The
fi rst multitrack tape recorders, in the form of three-track machines that recorded on half-inch tape, were in use by the end of the 1950s. Stereo (or two-track) machines had achieved limited availability by 1952, and certain innovative engineers, most notably Tom Dowd of Atlantic Records, were recording in mono and stereo simultaneously. However, the major record companies did not start pressing stereo records for sale to the general public until near the end of the decade.
By 1957 Ampex had manufactured a pair of experimental eight-track machines, designed by the famous electric guitar pioneer Les Paul, and these utilized one-inch tape. Dowd ordered a third machine custom-built, and by 1958 he was recording on it. However, the recording industry at large did not adopt eight-track technology until approximately ten years later.
Prior to purchasing his own Ampex machines in the late 1950s, Quinn was using a monophonic Berlantz Concertone Recorder, with ten-and-a-half-inch reels running quarter-inch tape. This machine was an older, heavily worn contraption, but it yielded a fantastic sound by prestereo standards.
Quinn later switched over to a Magnacord mono tape deck before upgrading to stereo.
Back in those days, neither tone controls nor equalizers existed. Thus, when a client requested that the sound be “brightened” (by increasing treble) or “darkened” (by decreasing treble or increasing bass), Quinn would remove a capacitor and resistor or two from the rear of the machine and replace them with alternates that sometimes achieved the desired eff ect.
Musicians Clyde Brewer and Herb Remington say they made a habit of requesting more bass or “bottom end” at the start of a session. Apparently Quinn’s recordings tended to be trebly, no matter how much he fi ddled with capacitors or resistors. Yet the musicians report that he was usually willing to strive to achieve the desired sonic results.
Country singer James O’Gwynn says, “Bill Quinn was a good guy and he took a lot of pains with us to get a good sound. He did the best you could with the type of equipment you had in those days.” Remembering the origi-3 6
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Musicians (left to right: Lou Frisby, Herb
Remington, Ernie Hunter, and Doc Lewis)
in front of Gold Star Studios, 1955
nal setup at the Brock Street facility, he adds, “He had egg crates all over the walls, and his recording equipment was kind of primitive, but he got a good sound.”
O’Gwynn’s eventual Starday Records label-mate Frankie Miller concurs:
“Bill Quinn was so good to work with because he would work hard to try to get you a good sound. In his day he was real good.”
Starday Records president Don Pierce, after signing a deal to merge with Mercury Records in 1957, assessed Quinn’s skills as quoted by John Tynan in Country and Western Jamboree magazine: “Bill is an old timer in the business and knows how to work with country artists and musicians. He knows how to get a real twangy country sound that sells.”
The eventual Grand Ole Opry star O’Gwynn (b. 1928—and billed as “The Smiling Irishman of Country Music,” even though he was born in Mississippi) recorded frequently for various labels at Quinn’s facility in the 1950s. “I did about twenty-six or twenty-eight sides over there at Gold Star Studios,” he says.
Today O’Gwynn is best remembered for the 1958 hit “Talk to Me Lonesome Heart,” which he recorded at Gold Star Studios for D Records (#1006). But his earliest affi
liation with Quinn yielded “Love in an Old Fashioned Way”
and “Bottle Talk” (#2020), as well as “I Wish You Wuz My Darling But You Ain’t” and “Love Made Slave” (#2023), both on Nucraft Records. Quinn next l a b e l ’ s d e m i s e , n e w s t u d i o ’ s r i s e 3 7
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recorded O’Gwynn singing “Your Love Is Strong (But Your Heart Is Weak)”
and “Ready for Freddy” for the Azalea label (#106).
Country music defi ned much of Quinn’s studio career. Though the stylistic pursuits of his clientele remained somewhat varied, the entrepreneur who had envisioned his short-lived label as “King of the Hillbillies” was surely in his element now working with artists such as O’Gwynn.
throughout the 1950s, quinn recorded numerous other tracks for independent record labels, with the results being issued on the newer 45 rpm discs. One such label was Nucraft Records, owned and operated by Boyd Leisy, a would-be mogul who ran his record companies out of his Houston tamale restaurant. From 1953 through 1959 Leisy released at least nineteen singles, all recorded at Gold Star Studios, featuring artists such as James O’Gwynn, the Hooper Twins, the Harmonica Kid, Link Davis, and Floyd Tillman.
Another of Quinn’s regular clients was Freedom Records (not to be confused with a later jazz label of the same name), a local company owned by the Kahal family. Representative examples of the many country music sessions that Quinn engineered for that label include “Jelly Roll Blues” by Cotton Thompson, backed by Olin Davidson and His Village Boys (#5010), produced in 1950. Drew Miller and Wink Lewis’s Dude Ranchers cut a song called “What’s a Matter Baby” (#5016) featuring a solo by steel guitarist Ralph
“Dusty” Stewart. Johnny Nelms and the Sunset Cowboys, who had recorded earlier for the Gold Star label, came to Quinn’s new studio to record the song
“If I Can’t Have You” for Freedom (#5018).
