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Meanwhile, as Patterson took over, Quinn and his wife continued to reside nearby. Who knows what it was like for Quinn to cease running the studio while still living on site? Maybe he was simply relieved to be free of the responsibilities he had voluntarily shouldered in building his business. But we think that perhaps he also sometimes missed it.
As a musician who was working in the studio from 1961 through 1965—
an era overlapping the founder’s transition out of the control booth and into retirement—Mel Douglas observed Quinn in the last stage of his involvement with studio operations. When queried about his memories of the man, Douglas evokes a striking image:
Bill Quinn was an older man. He was nicely dressed and had fairly long gray hair. He was a real pleasant and outgoing guy. He reminded me of one of those older actors, like Jimmy Stewart. I was real impressed with the way he did things. It seemed like he tried to accommodate everyone who asked him for things. He was always talking and friendly, even when he was cutting me the acetate dubs after the session was over.
This description of Quinn in the twilight of his career suggests a professional who clearly loved his work and the environment in which he did it. In retrospect, part of Quinn’s achievement is that he practically invented this job and this workspace for himself. It is perhaps no wonder that he may have seemed so satisfi ed and fulfi lled as he practiced his well-honed craft.
After all, this mild-mannered yet defi antly self-reliant maverick had learned almost everything he knew about sound recording technology entirely on his own—no training or mentorship. Since leaving that carnival company back in 1939, this husband and father had remained successfully self-employed, dependent solely on his own ingenuity and vision, a good provider. He had designed and expanded the very studios in which he had daily worked—structures that were literally an extension of his family’s home. When it came to trusting one’s instincts and endeavoring to be true to them, he seems to have got it right.
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11
Duke-Peacock
t h e g o l d s t a r c o n n e c t i o n
he significance of Houston-born music magnate Don Robey in postwar independent recording history, previously documented in various books and articles, is immense. However, few if any writers have noted that Robey conducted numerous recording
sessions at Gold Star Studios. This fact challenges the common (and false) assumption that Robey recorded mainly in the studio that he had constructed inside his offi
ce building in 1954. For the better informed, it contrasts
with the generalized knowledge that Robey utilized ACA Studios for many Houston recordings. Nonetheless, Robey’s role as the fi rst nationally prominent African American record-label boss is also part of Gold Star Studios history.
As the proprietor of Peacock Records, founded in 1949, Robey had launched several stars of urban blues and early R&B—infl uential performers such as Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (1924–2005) and Willie Mae “Big Mama”
Thornton (1926–1984)—as well as gospel stalwarts such as the Original Five Blind Boys, Bells of Joy, Dixie Hummingbirds, and Mighty Clouds of Joy. As the owner also of Duke Records, acquired in 1952 from David James Mattis, Robey forged a fusion of its original Memphis sound with fresh talent from Texas. That move triggered a succession of hit recordings by Bobby “Blue”
Bland (b. 1930), Johnny Ace (b. John Alexander, 1929–1955), Junior Parker, Roscoe Gordon (1928–2002), and many others. As the creator of other labels—Sure Shot, Back Beat, and Song Bird—Robey introduced hit-making artists such as Joe Hinton (1929–1968), O. V. Wright (1939–1980), and Roy Head (b. 1941) to popular culture. And Robey did it all in or near his home neighborhood of the Fifth Ward.
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His base of operation was located at 2809 Erastus Street in what is now an inconspicuous rectangular building covered in whitewashed stucco. Today its only distinguishing architectural feature is a wing-shaped protrusion, pointing skyward, above the front door. From 1945 through most of 1953, this unusual protuberance carried a neon sign that spelled out “Bronze Peacock”
and outlined an image of the namesake bird. That establishment—a nightclub featuring live jazz orchestras on stage, fi ne dining in the main room, and a reputation for high-stakes gaming opportunities in the back—was so impressive in its time that Johnny Ace biographer James M. Salem refers to it as “Las Vegas in Houston.” The Bronze Peacock too was owned by Robey, and along with his Buff alo Booking Agency, it had been his primary focus until he entered the record business.
