Another Texas singer who came to Gold Star to record for Daily was Roger Miller (1936–1992), best known for later hits (such as “Dang Me” and “King of the Road”) recorded elsewhere for other labels. In 1956 Jones had introduced the unproven Miller to Daily, leading to the production of several singles, including two issued on Starday: “Can’t Stop Loving You” backed with “You’re Forgetting Me” (#356) and “Playboy” backed with “Poor Little John” (#718).
Other Daily-produced tracks by Miller were released on Mercury, including a reissue of “Poor Little John” with “My Pillow” (#71212). Quinn had engineered all of these.
The lineup of Gold Star staff musicians regularly used during its prime Starday era (1954 to 1957) included the following: Hal Harris, Eddie Eddings, Glenn Barber, or Cameron Hill on lead guitar; Ernie Hunter, Earl Caruthers, Joe “Red” Hayes, Kenneth “Little Red” Hayes, Tony Sepolio, or Clyde Brewer on fi ddle; Herb Remington, Frank Juricek, Al Petty, or Buddy Doyle on steel guitar; Charles “Doc” Lewis or “Shorty” Byron on piano; Russell “Hezzie” Bryant, Ray “Shang” Kennedy, or J. T. “Tiny” Smith on bass; and Bill Kimbrough, Red Novak, or Darrell Newsome on drums. As Glenn Barber says, “It was a real who’s who of Houston singers and musicians.” Frank Juricek adds, “We always had great guitar players on our sessions. Quite often it was Hal Harris.
5 8
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 58
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
The Sun Downers (left to right, front row: Herb Remington, Clyde Brewer, Johnny Ragsdell, Frank Whiteside; back row: Red Novak on drums, Hezzie Bryant), at the Rice Hotel ballroom, Houston, 1950s
He started that plucking guitar stuff when it became the thing to do or the new sound in country records.”
As for Hal Harris (1920–1992), he was a highly respected fi nger-picking guitarist who played on numerous Gold Star sessions. His aggressive guitar style shone brilliantly on many country and rockabilly recordings for Starday or D Records, including some credited to Jones, as well as others by Barnes, Barber, the Big Bopper, Link Davis, Eddie Noack, Ray Campi, Bob Doss, Sleepy LaBeef, Rock Rogers, and others.
p a p py d a i ly a n d s t a r d ay r e c o r d s
5 9
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 59
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
By documenting and publicizing artists such as these during the mid-1950s, Starday ranks right up there with Quinn’s previous Gold Star Records label in terms of historical signifi cance. They both were early, infl uential, and unusually prolifi c independent Texas-based companies recording regional talent. Their respective catalogues are now cultural artifacts, a rich source of mid-twentieth-century roots music from the state’s largest city.
As for Gold Star Studios, the numerous Daily-produced sessions there for Starday (and for its Mercury affi
liation) provided what was surely Quinn’s
most important source of income from 1955 through 1959. However, he was still recording a variety of performers for other labels during this period. (For instance, in 1956 eventual country star Mickey Gilley made his fi rst single there for Minor Records.) Yet the Quinn-Daily business relationship was crucial to the fi nancial stability, and subsequent expansion, of the Gold Star enterprise, and it would continue even after Daily left Starday.
6 0
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 60
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
7
The Big Studio
Room Expansion
ust as the 1950s were a boom time for certain local independent record companies such as Starday, even more so were they a period of explosive expansion and prosperity in Houston proper.
As Bob Allen writes, “All roads led to Houston in Southeast Texas in the early ’50s. The teeming port metropolis was growing so rapidly from the spoils of the cattle, oil, and shipping industries that it was practically bursting at the seams.” Given that context, perhaps it is not surprising that, even though scores of important records have been made there, Houston would rarely be considered a major recording center.
After all, Houston would never really develop or promote itself as such. By 1950 there was so much money being generated in the city’s many business arenas that civic leaders and power brokers likely scoff ed at the notion that recorded music could possibly be one of its prime exports. Perhaps unlike Nashville, the rapidly rising petrochemical capital of the nation did not really need the music business. At any rate, lacking any leadership or support from outside their decidedly eccentric ranks, the various studio proprietors, A&R
producers, label owners, and musical forces never coalesced to create a collective identity for, or to promote, the Houston recording scene.
Nonetheless, it was a fertile and profi table era for some of the shrewdest of the independent music producers. And none was sharper than the Starday Records cofounder known by the paternal nickname. As Allen goes on to say,
“If you came down the pike to Houston with music in your mind, the man to see was Harold W. ‘Pappy’ Daily . . . who had slowly built himself a small empire.” Just as the Duke-Peacock owner Don Robey, despite the presence of many competitors, dominated the local recording of black talent in the 1950s, Daily prevailed over much of the white music scene. Their business pursuits Bradley_4319_BK.indd 61
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
surely stimulated the city’s job market for engineers, songwriters, and musicians, as well as other investments in real property, equipment, and related services. But though they built impressive companies, neither Daily nor Robey could ultimately transform the role of music recording in Houston’s overall economic development.
