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

by Andy Bradley, Roger Wood

  “Just One More” was surpassed. Although several takes on “White Lightning”

  (written by J. P. Richardson, better known as the Big Bopper) had previously been recorded at Gold Star, the later hit version was a product of the Nashville studio scene (including the presence of Hargus “Pig” Robbins on piano).

  All in all, Jones released at least twenty-seven songs that were recorded at Gold Star Studios in the mid-1950s. (It is possible that other Jones songs were recorded there but never released, or they may have appeared without session credits on one or more of his early albums.) Though he would eventually become a legendary Nashville fi gure, this country singer from Beaumont launched his bid for stardom close to home in Houston. Accordingly, he—

  like the studio where he made “Why Baby Why”—is a key part of Texas music history.

  rockabilly delivered a powerful jolt to much of the country music recording industry in the mid-1950s. Young white artists such as Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis—borrowing heavily from the African American–formed genre of electric blues—were speaking a new kind of musical language, one that drew simultaneously from country and early R&B.

  Across the nation, multitudes of white teens and young adults passionately liked what they heard and soon redefi ned, often to the angst of the older generation, popular tastes and standards for commercial success. By February of 1956, when Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” became a number one hit, many country music producers were scurrying to react to this major shift in public opinion. Consider this anecdote from Starday rockabilly hit-maker Rudy Grayzell, as told to writer Dan Davidson: “I remember poor ol’ Hank Locklin, man. We’d all moved on to rock ’n’ roll, and on one show we did, he got up and did his straight country thing, and the kids let him have it with hotdogs and paper cups!”

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  But Daily had perhaps seen this change coming, and he had already recorded several rock ’n’ roll and rockabilly sides prior to Elvis’s ascension in pop culture. Among the earliest Starday records in that vein were Sonny Fisher’s “Rockin’ Daddy” (#179) and “Hey Mama” (#190) and Sonny Burns’s

  “A Real Cool Cat” (#209).

  The swell of commercial interest in this fast-paced style of new music even prompted Daily and Jones to return to Gold Star Studios in early 1956 specifi -

  cally to record rockabilly. The results included a cover version of “Heartbreak Hotel” and a pair of original songs by Jones: “Rock It” and “How Come It.”

  In May the last two titles were released as alternate sides of a Starday single (#240) under the rockabilly-inspired pseudonym Thumper Jones. Public response to this record was indiff erent, prompting the producer-artist duo to focus thereafter solely on straight country music.

  Yet by no means did Daily quit recording rockabilly. He just shifted his focus to more suitable artists on the Starday roster. Moreover, he would expand that emphasis even more, within a couple of years, on his many Gold Star productions for D Records.

  One of the most noteworthy Starday artists in the rockabilly genre was Rudy “Tutti” (Jimenez) Grayzell (b. 1933), a native of Saspamco, near San Antonio, Texas. Unlike many of his Starday peers, Grayzell did not make his fi rst records at Gold Star Studios, for he had already cut his three singles for Abbott Records (where he sang in a traditional country style) back in 1953.

  While those records did not generate many sales, they were good enough to earn Grayzell guest appearances on both the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride radio programs. Grayzell, who was honing a more progressive rockabilly-tinged sound, then signed with Capitol Records, which released three more singles (under the pseudonym Rudy Gray), but scored no hits.

  Yet Grayzell was gaining attention—so much so that Elvis Presley, while touring in San Antonio, reportedly showed up at one of his gigs. Impressed by Grayzell’s fi ery on-stage presence, Presley off ered him a job as his opening act, a role he served for approximately a year and a half. Presley allegedly also bestowed the “Tutti” nickname on the budding star.

  Daily soon signed Grayzell to Starday Records. However, the fi rst release,

  “The Moon Is Up (The Stars Are Out)” backed with “Day by Day” (#229, issued in March 1956), had used the regular Gold Star house band and thus conveyed a fairly traditional country sound, not rockabilly. Yet neither Grayzell nor Daily gave up, and shortly thereafter they recorded and released (in May 1956) a truly classic disc in the rockabilly mode, “Duck Tail” (#241, backed with “You’re Gone”).