Today the Bronze Peacock is remembered as one of the fi nest African-American-owned-and-operated entertainment venues in the mid-twentieth-century South. But in 1953, four years after cutting his fi rst recordings, Robey closed it, concentrating thereafter on his record labels and their affi liated
artists. He then remodeled the nightclub structure, transforming it into his corporate headquarters. Within another year he had commissioned the building of a recording studio there too. Given the phenomenal success of his fi rst two labels, Robey’s amalgamation of operations has often been referred to as Duke-Peacock, or sometimes simply as Peacock. Thus, that Erastus Street property has often been called, misleadingly, the Peacock studio. Yet Robey’s robust achievement depended almost entirely on hits produced elsewhere.
When Robey retired in 1973 and sold his music business holdings to ABC/
Dunhill Records, that deal encompassed fi ve record labels, a catalogue of close to 2,700 song copyrights (which he had typically purchased outright from cash-starved songwriters), approximately 2,000 unreleased masters, and contracts with over one hundred artists. Yet his success as a capitalist (whose medium just happened to be music recording) should not overshadow his impact on cultural history. For example, Jerry Zolten, in his book Great God A’mighty!: The Dixie Hummingbirds, acknowledges that “Robey signed some of the most important artists in African-American blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel, making Peacock a prime force in the business of recording American roots music.” Moreover, in the Handbook of Texas Online Ruth K. Sullivan writes of Robey, “Although controversial because of his shrewd business practices and dealings with artists, he is credited with substantially infl uencing the development of Texas blues by fi nding and recording blues artists.” Indeed, hundreds of people—instrumentalists, singers, songwriters, arrangers—were part of the collective creative process that ultimately made Duke-Peacock so profi table, and Robey provided a way to showcase their talents.
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The potent artistry cultivated during Robey’s twenty-four-year reign particularly invigorated the Houston blues scene. Even in the early twenty-fi rst century, its most distinctive characteristics are vitally linked to Robey’s empire, particularly as defi ned by the polished arrangements of his primary A&R
man, trumpeter Joe Scott (1924–1979).
As is most thoroughly documented in the book Duke/Peacock Records by Galen Gart and Roy C. Ames, Robey actually conducted the majority of his Houston recording sessions at ACA Studios under the technical supervision of its founder Bill Holford. In fact, Gart and Ames call Robey “ACA’s best customer.” However, even in the early stages of that business relationship, Gold Star Studios was peripherally involved. As Gart and Ames also acknowledge, after paying for recording sessions at ACA, “Robey would indicate which of the numbers on a given date he wished to have mastered for release. Holford would then send the fi nal selections on to Bill Quinn’s Gold Star facility (or to various other places around the co
untry) for processing.” Thus, almost from the start of his hit-making endeavors, Robey’s product was dependent in part on Quinn’s expertise.
After using ACA Studios almost exclusively for Houston sessions during his fi rst fi ve years, in April of 1954 Robey hired Holford to design and install a recording studio within the Duke-Peacock offi
ce complex. Many people have
assumed that Robey produced his recordings there, but that was only rarely the case. As quoted by Gart and Ames, Holford himself indicates otherwise:
“He built that basically as a rehearsal studio. . . . Although some gospel sessions were cut there, the soul and pop groups mainly rehearsed there and then cut the fi nished recordings elsewhere.” A quick scan of the discographi-cal data for top artists such as Bland or Parker reveals that “elsewhere” could have been out of town or another studio in Houston. Holford adds, “By that time, many of them [the Duke-Peacock stars] were on the road almost continuously. When Robey was ready to record a session, he’d hire a studio in whatever city they happened to be in.”
