liated television sta-
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tion, KHOU. He had then just begun hanging out in folk clubs and composing his own songs. Though he would ultimately settle in Nashville, his Houston years were a key time in his prolifi c career. As his booking agent Keith Case puts it in an online profi le,
Moving to Houston, Clark began his career during the “folk scare” of the 1960s. Fascinated by Texas blues legends like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’
Hopkins and steeped in the cultural sauce piquante of his border state, he played traditional folk tunes on the same Austin-Houston club circuit as Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker. . . . Eventually, Clark would draw on these roots to fi rebrand his own fi ddle-friendly and bluesy folk music, see it embraced as country, and emerge as a songwriting icon for connoisseurs of the art.
Clark shares with us his memories of the genesis and execution of the Jester album project:
This was my fi rst recording in a studio, for sure. I believe that this was also K. T. Oslin’s fi rst recording as well. We were all playing this folk joint called the Jester, and Scott and Vivian Holtzman felt that we should make a record, and most of us had never made a record before. We all felt that it would be exciting and interesting to do this. I remember that everybody who participated in the record came to the studio, and we recorded in shifts. Those that weren’t recording were sitting around listening to the others.
Though the Jester album was never widely distributed, this unusual LP
highlights the generally underappreciated vibrancy of the Houston folk scene in the early 1960s—and makes yet another case for the historical signifi cance of Gold Star Studios.
back in the 1950s gold star studios—especially via its affi
liation with
Pappy Daily’s Starday, D, and Dart labels—had played an important Texas role in the rockabilly revolution. But by the early years of the next decade, the genre commonly called rock was rapidly changing. For many in the younger generation, the formerly cool rockabilly sound and persona were now considered antiquated. Gone were the greasers with the ducktail haircuts and their countrifi ed mannerisms. Instead, more record-buying youth were identifying with a style that overtly embraced the infl uence of postmodern urban black music, particularly R&B, and rejected the hillbilly connotations. That movement would accelerate under the infl uence of the so-called British Invasion bands. But American rock and pop were already evolving in new directions, and several Gold Star Studios productions provide evidence of that trend.
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The Jades, in front of Gold Star Studios, 1961
A group billed as C.L. and the Pictures were an early white R&B-inspired Texas rock band. The original lineup featured C. L. Weldon on vocals, Charlie Broyles on guitar, Trent Poole on drums, Leroy Rodriguez on bass, and two sax players, Leo Grimaldo and Glenn Spreen. While the group’s biggest hit,
“I’m Asking for Forgiveness,” was recorded at ACA Studios, they also recorded some classic blue-eyed soul tracks at Gold Star Studios, songs such as
“Smacksie Part II,” “I’m Sorry,” and “For the Sake of Love.”
As for that last song, Poole relates that it came to them from an impeccable source, the black Creole musician Clarence Garlow (1911–1986), best known for his 1949 hit “Bon Ton Roula,” recorded in Houston on the Macy’s label. Poole explains how he interacted with Garlow to buy the rights to new material:
He was an old guy who wrote songs, and people bought them from him. . . .
I was working with Huey P. Meaux and Steve Tyrell in the early ’60s. . . .
And I would go . . . to this old garage apartment and knock on the door, and this guy would hear me and say, “Hold on a minute.” Then the door would open, but I couldn’t see in. He’d just hold the door and say, “You got fi fty dollars?”—because they always sent me with a fi fty-dollar bill.
I’d say, “I got the money.” . . . Then he’d shut the door, and I’d hear him rummaging around in there for a bit. Then he’d come back to the door and hand me a song written on a paper bag like you get your groceries in.
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So he wrote us a song . . . called “For the Sake of Love,” and we recorded it at Gold Star with an engineer by the name of Dan Puskar. We were nineteen and twenty years old. Dan was like thirty-fi ve and an accomplished musician, and he helped us with the song. It was the only record we made that became popular on Houston radio stations, KYOK and KCOH.