  With its title and lyrics referencing the ubiquitous hairstyle adopted by thousands of young American males as a symbol of cool rebellion, plus its fre-5 2

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  Hank Locklin, inside Daily’s Record Ranch, publicity photo, Houston, 1949

  netic rockabilly groove, “Duck Tail” immediately climbed the regional charts, reaching the number seven position in Houston. Though Grayzell later denied any infl uence by the Carl Perkins hit with the signature line “Don’t step on my blue suede shoes,” his own breakthrough song had a similar hook in its repeated warning, “Don’t mess with my duck tail.” Davidson quotes Grayzell’s explanation: “Most teenagers had ducktails in their hair and hell, so did I. I just kinda got the idea for the song from that.” Writer John Tottenham off ers further insight from Grayzell about the origins of the song: “Some girl was fooling with my ducktail one night . . . and it was making me mad—so I p a p py d a i ly a n d s t a r d ay r e c o r d s

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  wrote about it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I guess a lot of other people thought so, too.”

  Perhaps the wild-eyed 1950s-era punk attitude that the song exudes was ex-aggerated by the conditions under which it was recorded at Gold Star Studios.

  Sleepy LaBeef recounts his impressions of that session:

  I was at the studio when Rudy Grayzell came in to record “Don’t Mess with My Duck Tail.” He and the band were not getting along well at all in the studio. Bill [Quinn] said, “Y’all have got to do something because y’all have got a lot of friction between you, and it ain’t coming off .” So Rudy called them all out back of the studio, and they had fi sticuff s for what seemed like ten minutes. Then they came in and cut the song, and a few others.

  The hit song established Grayzell’s rock credibility, and he soon was touring and releasing follow-ups on Starday. The next single, issued in November 1956, featured the cut “You Hurt Me So” backed with “Jig-Ga-Lee-Ga” (#270).

  Following that, in 1957, Grayzell recorded perhaps his most frenzied rocker, the blunt call to debauchery entitled “Let’s Get Wild.” Coming as it did during the gradually evolving affi

  liation between Houston-based Starday and the

  Nashville-based branch of Mercury, this cut was ultimately released on both labels (#321 for the former and #71138 for the latter).

  Though by the end of 1957 Grayzell would leave to record for other companies, he was arguably at his best during the dawning of rockabilly—when he was recording at Gold Star Studios for Daily, whom he continued to admire even after his departure. The Davidson article quotes Grayzell’s assessment of the man who produced his biggest hit: “He was tremendous! A great man.

  Pappy stood behind me all through the Starday years. He told me, ‘Rudy, you’ve got a message in there somewhere and we’re gonna fi nd it!’” As many rockabilly record collectors and afi cionados would attest today, with the hit

  “Duck Tail,” they surely did.

  Yet Grayzell was not Daily’s only Starday rockabilly sensation. Another was Sonny Fisher (1931–2005), originally from Chandler, Texas. At the time of his death at age 73 in Houston, he was memorialized by
music writers not only nationwide but elsewhere, especially in western Europe, where he toured sporadically to wide acclaim between 1979 and 1993. Garth Cartwright, for instance, writing in The Guardian, proclaims him to be “one of America’s pioneering rockabilly artists,” and he notes, “when London’s Ace Records reissued his 1956 recordings in 1979, he found himself proclaimed king of the rockabilly revival.”