Evelyn Johnson, Robey’s longtime offi
ce manager, indicates in Roger
Wood’s Down in Houston that the Erastus Street in-house recording studio was mainly used to make demos of new songs. These tapes were then often sent out to touring artists to provide aural orientation to new material that Scott or others had developed in the demo studio. Then, when Robey booked them into a studio session on the road, they could effi
ciently perform the
track the way the home-based arranger had envisioned it.
Nonetheless, a large share of Robey’s recordings continued to take place in Houston—and if not at ACA, then often at Gold Star Studios.
of all the artists whom robey recorded, his most enduring success came with Bobby “Blue” Bland. Between 1957 and 1972, his prime years with 1 0 6
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Bobby “Blue” Bland, publicity
photo, mid-1960s
Robey, the singer placed hits on the Billboard R&B charts an amazing forty-fi ve times. Thirty-three of those tunes crossed over to register on the pop charts too, with four making it into the Top 40. Since then, Bland has remained intensely popular, touring widely and releasing scores of albums on other labels. In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction proclamation, Bland is credited with achieving “a defi nitive union of Southern blues and soul.” This iconic singer, too, is part of the Gold Star Studios story.
Because Robey and Johnson kept Bland frequently on tour, many of his recordings for the Duke label were made at studios in Nashville, Chicago, or Los Angeles. But there were still many done in Houston, dating as far back as 1952, mostly at ACA. However, by 1963, Robey also had begun to use the big room at Gold Star Studios to record various artists, including Bland.
Bland came there initially in 1965 to record the Duke single “I’m Too Far Gone (to Turn Around)” backed with “If You Could Read My Mind” (#393).
The A-side went to number eight on the Billboard R&B charts and crossed d u k e - p e a c o c k : t h e g o l d s t a r c o n n e c t i o n 1 0 7
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over to register at number sixty-two on its Hot 100 pop listings. Some time later, Bland returned to Gold Star for a session that yielded another single:
“Back in the Same Old Bag Again” and “I Ain’t Myself Anymore” (#412).
In terms of popularity and record sales, Bland’s closest Duke rival was the harmonica-playing singer known as Junior Parker. This Mississippi native (born Herman Parker Jr.) had signed with the label in 1953 and scored his fi rst hit with “Next Time You See Me” (#164), recorded in Houston in May 1956. From the mid-1950s into the ’60s Parker and Bland frequently toured together, sharing the same band and road manager, in a package show billed as “Blues Consolidated.”
On January 23, 1963, Parker recorded “Walking the Floor over You” at Gold Star Studios. However, that track was not released until 1965 when Duke issued it as a single backing “Goodbye Little Girl” (#398).
One of the musicians who toured with Bland and Parker and played on many of Bland’s classic Duke tracks was trumpeter Melvin Jackson. Noting that Jackson appears on nine of the sixteen tracks documented on the 1998-issued Bland CD Greatest Hits Volume One: The Duke Recordings (MCAD
#11783) should establish his credentials. There his brassy tones are heard, often in tandem with those emanating from Joe Scott, on the original versions of songs such as “Cry Cry Cry” (#327), “I Pity the Fool” (#332), and
“Turn On Your Love Light” (#344). As Jackson says, “I was on the road with Bobby Bland from 1959 all the way through 1987, and I was his bandleader for about twenty of those years. So if we were in Houston recording, I was with him.” Jackson also appears on the classic 1974 album Together Again for the First Time . . . Live by B. B. King and Bland (MCAD #4160). Refl ecting on his life in music, Jackson recounts various memories of recording at Gold Star Studios:
Whenever we were in Houston, we would record demos over at the studio on Erastus Street where [Robey] kept his offi
ces. If there was a real recording
session, we would go over to Gold Star to do it. . . . Some of the musicians I remember working with were Johnny Brown, Wayne Bennett, and Clarence Hollimon on guitar. Drummers were John Starks and Harold Portier. Joe Scott was the man who created the big horn sound for blues bands. Our band playing with Bland and Parker was the hottest band in Houston.