For the same label, Charlie Harris with R. D. Hendon and His Western Jamboree Cowboys cut “No Shoes Boogie” (#5033), issued in March 1951. Of all the Freedom releases, this track perhaps best exemplifi es the hard-rocking, shuffl
e-beat swing style that defi ned so much of the Texas music scene prior to rock ’n’ roll. In addition to the superb electric guitar of Charlie Harris, the band featured Theron Poteet on piano, Johnny Cooper on rhythm guitar, Tiny Smith on bass, Don Brewer on drums, and (as was often the case on Freedom recordings) veteran Herb Remington (a former member of the seminal Texas Playboys swing band) on steel guitar.
Beyond the Freedom label, there were many other independent companies that hired Quinn to record their country artists during this time. Deacon Anderson, working for Bayou Records, cut the single “Just Looking through These Tears” backed with “Daddy’s Waltz.” In 1954 Quinn recorded Eddie Noack singing “How Does It Feel to Be the Winner” and “Too Hot to Handle”
(#110) for Bob Tanner’s San Antonio–based TNT Records.
Of special note, master songwriter and singer Floyd Tillman (1914–2003) came to Gold Star Studios for the fi rst time in late 1954 or early ’55 to record 3 8
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Eddie Noack, publicity photo, 1950s
a single for Houston-based Western Records. The A-side, written and sung by the eventual Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, was called “Save a Little for Me.” The label text credits the performance to Floyd Tillman with Link Davis and the Bayou Billies. The B-side, “Big Houston,” was written and sung by Davis “with Floyd Tillman and all the boys.”
Davis, a tenor sax player and singer, often recorded at Gold Star Studios—
playing on hits such as “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper and “Running Bear” by Johnny Preston. Meanwhile, Tillman and Davis would reunite at Gold Star Studios about a year and a half later on sessions produced for Charlie Fitch’s Sarg Records label.
Although Tillman (who had cut his fi rst record as a featured singer with Leon “Pappy” Selph’s Blue Ridge Playboys back in 1938) never scored a hit with the records he made at Gold Star Studios, his presence there was signifi cant, especially in its impact on other musicians. As indicated by the title of his fi nal album, The Infl uence (released posthumously in 2004 on Heart of Texas Records), Tillman’s sixty-plus-year career in country music directly l a b e l ’ s d e m i s e , n e w s t u d i o ’ s r i s e 3 9
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inspired countless singers and songwriters. Among the long list of classic songs that Tillman penned are “It Makes No Diff erence Now” (a hit for Bing Crosby in 1939) and his own early hits, the 1942 chart-topping classic “They Took the Stars out of Heaven” and the 1944 song “Each Night at Nine.”
Tillman is remembered today as a seminal country music composer, particularly because he wrote one of the fi rst “cheating” songs, which would become a staple of the genre in subsequent decades. His widely covered 1949
number one hit “Slippin’ Around,” as recorded by Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely (Capitol #40224), helped to usher in a movement toward con-fessional social realism in country songwriting.
Though the most fertile period of Tillman’s career was in the 1940s, he returned to record again at Gold Star Studios in 1964 and 1967, and again in 1973 (by which time Quinn’s facility had been sold and renamed SugarHill).
While numerous independent labels utilized Quinn’s expertise during the 1950s, there was one in particular for which the Brock Street facility would prove to be an especially worthy base for taking its sound to the world.
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6
Pappy Daily and
Starday Records
major behind-the-scenes figure in twentieth-century popular music, in Houston and beyond, was Harold W. “Pappy” Daily. This Marine Corps veteran, ex-semipro baseball player and manager,
and former accountant for the Southern Pacifi c Railroad was
an early jukebox distributor, record store proprietor, record wholesaler, and music publisher, but also a hit-making producer and label owner with close ties to Gold Star Studios during a major phase of his illustrious career.
By the early 1970s, when he ceased record production in Nashville and concentrated solely on his Glad Music publishing fi rm in Houston, Daily had owned part or all of at least four record labels. Artists whom he had signed, recorded, published, and promoted had scored numerous Top Ten hits on the country and pop charts and become national stars. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, in All Music Guide, describes him as “one of the most important record executives and producers of the postwar era.”
Daily got into the music business around age thirty. Concerned about possibly losing his railroad company position during the Great Depression, he opted to become the fi rst Bally’s jukebox distributor in Houston. As Daily told writer Barbara Wesolek, “I would have stayed with the railroads if there had been any security, but they were cutting people off . I didn’t know anything about the coin business or phonograph records or music.”
This new fi eld proved so lucrative that by 1932 he had created his own jukebox distributing operation, South Coast Amusements. Throughout the rest of the 1930s his company dominated the regional market for jukeboxes, coin-operated pool tables, and slot machines. In The Complete D Singles Collection, writer Colin Escott notes, “At one time, South Coast Amusements had offi ces
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in Dallas, Amarillo, Shreveport, San Antonio, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi, but Daily later closed them all down and centralized his operation . . . in Houston.”
Daily’s ventures prospered during World War II, but even more so after.