  According to Fisher’s own account, he paid for his fi rst recording sessions out of his own pocket, a move that promptly led Starnes to recruit him to 5 4

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  Starday Records in early 1955. From Bill Millar’s New Kommotion article, we get the story, in Fisher’s words, of his fi rst recordings at Gold Star Studios: There were two or three studios in Houston, but I think Gold Star, owned by Mr. Bill Quinn, was the cheapest. You could get hourly sessions done for a little demo record, and it wouldn’t cost nothing at all. We paid for our own sessions and recorded “Rockin’ Daddy,” “Hold Me Baby,” “Sneaky Pete,” and

  “Hey Mama” at the fi rst one. There wasn’t much there except a little turntable behind the glass, one or two microphones, and egg boxes up on the wall. Quinn handled all the controls, and I paid him for the hiring of the studio. . . . When I came back to Quinn’s for the second session [after signing with Starday], he’d installed a booth that I got into for the singing.

  In the immediate aftermath of that fi rst session, Fisher got the break he needed. He continues: “Quinn called Jack Starnes and told him there’s a guy over here doing stuff like Elvis, and Starnes came over to hear us. That’s how we got on Starday Records. Jack Starnes became my manager, and I signed a one-year contract with Pappy Daily.”

  Fisher’s initial Starday releases were the four demo tracks that he had hired Quinn to record. “Rockin’ Daddy” backed with “Hold Me Baby” (#179) came fi rst and was a regional hit. Next was “Hey Mama” and “Sneaky Pete” (#190).

  These sides were followed later in 1955 by “I Can’t Lose” backed with “Rockin’

  and Rollin’” (#207). In 1956 Starday issued “Little Red Wagon” backed with

  “Pink and Black” (#244).

  Nonetheless, Fisher ultimately was unhappy with the label, so he got out when his contract expired. This move, however valid, may have derailed Fisher’s career. Cartwright’s posthumous tribute in The Guardian includes this account:

  When Starday presented Fisher with a royalty cheque for $126 at the end of 1955, he was so displeased by the sum he refused to re-sign with them.

  Attempting to set up his own record label and publishing company proved impossible for Fisher, and his band soon fell apart.

  Fisher eventually migrated to diff erent genres before abandoning the music business, only to see his career surprisingly revived by European fans over a decade later. Cartwright says of the post-Starday Fisher,

  In 1958 he began fronting an all-black band singing rhythm and blues. This was too radical a gesture for the South at the time, and Fisher was soon back playing country music. In 1965 he left the music industry, unaware that his p a p py d a i ly a n d s t a r d ay r e c o r d s

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  Starday 45s were now considered by connoisseurs as classic primal rockabilly.

  When Soho’s Ace Records market stall in London decided to set up as a label, they began with a ten-inch album featuring all of Fisher’s Starday recordings. The success of the album not only launched Ace Records—now a leading force in reissues on this side of the Atlantic—but instigated a hugely popular rockabilly revival, and led to Fisher being brought to Europe for the fi rst time.

  Thus, though his Starday affi

  liation concluded on a sour note, Fisher

  reaped unexpected dividends years later—leading to several tours and recording opportunities in Europe. And the foundation for that success was laid in the sessions Quinn had engineered at his aff ordable studio facility.

  despite its calculated foray into the rockabilly genre, Starday continued successfully recording country music at Gold Star Studios and discovering artists who, like Fisher, had come there on their own initiative to cut demos.

  One prime example is the singer Frankie Miller (b. 1931), whose Gold Star–

  produced demo disc would not pay off till a few years later. He recounts that experience:

  I fi rst came to Gold Star Studios in 1951. I was visiting the studio and observ-ing a session being recorded by Bill Quinn for a clarinet player named Hub Sutter, who had played with many of the big bands in the area, including Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Following Hub’s session, I recorded a bunch of demos with just me and my guitar. I needed these demos to be able to talk to some record companies about signing me. Bill recorded me on a Magnacord tape recorder and then made me some dubs on acetate discs.

  I came back to record again in 1956 and did “Blackland Farmer” there.

  The song was released in 1959 on Starday Records [#424], but I recorded it in 1956 with Bill Quinn. The song went to number fi ve on the country charts.

  The bass man was Hezzie Bryant, and the guitar man was real popular and recorded a bunch of his own records also at Gold Star; his name was Glenn Barber. My brother played the coconut shells that made the horse sounds on the record; his name was Norman Miller. I had a fi ddle player on the session, and Jack Kennedy played piano. I made my career off that song. “True Blue”

  was the other side of the record.