As for Robey’s reasons for renting studio space elsewhere even though he owned his own facility, it seems likely that he deferred to the superior equipment, sound rooms, and engineering staff s off ered by established recording companies. In particular, he might not have wanted to invest in necessary upgrading, especially during the transition from mono to multitrack recording.
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Whatever the case, Gold Star invoices from 1964 to 1968 confi rm that Robey frequently staged his sessions there.
Veteran engineer Doyle Jones (1928–2006), who started working there in 1965, says, “Duke and Peacock did a hell of a lot of recording while I was at Gold Star. I remember sessions with Buddy Ace and Junior Parker and many others.” Though he reports that Robey rarely visited, Jones adds, “One of his
[producers] was always there, either Gil Capel or Joe Scott.”
Jones had replaced the engineer who handled the earliest known Duke-Peacock sessions at Gold Star—Walt Andrus, who had been hired when J. L.
Patterson leased the facility from Quinn in 1963. Before departing to build his own studio, Andrus specialized in custom recordings and pressings, particularly for Duke-Peacock. In addition to sessions with Bland and Parker, Andrus also recorded tracks by other Robey artists, such as Joe Hinton, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and Ernie K-Doe (1936–2001).
As for determining precisely when Robey started to use Gold Star, the paper trail is incomplete. One source suggests that it could have been earlier than 1963, but no corroboration has been established. “We talked a lot there in the studio,” musician Sleepy LaBeef says of Robey. “He would lease the studio sometimes for a day, and sometimes for a whole week.” Because he recalls Robey being there during Quinn’s studio expansion project, LaBeef insists,
“The time period that Robey was there was from 1959 on. He was there at the studios a lot, and he and Bill Quinn got along real good. They kind of believed in each other.”
Trumpeter Calvin Owens (1929–2008) did Duke-Peacock session work and served as A&R man during a couple of stints. Owens says that such assignments brought him to Gold Star for the fi rst time in 1962 and that he worked on recordings for Parker as well as K-Doe with a variety of engineers, including Dan Puskar, Bert Frilot, and Andrus.
Meanwhile, jazz
drummer Bubbha Thomas also worked lots of sessions for the Duke-Peacock concern, including its Back Beat and Sure Shot imprints. Starting in 1963, he gigged as part of a studio unit that featured guitarist Clarence Hollimon (1937–2000) and bassist Lawrence Evans. “Clarence, Lawrence, and I played on sessions for Buddy Ace, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, the Loving Sisters, O. V. Wright, and others,” he says. “Early on, sessions were being done at Bill Holford’s ACA Studios, but then quite a number of the sessions were moved over to Gold Star.” Thomas’s earliest session credits there include Verna Rae Clay’s “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,” released on Sure Shot (#5001) in October 1963, and Bobby Williams’s “Play a Sad Song” and
“Try Love” on Sure Shot (#5003), issued in May 1964.
Leo O’Neil, trombonist and arranger, says, “The earliest I remember being at Gold Star was maybe 1964. I remember working with a lot of Don Robey’s d u k e - p e a c o c k : t h e g o l d s t a r c o n n e c t i o n 1 0 9
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artists back in those days. They had great writers and arrangers . . . so my job was to work with those guys and get the arrangements written out correctly.”
O’Neil’s assessment of the quality of the arrangers is almost universally shared. For instance, ACA Studios owner Holford, quoted in Gart and Ames, says of Robey, “First, he hired good arrangers. Every part was ready when the session started.” Gold Star staff engineer Doyle Jones adds,
The one thing that I remember the most about Don Robey’s outfi t was the two A&R men that came over during the sessions. One was an older gentleman named Wilmer Shakesnider, and the other was a real famous guy, Joe Scott. I was real impressed with those two guys. They always handled the sessions very well, and almost every session was productive.
House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) Page 16