House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (25 page)

a few of the hit records made at Gold Star Studios by artists linked to Robey ended up being released on labels that he did not control. A prime example of that seemingly unlikely scenario is the song “Think,” written and performed by Jimmy McCracklin (b. 1921). Released in 1965 on the California-based Imperial Records (#66129), it went to number seven on the R&B charts
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and number ninety-fi ve in the pop category. Its status as a classic would be confi rmed years later by its inclusion on the multidisc compilation
Mean Old
World: The Blues from 1940 to 1994,
issued by the Smithsonian Institution—

though the liner notes by Lawrence Hoff man mistakenly identify Los Angeles as the song’s recording site. Yet “Think” was actually recorded independently by McCracklin in Houston, where he made use of both Robey’s in-house studio on Erastus Street and the Gold Star facility across town.

Though born in St. Louis, McCracklin was a California resident and a proponent of the West Coast blues sound for the entire second half of the twentieth century. After launching his recording career with Globe in 1945, he went on to issue other singles and albums on numerous labels nationwide, including Modern, Atlantic, Swing Time, Checker, Mercury, and many others—as well as Robey’s Peacock brand. That arrangement had evolved during a two-week special engagement featuring McCracklin (along with Big Mama Thornton, Billy Wright, and Marie Adams) at the Bronze Peacock nightclub in 1952. McCracklin’s fi rst Peacock single, issued later that year, off ered the minor hit “My Days Are Limited” (#1605). Peacock released four other McCracklin singles over the next few years, but by 1954 he had moved on to another company.

However, McCracklin continued to perform periodically in Houston, a regular stop on his tours across the South. Though his formal ties with Robey’s label were broken, McCracklin evidently maintained a friendship with the A&R man Scott, which likely led to McCracklin recording one of his most famous songs in Houston. “I had an agent in New York who was booking me in Houston all the time. So I was in your area a lot,” McCracklin explains. “The song ‘Think’ just came to me one day, and I wanted to record it.”

Being in Houston as he was at the time, McCracklin turned to his former associates at Duke-Peacock to bring his plan to fruition. Someone there, presumably Scott, facilitated McCracklin’s initial use of the offi ce-building studio. Whatever arrangements may have been made to garner Robey’s approval of this plan are unclear. But the wheeler-dealer label boss, via his commonly evoked alias, did receive publishing credit as cowriter of “Think”—and hence a half-share of the composer royalties in perpetuity. As is widely known (and covered in more detail in Wood’s
Down in Houston
), after being criticized for claiming writer’s credit for countless songs that he had simply purchased outright from others, Robey had adopted the pseudonym Deadric Malone (based on a combination of his own middle name and his wife’s maiden name—

often abbreviated in credits as D. Malone) to use in such situations, which for Robey were numerous indeed. He thereafter still received the lucrative royalty payments but avoided some of the public embarrassment (for allegedly taking advantage of desperate artists by buying and publishing their songs without acknowledging their role as the actual creators). Because “D. Malone” appears
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with McCracklin’s name in the songwriting credits on this Imperial Records disc, we infer that Robey perhaps permitted the traveling blues musician to make use of the Duke-Peacock studio and ace producer in exchange for a piece of the songwriting action. Gambler that he was (by his own self-description), Robey had to like the odds. After all, assuming no other sessions were scheduled at the time, he would have nothing to lose for allowing McCracklin into his studio; however, if the song proved to be a hit (as it did), Robey could earn some fat and easy royalty checks—what musicians of his era often called

“mailbox money.”

McCracklin continues the story, explaining also how Gold Star Studios came to be involved:

We started the recording over at Robey’s studio in his building, with Joe Scott producing. But Joe wasn’t happy with some of the playing, and he went over to your studio [Gold Star] and replaced some of the music behind my voice. . . . I used my own road band on the [fi rst] recording of that song. The other song we did was . . . “Steppin’ Up in Class.” I recorded those sides for Imperial Records. . . . “Think” was a Gold Record for me.

Among the studio musicians whom Scott employed to rerecord the selected instrumentation for overdubbing was the drummer Bubbha Thomas. The engineer for that session was Frilot, who handled the mixing as well. As for his role on the track, Thomas says, “The reason I got the Jimmy McCracklin thing was because they really liked my backbeat. Robey would say, ‘You tell that damn drummer’—me—‘to play that same backbeat he used on the O. V.

[Wright] session last week!’”

McCracklin adds, “I think that we might have done maybe four other songs during that time period.” In fact, he staged several additional sessions specifi cally at Gold Star Studios in 1965. We have three invoices made out to Imperial Records for Jimmy McCracklin for that same year: a recording session on April 21, a mixing session on April 26, and then twelve straight hours of recording and mixing on September 28. In the company vault we also have a safety master of six untitled tracks labeled as “Jimmy McCracklin/Imperial Records.” Such artifacts are physical reminders of the sometimes surprising, multifaceted history of Gold Star Studios.

while robey’s recording conglomerate scored big with secular music, it was also deeply involved in the production of gospel recordings. As a result, some of the greatest performers in that genre came from across the nation to record in Houston. In a few cases, they are known to have done sessions at Gold Star Studios too.

