarHill.

One jazz session came about following Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans. In October 2005 Nonesuch Records booked studio time at SugarHill to record tracks for
Our New Orleans 2005: A Benefi t Album,
released one month later. New Orleans–based engineers Mark Bingham and Drew Vonderhaar worked with producer Doug Petty to record two of the Crescent City’s recently displaced jazz stars, clarinetist Michael White (b. 1954) and trumpeter Kermit Ruffi

ns (b. 1964), for the project.

Meanwhile, jazz pianist and vocalist Kellye Gray continued to make SugarHill Studios her recording base. Having previously been there to make her fi rst two CDs (
Standards in Gray
on Justice Records and
Tomato Kiss
on Proteus Recordings), she used the SugarHill staff again in 2002 for live sessions at Ovations, a Houston club. We did the location recording with freelance engineer J. P. Rappenecker, producing enough quality tracks to make two CDs. The fi rst, released in 2002, was called
Blue
and featured the ballads,
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 9

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 249

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

Latin, and gentle songs. The second CD, released in April 2003, was named
Pink
and featured the bebop, high-energy blues, and funk grooves.

The sibling vocal trio known as the Champion Sisters fi rst brought their blend of pop-jazz standards to SugarHill in 2004. (Forty-eight years earlier, their father, George Champion, had recorded at the same site with George Jones.) Featuring a tight three-part harmony that evokes the Andrews Sisters, the three Champion women—Molly, Brenda, and Sandra—cut tracks for their 2005 debut album
In the Mood,
which included a guest appearance by jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum. In 2006 the sisters returned—again with Paul English as arranger, keyboardist, and producer—to record their follow-up album,
Christmas with the Champion Sisters
(2007).

while country, blues, and jazz have remained staples of SugarHill sessions in recent years, there have also been various manifestations of postmodern rock and even avant-garde music, as well as an ongoing relationship with rap.

Perhaps the most unusual of all the artists in these categories is the internationally famous-for-being-obscure atonal music phenomenon known simply as Jandek. A mostly one-man operation based in Houston, Jandek released his fi rst self-produced album in 1978. As of 2008, he has now issued over fi fty weird art-rock albums, many of which have been mixed and mastered at SugarHill.

While Jandek’s music resists simple classifi cation,
Texas Monthly
writer Katy Vine reveals that Jandek favors the description “pentatonic refractive dissonance.” Reclusive and elusive, Jandek has steadfastly shunned publicity and the revelation of his true identity, disappearing instead behind his corporate identity as Corwood Industries, the name of his homemade label.

Moreover, despite a growing worldwide cadre of fans, Jandek made no public performances until October 2004, when he played at an unpublicized event in Scotland. Since then, Jandek has occasionally but rarely played live elsewhere.
Houston Chronicle
writer Andrew Dansby, who observed a 2007 concert, describes the live sound as “dark, naturally; loud; and, for those who like their music served up with performance-artish rough edges intact, sharp as shorn metal . . . like deconstructed mountain music run through monster amps.”

I

fi rst met Jandek in 1981 at ACA Studios when he hired me to mix and master his third album,
Later On.
Since then, I have mixed a tremendous volume of his music—and since 1984, all at SugarHill Studios. Jandek has confi rmed that I handled mixing and mastering for the Corwood releases #0741

through #0769, and then for #0783 and all subsequent releases to date. As Dansby points out, “there’s some untainted allure to the music.” And despite
2 5 0

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 250

1/26/10 1:12:22 PM

its strangeness and the mystique of the Jandek persona, in some respects he is one of the most successful artists currently engaging the services of SugarHill Studios.

Speaking of unusual personae, the famous alternative rocker known variously as Frank Black and Black Francis, of the infl uential late 1980s–early ’90s postpunk band the Pixies, graced SugarHill Studios with a session during his Fall 2006 tour. Via his pseudonyms, Black (b. Charles Mitchell Kittredge Thompson IV, 1965) has been a major presence on the national scene for over two decades. Christensen recalls the night Black recorded at SugarHill: Billy Block, a drummer . . . all during the 1980s here in Houston, called

[Andy Bradley] to talk about a recording session. It turns out that he is both the manager and drummer for Frank Black. . . . They were in town playing a show at the Meridian [and] wanted to cut a couple of new songs. . . . They brought in an engineer named Billy Mumfrey . . . and I worked as his assistant. . . . The band arrived by taxi from the Meridian about midnight. . . .