Getting airplay on those two prominent African American–oriented stations represented new ground for a white rock group in Houston at the time—a situation that later led to some confusion. Poole continues, “The song became big in Houston, and we were invited to come play live at the radio stations. When we showed up, they discovered we were white guys and Latinos. It was a bit awkward at fi rst, but they fi nally warmed up to us, and we played all afternoon.”
While C.L. and the Pictures never achieved much fame beyond the region, several of their musicians did so as individuals. One of those was session horn player Luis (aka Louis) Gasca (b. 1940), who launched his recording career at Gold Star Studios but later achieved national stature in the music industry, recording with a diverse range of superstars, ranging from Janis Joplin to Count Basie to Van Morrison to Carlos Santana to Brasil ’66 to Mongo Santamaria, and many others. This trumpeter went on to establish himself not only as a versatile session musician but also as a jazz composer and band conductor.
Somewhat similarly, during the nascent phase of his recording career, the artist now known as Mark James ventured into Gold Star Studios. A native Houstonian born Francis Zambon (1940), he recorded his fi rst song, “Jive Note,” there in 1959 for the Vamalco label (#503). By 1960 he had changed his professional name. At Gold Star he also made an early demo recording of one of his compositions, “Suspicious Minds,” which would later become a hit for Elvis Presley, as would a song cowritten by James called “Always on My Mind.” Another singer from Houston, B. J. Thomas (b. 1942), would earn a Gold Record Award in 1968 with James’s composition “Hooked on a Feeling,”
which hit again in 1974 via an eccentric cover version by the Swedish group Blue Suede.
Today James owns Music Row Studio in Nashville and resides in Santa Monica, California. He provides an insightful recollection of Gold Star Studios at the time of his recording-industry initiation:
I had singles mastered at Gold Star because Quinn was a good mastering engineer. I also played guitar on a bunch of things at the studio. On my own recordings, I was moving back and forth between the studios, mostly at Bill Holford’s [ACA Studios]. Quinn’s studio was busier than Holford’s because of Pappy’s involvement, so it was easier for me to get in over at Holford’s.
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. . . When I was seventeen or eighteen I went in [to Gold Star] and cut that instrumental “Jive Note” and put a vocal song on the other side. When it went to number one in Houston, I realized then at an early age that maybe I could really do this.
Another major music business fi gure to emerge from this time and place was Steve Bilao, a guy who grew up literally around the corner from Francis Zambon in southeast Houston. However, like his childhood friend, Bilao soon changed his Italian surname. Since then this vocalist, songwriter, producer, and industry mogul has been known as Steve Tyrell.
Tyrell’s fame today extends in multiple directions in the Los Angeles–based entertainment industry, including roles as a singer or songwriter for a number of fi lms, plus productions f
or Dionne Warwick, Ray Charles, Diana Ross, Burt Bacharach, Stevie Wonder, Bette Midler, Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, and many others. Moreover, in more recent years he has recorded several successful albums as a singer of jazz and pop standards. But Tyrell got started in music recording at Gold Star Studios—during his tenure as the second singer in C.L. and the Pictures.
Some of Tyrell’s bandmates in the Pictures also migrated to entertainment centers to forge their own careers. Trent Poole became a successful studio drummer in Los Angeles. Sax man Glenn Spreen fi rst attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York, and then moved to Nashville and became a record producer. He also wrote the string arrangements for Elvis Presley’s recording of “Suspicious Minds,” as well as for Johnny Mathis’s “Chances Are.”
Tyrell was also involved in producing Joyce Webb (b. 1940), a popular local singer who later served a ten-year stint as featured vocalist with the Houston Pops Orchestra. Having made her fi rst recordings for the Austin-based Domino’s label at age 17, Webb also cut 45 rpm singles for various other record companies nationwide, including Ric Tic, Golden World, Warner Brothers, Probe-ABC, Columbia, Lee-Roy, and Epic. In Houston she frequently did sessions as a backup singer at Gold Star Studios, working there fi rst when Quinn was chief engineer and later with successors such as Walt Andrus, Bert Frilot, Doyle Jones, and Jim Duff . She also recorded there with producer Tyrell in the 1960s on the single “I Sang a Rainbow,” released on Warner Brothers Records (#7048).