Nonetheless, for regular session players such as Clyde Brewer, the 1950s were a fi ne time to be working in the city. He says,
Herbie [Remington] and I would get a call almost daily from either Quinn [of Gold Star Studios] or Holford [of ACA Studios] to cut a serious session for a record company or a vanity record for anyone wanting to ride the coattails of George [Jones], Benny [Barnes], or [Big] Bopper.
As far as the founder of Gold Star Studios was concerned, in the late 1950s things were going pretty well. In fact, from late 1958 to early ’59, Quinn had constructed a large new recording studio of his own design. By expanding off the back and one side of his house (the ground fl oor of which remained a smaller studio), he had created a sizable and splendid sanctuary of sound.
Since the bulk of the new building spilled over into the previously vacant side yard, it got its own entrance and street address, 5626 Brock, while the house number remained 5628.
In addition to the big studio room, the fi rst fl oor of the new building also housed two bathrooms, an entrance foyer and reception offi
ce, the stairwell
to the control room, and an engineer’s offi
ce that led directly into the studio
area. The exterior looked like a corrugated steel Quonset hut. The dimensions ran forty-eight feet long by fi fty-three feet wide, with a ceiling height of twenty-two feet. The fl ooring was a type of hardwood parquet. The walls were covered with acoustic tiles and strategically placed heavy drapes that Quinn’s wife had made. There were two vocal booths situated in the back corners below the large window, which signifi ed the control room. In a highly unusual move, Quinn had installed the control room upstairs on the second-fl oor level, off ering it an overhead view of the performance space below.
That control room ran twenty feet wide by sixteen feet deep, with a ceiling height of ten feet. Its wall surfaces and ceiling were covered with acoustic tiles. The fl oor was carpeted to reduce some of the sonic “liveness” caused by the huge window. Considering where Quinn had placed the stairway in relation to the new studio, it was a walk of many steps from the fl oor where the musicians performed up to the control console. However, because of the studio’s unusually grand size, that elevated vantage point off ered exceptional sightlines for the engineer.
6 2
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 62
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
Bill Quinn, at the gate to Gold Star Studios (with the “Big Room” expansion in the background), 1960 (photo by and courtesy of Chris Strachwitz) The mixing console consisted of several Ampex MX-10 tube mixers ganged together. The fi rst state-of-the-art machines that had been set up at Gold Star Studios in 1955 were Ampex 350 and 351 mono tape machines. The fi rst multitrack machine, installed in 1960, was a three-track Ampex machine. In the mid-1960s it would be upgraded to an Ampex four-track that recorded on half-inch tape. Mixing was done fi rst to a mono Ampex 350 quarter-inch machine and later in the mid-1960s to a quarter-inch Ampex 351 stereo machine.
There were also several smaller analog tape decks that were used to create the relatively new echo technology for vocal processing. Engineers had discovered that if you split the vocal signal off to a tape recorder that was rolling in record mode, and then brought that signal back from the playback head to the mixing board, you would have a slightly delayed signal which, used with discretion, could enhance the original vocal. This technique is often referred to as slap-back echo or delay, used frequently on early rockabilly, country, and rock ’n’ roll records.
The control room monitors were JBL, and the studio had Altec A7 speakers. Outboard gear in the early 1960s consisted of some large passive equal-t h e b i g s t u d i o ro o m e x p a n s i o n
6 3
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 63
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
izers, made by a company called Pulteq or custom designed. In 1964 Gold Star would add equalizers to the Ampex MX-10 and MX-35 mixers. The most common microphones in use at the time were the Neumann tube U-47 or U-67, various RCA ribbon microphones (like the DX-77 and DX-44), an Altec/
Western Electric 634, and other smaller Electro Voice and Altec dynamic microphones.
Directly below the control room is where the reception area was located (and still is today). There was also an area that housed an acetate-cutting lathe (later replaced with a Gotham/Grampian lathe in 1965). That space is now the SugarHill Studios front entrance room.
The new studio and offi
ce space marked a signifi cant upgrading of
Quinn’s Brock Street recording facility and the types of projects it could support. Though there was no concerted eff ort among other Houstonians, Quinn—with fi nancial support from Daily and perhaps also from Robey—
was doing his part to bring serious studio recording space and services to the city. Musician Clyde Brewer explains the visionary motivation for Quinn’s expansion:
Bill Quinn built the large studio big enough to be used for television shows and commercials, as well as to cater to the many Daily recording projects. . . .
He built the new Gold Star studio to be used as a sound or TV stage, in the hopes that he would be able to do local video and audio production. I remember . . . comedian Jonathan Winters had come into Gold Star to do a TV commercial while he was on tour performing in Houston.
Musician Glenn Barber adds another insight: “Originally the reason he wanted a room that size was that he wanted to record high school and college marching bands in there, and also big orchestras and such. He was trying to bring in new business and create a new market.”