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For instance, the Sunset Travelers—who originally had featured the singer Wright—indeed traveled, several times, from Memphis to Houston to record. They came twice in 1961 alone, producing at least fi fteen sides at those sessions. Where they recorded (and whether at one or two studios) is not documented. But in October of 1964 the Sunset Travelers are known to have returned to Houston for sessions at Gold Star Studios. They recorded eleven tracks there—some of which appear on the group’s Peacock Records LP entitled
On Jesus’ Program
(#122).

Even nonreligious music fans are likely to know of the Mighty Clouds of Joy. Writing in
All Music Guide,
Jason Ankeny calls them “gospel’s preeminent group,” adding that they “carried the torch for the traditional quartet vocal style” even while “pioneering a distinctively funky sound.” Formed in Los Angeles in 1955, they signed with Peacock Records in 1960 (which was already home to several gospel supergroups). There they made a large number of best-selling gospel singles and albums for Robey’s company. In particular, we know that their 1965 single “I’ll Go” (#3025) was recorded at Gold Star Studios, and it was reportedly a mainstay of
Billboard
’s “Hot Spiritual Singles” chart for that year. Likewise, their 1965 album,
A Bright Side,
was a top-seller, and much of it was recorded at Gold Star (featuring veteran session players such as Thomas, Hollimon, and Evans).

Though gospel music had never been the primary focus of Quinn’s studio, it had been recorded there on many sessions in the 1950s—typically by white country singers with cagy producers who sensed that old-time Christian numbers on the B-sides might help sell records. But the Duke-Peacock connection distinguished Gold Star Studios as a recording site for some of the biggest groups in the history of black gospel.

Similarly, though African Americans had recorded at Quinn’s facility since the late 1940s, the Duke-Peacock connection signifi ed also a changing dynamic in terms of race relations. Given Robey’s self-confi dent demeanor and obvious fi nancial success, as well as his tendency to employ brilliant fellow African Americans (such as Johnson or Scott) in key positions of author-ity, blacks took on increasingly high-profi le roles among the studio’s clientele.

In some cases, the blacks were now the bosses exploiting and promoting the talents of whites—and marketing music (such as Head’s “Treat Her Right”) that appealed to both groups. Writer Tim Brooks notes “the signifi cant socio-economic and cultural contributions Robey made to the industry and to the convergence of black and white popular music,” and then sums up a key fact:

“He was a rare breed, a black man succeeding in a white man’s business, in the South, at a time when that was not encouraged.”

In part because of Robey’s involvement with studios such as ACA and Gold Star, scores of blacks and whites—musicians, engineers, managers,
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producers, songwriters, staff members, and such—worked together in close proximity. For some, it was perhaps the fi rst time to experience a racially integrated professional environment. And despite whatever frictions may have occasionally transpired, some of them, at least sometimes, collaborated creatively in ways that were rare in Texas at the time.

Producer and songwriter Flery Versay provides his own insight on the matter:

I arrived in Houston with my partner Robert Staunton in 1967. We came from LA via Motown Records. Robert had written to Don Robey of Duke and Peacock Records. He asked us to come down to Houston to be staff songwriters, and I wound up being head of A&R for a couple of years, around 1966

and 1967. . . .

I am glad that I got to work with a lot of white cats in the late ’60s. Race relations were a big deal if you listened to the media. They made it out to be a lot worse than it really was. In the entertainment business, everybody pretty much got along. And I’m glad that my experience made that possible.

Of course, Robey’s business sense was focused on making money, not necessarily making racial harmony. But because he needed, and could pay for, the services and facilities that an experienced studio such as ACA or Gold Star could off er, Robey nonetheless may have inadvertently stimulated racial integration in the 1960s recording scene in Houston, the largest city in the South.

Whatever his motive, as an entrepreneur Robey had blazed new trails. Even the cantankerous “Gatemouth” Brown, the fi rst artist he ever recorded, had to admire what Robey had achieved—a feat that until the mid-1960s had yet to be matched. Brown, as quoted in Gart and Ames, off ers this assessment: “He pulled off something in America that no one else ever pulled off [before]. We had the only world-renowned black recording company, the biggest.”

The Duke-Peacock story is thus unique. Moreover, the fact that it includes Gold Star Studios adds yet another dimension to that site’s claim to a special status of its own.

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12

The HSP Corporation

Experiment Begins

y 1965 j. l. patterson,
who was leasing Gold Star Studios from the retired Bill Quinn, had developed a concept that, he hoped, would give him and his partners in the facility unprecedented control of the regional recording market—and make lots of money.

Patterson essentially convinced several previous competitors and independent contractors to join forces with him under a single corporate umbrella.

This larger company’s staff thus comprised many of the best recording engineers from the Houston-Beaumont area. Most prominent in this partnership was Bill Holford of ACA Studios, one of Houston’s most reputable recording companies. By coupling ACA’s business and staff with Gold Star’s, this new hybrid corporation was primed to dominate the recording services industry in and beyond the state’s largest city. It was called the HSP Corporation, based on the initial letter of each founding offi