Among other young talent that graduated, in a sense, from early ’60s sessions at Gold Star Studios to become part of the national musical industry were two acclaimed drummers: Willie Ornelas and Tony Braunagle.
After relocating to Los Angeles, Ornelas became one of its premiere session and touring musicians. His studio work has included sessions with i n t o t h e ’ 6 0 s a n d q u i n n ’ s l a s t s e s s i o n s 9 9
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Dionne Warwick, Ray Charles, Tom Jones, Dolly Parton, José Feliciano, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, David Foster, Larry Carlton, Bill Champlain, Al Jarreau, and others. He has also worked in television, contributing to soundtracks for shows such as Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Magnum PI, NYPD Blue, Greatest American Hero, White Shadow, Boston Public, The King of Queens, Law and Order, The Love Boat, and others.
Yet the impressive Ornelas résumé begins with session work back in his hometown. He relates,
The fi rst session I ever did was in the big studio at Gold Star. It was probably in 1961, and Bill Quinn was the engineer. He was an older gentleman who just generally told us what to do, and we did it—because we were idiots.
It was a group called Cecil and Anne. We had a hit record in Houston back then, called “You Wrote This Letter,” and it was the fi rst group I ever played with. . . . It was for a local label that Lelan Rogers had at the time, called Sabra Records [#520].
Soon, however, Ornelas bid farewell to Texas. “I left Houston in 1966 for the fi rst time and went on tour with B. J. Thomas,” he says. They appeared together on the teen-music-oriented TV show called Where the Action Is, setting the stage for the long and productive career that Ornelas has fashioned for himself on the West Coast.
Though he gigged throughout Texas for much of his early career, Ornelas’s childhood friend and fellow drummer Tony Braunagle eventually ended up in Los Angeles too. His album session credits include work with Bonnie Raitt, Rickie Lee Jones, Johnny Nash, Dionne Warwick, and others—as well as production of a 2006 project by Eric Burdon. He too did demos and session work at Gold Star Studios before setting off on the major phase of his career.
Another
R&B-infl uenced rocker with a Gold Star pedigree is Jerry LaCroix, an extraordinary vocalist and tenor sax player from Beaumont. Though he is best known for his roles with Edgar Winter’s White Trash, the legendary Gulf Coast bar band the Boogie Kings, or the famous group Blood, Sweat, and Tears, LaCroix recorded some obscure but powerful records at Gold Star Studios in the 1960s.
LaCroix’s initial work there yielded the 1961 single “Band Doll,” credited to Jerry and the Dominoes on Meaux’s Teardrop Records. Next, under the pseudonym Jerry “Count” Jackson, he recorded “Falling in Love” for Meaux, released on Vee-Jay Records (#563). Later, the Boogie Kings, featuring Jerry LaCroix and G. G. Shin on vocals, recorded there, again for Meaux. At that point LaCroix’s talents propelled him to higher-profi le gigs beyond Southeast Texas. But approximately thirty years later, LaCroix returned to the Houston 1 0 0
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studio where he had cut his fi rst tracks to record the 1999 CD Better Days with Jerry Lightfoot (1951–2006).
Other prominent musicians who passed through the studios in the early 1960s include Johnny “Rabbit” Bundrick, who eventually played keyboards for the Who. Another was Snuff y Walden, a guitarist who later appeared on hit tracks by Stevie Wonder, Heart, and REO Speedwagon—and received a 2004 Emmy Award for his music on the hit TV show West Wing.
However, of the many artists who fi rst recorded at Gold Star and went on to make successful careers in music, some did so without leaving Houston.
Instead, they became stalwarts of the local scene. Guitarist and bassist Rock Romano (sometimes billed as Dr. Rockit) has led his own band and played with scores of other highly regarded regional groups. Since 1988 he has also owned and operated his own studio, called the Red Shack.