Slick Norris says the strategy worked: “J. L. Patterson got in with Quinn in, like, 1963 and made his money cutting high school big bands.” Another example is Ed Gerlach’s Big Band, which recorded the album The Big Band from Texas (Dored Records) there in 1964, engineered by Walt Andrus. That seventeen-piece group, even with an extra singer, fi tted easily into the new studio. Back when most recordings were done in relatively small rooms, engineering such a session in Houston would have been diffi
cult. Thus, Quinn’s
ambitious expansion redefi ned the possibilities.
Nevertheless, despite its relatively grandiose scale and Quinn’s desire to expand his clientele (which he did with some success), in the late 1950s and 1960s Gold Star Studios continued primarily to record blues, country, and rock bands or other small combos. Given Quinn’s apparently low-key per-6 4
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 64
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
sonality and working-class graciousness, his enlarged studio facility became a gathering place for many players in such groups. As Sleepy LaBeef put it during a 2004 tour of the building,
It is like coming home. This place still has the same feel that it did when I recorded with Bill Quinn in the ’50s and ’60s. Bill Holford over at ACA was a great recording engineer, but Quinn was less formal, and Gold Star was a much better hangout for the musicians. Most of the players who came here to record in those years also felt like they were at home at Gold Star and
[with] Quinn.
One of those who had accompanied LaBeef there on various sessions was musician Dean Needham, who recalls his fi rst, awestruck impression of the place, circa 1963:
I had been to studios before, but I had never seen anything like this before. It was this huge room with a plank wooden fl oor. Everybody else had egg-crate cartons on the walls and carpet on the fl oor. And I’ve never been in one since that looked like that big room here at Gold Star.
Precisely when Quinn started conducting recording sessions in the big room is not clear, but oral testimony suggests that it was in late 1958 or early
’59. Norris says, “I cut my last record in the house studio in 1958. So I guess that the big room was built sometime after that; possibly in late spring or early summer of ’58. . . . I never cut any records in that big room.” LaBeef adds, “I recorded in both of Bill’s studios; in the small place on the ground fl oor of his house and the big studio next door. He built the big studio in, like, 1959.”
Glenn Barber concurs, “I think that big room was built in early 1959, and we were still doing sessions in the smaller studio while it was being built.”
Then, to illustrate Quinn’s prankish wit and down-home ingenuity—part of what made Gold Star Studios a cool place for many musicians perhaps—
Barber relates the following anecdote:
When they were building it, there was a young guy helping him do the construction. I think he was a musician. He was teasing and making fun of Quinn, [saying] “the old man” this and “the old man” that. [Saying] “He’ll want this, and that’s crazy.”
True to his reputation for a calm demeanor, Quinn ignored the youth’s insulting critiques—up to a point. Barber continues,
t h e b i g s t u d i o ro o m e x p a n s i o n
6 5
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 65
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
Bill was going to hang a speaker, and he was going to use a turnbuckle to ad-just the angle of it as it hung. He didn’t have any at fi rst, but fi nally he found one that was all rusty and looked terrible. So the kid said, “So you aren’t going to buy a new one, are you! You’re going to use that one!”
Quinn said, “Come and hold on to this turnbuckle for me.” He then pulled a can of silver spray paint from behind his back and painted the turnbuckle all the way down to the kid’s wrist. Then he said, “Now that’s pretty, ain’t it?”
Despite such a capacity to humiliate an annoying hired hand, Quinn was evidently viewed by many of the musicians as a likable fellow. However, he was also often a curiosity. For example, Barber describes Quinn’s typical approach to positioning musicians to record during a session.
Bill had a strange way of recording in that big room. He had a great big circle painted on the fl oor. It was a big black circle about twelve feet across. . . . He had a Telefunken tube mic hanging out over the middle of that circle. You’d go up in the control room, and he’d have this little Roberts tape recorder. It was a stereo machine, and he didn’t have multiple tracks. He would set up the musicians in the circle, and he would move them around until he got it balanced the way he wanted. He would move the piano back and fort
h and the rhythm guitarist, and he had two isolation booths for the singer and background singers to sing in. He mixed as he went along on the session. He was a genius and very crude about what he did at the same time. But he cut hit after hit.
Again illustrating Quinn’s mostly nonverbal manner for making a point, Barber recalls another encounter.
I remember one session where he called down from the booth and said,
“Glenn, could you put a bit more treble on your guitar?”
Well, I didn’t like a lot of treble, but I said, “Sure, I’ll give you some more.”
Finally he came down from the booth and said, “Where’s your treble at?”
So I pointed, and he turned it full on. He asked then, “Where’s your bass?”
And again I pointed. He turned it all the way off . That was the way he made me play.
He knew exactly what he wanted, and that’s the way it was. A lot of times he would take a crude sound, something that was shrill and terrible, and make it something that the people wanted to hear.
6 6
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 66
1/26/10 1:12:13 PM
Regarding Quinn’s sound engineering skills, LaBeef adds these comments:
Bill was a genius at the electronic stuff . He could take small equipment, things that seemed insignifi cant, and get a lot of sound out of it. He was the only one that I knew of that could compete with the sound coming out of the Sun Records Studio [in Memphis]. He had a lot of smarts and seemed to know what he wanted and how to get it out of the equipment that he had.
House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) Page 10