  When asked about the time gap between the studio recording of his signature hit and its Starday release, Miller is quick to blame the rockabilly phenomenon. He explains,

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  Well, guys like J. P. Richardson [Big Bopper] and Elvis Presley almost killed country music. I carried the tape around for two years and didn’t play it to anyone because nobody was listening to country music anymore. Then one day I was in Nashville, and I was in Tommy Hill’s offi

  ce at Starday Records.

  Told him I had a country song, and he said, “Go get it for me.”

  I said, “C’mon, you don’t want to hear a country song.”

  He said, “Yes, now go and get it.” So I did, and he listened, and his eyes lit up, and he went right over to play it to Starday’s president, Don Pierce, that same day. And I had a contract before I left Nashville.

  That was in 1958, and the rest is history. I have a Gold Record from Starday for “Blackland Farmer,” and I’ve seen it on fi fteen or twenty diff erent compilation CDs. . . . Don Pierce told me just a while ago that he had lost George Jones to Pappy Daily when Pappy left Starday—and that my record kind of saved the day for his business. . . . I played a big show in Houston with a bunch of rock ’n’ roll cats, and I had the number one record in Houston on KILT Radio. I headlined the show with Roy Orbison and Ben E.

  King. This little old country boy did good.

  Miller’s Gold Star Studios memories include an account of Quinn’s im-promptu ingenuity in getting the desired sound eff ects within the room: For “Blackland Farmer” Bill Quinn had me singing and playing guitar in a booth off to the side, much like you put drums in nowadays. My brother took a coconut and cut it in half and put them on the fl oor. Bill took a mic and put it down close to the fl oor, but the sound on the fl oor was too grainy and edgy.

  So we grabbed a pillow off the couch and put the coconuts on top of that.

  Sounded just like a horse walking through the room. He probably had about four mics out there recording. This was Bill’s house studio.

  Glenn Barber, the guitarist on that session, provides a theory about the commercial appeal of “Blackland Farmer” in an era when rockabilly was dominating the charts. He says,

  There is a great story around why that song became a huge success in a
n era where country music was not very popular. Outside Houston is a place called Garner State Park [where] thousands of kids would go to have fun and dance and party with good supervision. The guy that ran the park had a big old concrete slab in the park with a jukebox in the middle of it. The kids would dance to whatever he had on it—and then would go out and buy those records. He happened to be a country music lover [so he stocked Miller’s record], and “Blackland Farmer” was a song that the kids latched on to and started buying.

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  Miller followed up with several other Starday singles, including “Family Man” (#457), which charted as high as number seven in late 1959, and “Baby Rocked Her Dolly” (#496), which made it to number fi fteen in 1960. That same year he won the Cashbox award for “Most Promising Country Artist”—

  an irony, given that none of his subsequent recordings (on Starday, United Artists, and elsewhere) did as well as those fi rst Gold Star Studios–produced hits.

  Among the many other notable Starday artists who recorded at Quinn’s place was Benny Barnes (1936–1987). His “Poor Man’s Riches” (#262) impressively soared to number two on the country charts in 1956. As Andrew Brown writes for the Benny Barnes compilation, “He had defi ed current trends and record industry wisdom by hitting with a hard country performance at a time when rock ’n’ roll had threatened to consume everything in its path.” The Beaumont native’s fi rst single for Starday had featured “Once Again” backed with “No Fault of Mine” (#236). But his second Starday release, “Poor Man’s Riches,” was the best-seller, and it was also reissued on Mercury (#71048). His last single for Starday, credited to Benny Barnes with the Echoes, was “You Gotta Pay” backed with “Heads You Win (Tails I Lose)” (#401). After that, like his friend George Jones, Barnes moved to Mercury. But he continued to be produced by Daily and, through 1959, make records at Gold Star Studios (for the Mercury, Dixie, and D labels).