By 1946 he had opened his fi rst record store, Daily’s Record Ranch. In 1951
Daily also established a record wholesale business that covered the entire Southwest region—a well-timed and profi table undertaking, as the public appetite for hearing and collecting the latest hit discs was growing fast.
A shrewd businessman, Daily soon realized that there was potentially even more money to be had in also producing the records that he stocked on jukeboxes or distributed for sale. Though he claimed to have had no preexisting affi
nity for it, Daily had, as writer Linda Hellinger puts it, “developed an ear for country music by listening to the records in his jukeboxes.” He was likely well aware too of Bill Quinn’s recent run as a local independent record company owner (since Quinn had probably placed Gold Star Records releases such as “Jole Blon” in Daily’s store). Daily may have been prescient enough to infer that he could locate and promote regional talent more eff ectively than the reticent sound engineer. Moreover, as Escott’s essay points out, Daily had some previous experience, though “only a marginal involvement,”
in a short-lived mid-1940s label called Melody, which had issued a couple of records by Jerry Jericho and Ben Christian. He had also made initial recordings and placed “some marketable singers” with the 4-Star Records label in California. Drawing from that background, in 1952 or early ’53 Daily formed a partnership with a Beaumont nightclub owner and talent booker named Jack Starnes, and together they launched a new record label.
They called it Starday, based on a combination of the fi rst syllable from each of their surnames. That fl edging company would be the Southeast Texas home of some of the essential country music of the 1950s, as well as a regional launching pad for the newly defi ned rockabilly genre. Daily and his partner had started out self-reliantly recording in makeshift fashion on a Magnacord tape deck in the Starnes family house in Beaumont. Before long they had graduated to a more professional setting, doing sessions for a while at Bill Holford’s ACA Studios in Houston.
However, within two years of Starday’s birth, they had established their primary recording base at Quinn’s Gold Star Studios. This affi liation was signifi cant not only for the classic songs it produced (such as the fi rst hit by George Jones), but also because the Daily-Quinn relationship would later lead to renovation and expansion of the Gold Star property.
Ted Marek’s 1957 feature article on Gold Star Studios yields some insights regarding Daily’s role there. While an accompanying photo depicts Quinn doing studio work, others show Starday singer Jeanette Hicks cutting songs 4 2
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for upcoming release (according to the text: “Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone” and
“Extra, Extra, Read All about It”). There is also a shot of another Starday artist, rockabilly singer Rudy Grayzell. Along with various session musicians (such as Clyde Brewer and Frank Juricek), the only non-musician other than Quinn who appears in these images is Daily. Most tellingly, the article identifi es him as a “co-owner” of the studio with Quinn and quotes him philosophizing on the record business as follows:
It helps to be luckier than smart in the tune-picking industry. I’ve given up trying to predict which tune will click. I let the artists pick the ones they like.
If they’re enthusiastic about a number I’ll go along with them because they’ll put something extra into the recording. I wish I could pick ’em.
Despite his modest self-assessment as a forecaster of hits, by the time this article ran, Daily had already produced several big sellers, especially with Jones. Moreover, within a year, he would record—again at Gold Star Studios—one of his all-time greatest hits, “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper, for D Records.
Musician Slick Norris says, “Pappy had the knowledge of how to sell records. He was both a wholesaler and a retailer from his own shop. Pappy really didn’t know the making part of it as well as he knew how to sell and market them.” Indeed, given Quinn’s technical skills and facility, he could record and master whatever product Daily might choose to pay for.
By the late 1950s Daily evidently was willing, and certainly fi nancially able, to invest in some improvements at Gold Star Studios. In fact, a fairly common rumor among musicians who worked there was that Daily was not a co-owner but actually funding the whole operation for a while. For instance, James O’Gwynn says, “Somebody told me that Pappy really owned the recording studio back then, and Bill Quinn was running it for him.” While there is no cl
ear evidence, beyond such oral historical impressions, to establish that Daily ever assumed full control of Gold Star Studios, the Marek article and statements such as O’Gwynn’s point to the powerful presence that Daily established at Quinn’s facility. There he mastered the hit-making process, fi rst for the Starday label that he owned in part and later for the D label that he owned outright.
Though the Starday brand name would later survive for decades in Nashville, its Texan cofounders would both ultimately disassociate from it.
In 1953, the year after creating Starday, Daily and Starnes allowed the West Coast–based businessman Don Pierce (1915–2005), whom Daily knew from 4-Star Records, to buy into the company. The college-educated Pierce soon assumed the corporate presidency, and Daily formally took the role of the A&R
p a p py d a i ly a n d s t a r d ay r e c o r d s
4 3
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man—the person in charge of “artists and repertoire.” In other words, Daily made the corporate decisions concerning which artists, supporting players, styles, and songs would be recorded for the label. Thus, he was not merely a titular producer who only provided funding and accounted for profi ts; he was a music producer, directly involved in the creative process of crafting records aimed at becoming hits. Generally speaking, Daily excelled at this assignment, though he would fulfi ll it for a variety of diff erent companies over the following years.
House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) Page 7