Romano’s career path began, like so many others, in Quinn’s Brock Street facility. He recollects the scene:
My earliest memories of Gold Star Studios were probably between late 1961
and early 1963. . . . We were all grouped in a circle around one big fat mic, possibly a U-47, hanging down from the ceiling. The singer was standing closer to the mic than the rest of us. Then when the sax player needed to take his solo, he’d run up under the mic, and then he’d back up from the mic.
Romano’s exposure to this now quaint method for group recording perhaps laid the foundation for his ultimate vocation. As a Houston-based studio owner and engineer, every time he positions the mics today for a group performance or mixes overdubs created in isolation, he follows—consciously or not—a path fi rst blazed by Quinn.
Perhaps the youngest of all the artists who fi rst recorded at Gold Star Studios in the early 1960s were the Champagne Brothers. That band was a regionally successful white R&B-pop group, originally from South Louisiana, composed of male siblings, managed and promoted by their parents.
Don Champagne relates his childhood experiences as a Gold Star Studios recording artist:
We moved to Houston when I was nine and started playing gigs full-time. . . .
I was about ten years old the fi rst time I ever came over here to record . . . in 1961. We had signed a contract with Huey P. Meaux, and he put us on his Typhoon label and then later on his Teardrop label. We would be playing a gig in town and he would call up and say, “Y’all come to the studio as soon as you are through.” Charles, my brother, who was the lead singer, would be warmed up, and Huey would say, “What do you want to cut?” Or he would i n t o t h e ’ 6 0 s a n d q u i n n ’ s l a s t s e s s i o n s 1 0 1
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have a specifi c song in mind and kind of lead us through it. Another guy who was involved in the production was Steve Tyrell. . . . Many times after we’d rehearsed it a bit we would get the fi nished track on the fi rst take. After we were done, later they would add strings and voices to the recording. It was amazing to us, what they sounded like after they were done.
We did “It’s Raining”/“Robin” [Typhoon #2003], “Stranger to
You”/“Chickawawa” [Typhoon #2002], and one called “Let’s Live”/“I’ll Run Away, Far Away” [Teardrop #3042]. “Stranger to You” went to number one in the areas around Houston and in East Texas and Louisiana. The success of that
record and some of the others guaranteed us a great deal of work.
The Champagne Brothers recorded numerous other 45 rpm singles released on several regional labels. In their prime, they were major players on the upper–Gulf Coast pop music scene—as evidenced by a chart from KOLE
radio for September 4, 1963, which ranks their song “Stranger to You” as number one. At the height of their popularity, they also toured the region as the opening act for national stars such as the Righteous Brothers, the Everly Brothers, and the Four Seasons.
With groups like the Champagne Brothers, time was ushering fresh players onto the studio fl oor to sing and play into those suspended mics. And for the founder and chief engineer, time was pointing out the door.
in july of 1963 bill quinn partially retired, leasing his Gold Star Studios to an entrepreneur named J. L. Patterson, who had already been involved on some projects there. Patterson had worked as a franchised agent for a company called Century Records, a California-based label that specialized in custom record pressings for high school and college marching bands. Given its booming population and numerous colleges and universities, Houston was an ideal location for Patterson. His control of the studio off ered additional ways for him to capitalize on what he already knew—and soon would learn—
about the recording business.
Based on the paperwork available in the SugarHill archives, it is possible to piece together a partial view of Patterson’s evolving role in the daily operations. For example, we have a Gold Star receipt dated August 14, 1964, that shows J. L. Patterson as lessee and Doyle Jones as engineer. Two invoices from December 22, 1964, show Patterson actually engineering separate sessions for recordings by Lightnin’ Hopkins and Floyd Tillman. We also have a February 2, 1965, document from the JLP Corporation, dba Gold Star Recording Company, with the names of Patterson and Jones included as key members of the group.
House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) Page 15