They just jumped in the studio and went to work and knocked out the two music tracks like a well-oiled machine. . . . As soon as we fi nished the tracks, Frank went into the vocal booth. I had the Neumann U-67 [microphone] set up, and he just sang and screamed Frank Black–style.

As often occurs when touring visitors briefl y use the studio, Black departed with the only copy of the recorded tracks—and provided SugarHill with no song titles or identifying details. However, because Christensen recalls over-hearing that this session was for a “live” album, it seems likely that these two tracks may have appeared on the Frank Black
Live Session
EP that was created during that same tour.

Sometimes traveling artists come to SugarHill Studios, and sometimes SugarHill comes to them. In July 2007, members of the Australian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group Radio Birdman toured the United States, and we recorded both of their Texas gigs for broadcast on the
SugarHill Sessions
series on Houston’s KPFT-FM radio. Some of those tracks may eventually appear on a special-edition CD called
Live in Texas.

On the local front, the band called Spain Colored Orange—which mixes elements of indie rock, jazz, psychedelia, and pop—emerged around 2005, winning numerous “Best of” categories in the 2006
Houston Press
Music Awards. Later that year the group came to SugarHill to record their fi rst CD,
Hopelessly Incapable of Standing in the Way,
for release on Lucid Records. They made the 2008 follow-up album,
Sneaky Like a Villain,
there too.

The versatile, nontraditional Celtic group called the Rogues have continued to use SugarHill Studios to record their high-energy music. In 2001 they
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 5 1

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 251

1/26/10 1:12:23 PM

cut all the tracks there for the album
5.0.
Then in 2003 SugarHill made on-site multitrack digital recordings of a Rogues concert at the Houston venue called McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, preserved on the double CD called
Made
in Texas.
The group returned to SugarHill in 2005 to make the album
Rogue
Trip,
as well as in 2008 to record tracks for the CD
American Highlander.

Thus, SugarHill continues to function as the professional recording base of choice for various local groups engaged in creating and dispensing new tracks. Other representative examples include the Texas jam band called Moses Guest, which fi rst recorded there in 1999, and returned in 2002 to make an eponymous double album. In 2003 the ever-popular early rock and R&B connoisseurs called El Orbits did more sessions there. “Enough material was recorded for two CDs of Orbit music. The fi rst,
Flyin’ High with The El
Orbits,
was released in early fall of that year on Freedom Records [#1026],” says band founder David Beebe, adding, “The Christmas album was called
The El
Orbits Holiday Album.
” In recent years SugarHill has also staged sessions for albums by indie rock singer-songwriters such as Chet Daniels, Sarah Sharp, and Ray Younkin, as well as Latin rock ensemble Jesse Flores and Vudu Café and the psychedelic rockers Southern Backtones.

Yet despite the prevalence of diff erent off shoots of rock at SugarHill Studios in the new century, the site has continued to draw rappers and contemporary R&B performers too. Among those, one high-profi le fi gure is the Grammy-nominated singer and multi-instrumentalist Brian McKnight (b.

1969), who came to SugarHill to collaborate with rap mogul Jermaine Dupri (b. 1973). Christensen also engineered those sessions and shares these recollections:

They were cutting a new song for Brian McKnight, and Jermaine Dupri was producing. Brian was on tour and had a day off in Houston. The control room was a wall of keyboards. Between the keyboards and the speakers, it looked like we had built a bunker. They came in with nothing prepared and a few ideas. They started playing and programming and soon had built up a great track. Meanwhile Brian was writing lyrics and working on melodies. As soon as they fi nished the music, he went into the studio and laid down all the vocals.

Around the same time, Christensen also recalls working at SugarHill with the Chicago rapper known mainly as Twista (b. Carl Terrell Mitchell, 1973). “He rapped so fast that doing punch-ins to his tracks was brutal,” he says. “The song he did with us was called ‘Rubber Band Man’”—probably the remix version that premiered in 2004 featuring, in addition to Twista, the rappers called T.I., Trick Daddy, and Mack 10.

2 5 2

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 252

1/26/10 1:12:23 PM

Among other hip-hop artists to cut tracks at SugarHill recently is the New Orleans gangsta rapper known as C-Murder (b. Corey Miller, 1971), who recorded “The Truest Shit I Ever Said” for 2005 release on Koch Records.

Houston-based Latino rapper Rob G used the facility to record his debut CD

for Latium Entertainment (distributed by Universal Records). The Caucasian rapper called Origino recorded his 2007 album
Leave the Ground Behind
(L&O