House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (28 page)

In the mid-1960s various other bands or individuals, looking to achieve a breakthrough as Thomas had, made recordings there at a frenetic pace.

Singer-songwriter Gaylan Latimer came there fi rst in early 1965 to record with the Dawgs, which he fronted under the stage name Gaylan Ladd. Meaux produced the session, yielding the single “Shy” backed with “Won’t You Cry for Me” (two Latimer originals) on Pic 1 Records (#119).

In mid-1965 Meaux booked time in Gold Star’s Studio A for three days of recording with essentially the same personnel. ACA/Gold Star invoices indicate sessions occurred in April and June, with Jones engineering.

Having used compositions by band member Robert Sharpe as well as by Latimer, the crafty Meaux refashioned the group’s persona, billing them as Bob and Gaylan on singles such as “Don’t Go in My Room, Girl” on the Ventura label (#722) or others on his Pacemaker imprint. Latimer provides the rationale for that change:

Bob and Gaylan and our band had a very English mop-top or Mersey-beat look to it. . . . Together with Huey we then worked on a concept and convinced Epic Records that Bobby Sharpe was from Dover, England. And [then we] had a major deal signed with the company. Epic was all set to put a huge
t h e h s p c o r p o r at i o n e x p e r i m e n t b eg i n s
1 3 1

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 131

1/26/10 1:12:17 PM

investment into the band when, for some inexplicable reason, Bobby leaked to the Houston news media that he really wasn’t from England. That was the kiss of death for the project because the deal hinged on this Texas/English band being able to compete with the Beatles and the English invasion of the American charts.

Meaux had sought to convey an image appealing to fans enthralled by the latest phenomenon in pop music, then at its height. This is an example of a deceptive marketing strategy that Meaux would later similarly employ to rechristen Doug Sahm’s band as the Sir Douglas Quintet.

In August 1965 Steve Tyrell produced a session for an artist named Chuck Jackson, which was billed to Stan Greenberg of Scepter-Wand Records from New York City. Meanwhile, in a matter of just a few months (and for singles issued on a variety of labels), Meaux also produced artists such as Warren Storm, T. K. Hulin, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Doty Roy, Barbara Lynn, Joe Barry, Johnny Copeland, Ray Frushay, Johnny Williams, Joey Long, and Ivory Joe Hunter—who collectively represent almost any regional subgenre that might have viably struck pop gold.

But apart from Meaux there were plenty of other producers renting time and expertise from Gold Star Studios during this era. For example, Jimmy Duncan was a Houston songwriter and singer, very much in the mold of Pat Boone, who had founded Cue Records around 1955 and later a label called Cinderella Records. He wrote “My Special Angel,” a hit recorded by Bobby Helms for Decca Records in 1957. Duncan also wrote “Echoes of Time,”

which would be recorded by the Houston psychedelic rock band Lemon Fog in 1967. Later Duncan built his own studio complex, called Soundville, in southwest Houston. When it failed a few years later, Holford purchased it as the new home of ACA Studios.

But Duncan had fi rst recorded at Gold Star Studios as early as 1956, when he cut two Cue sides, and he came back frequently during the HSP days.

From July 1964 through July 1965, he and his various production companies staged at least fi fty-three Gold Star recording sessions. Andrus had engineered approximately the fi rst third of those, and Jones handled the rest. Archived documents show Duncan booked Gold Star sessions also for the blues artist Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, the white R&B singer Jesse Langford, the pop vocalist Jimmy Henderson, a duo called Cathy and Joe, as well as for himself and others.

There were other self-produced projects by artists hoping to break through on their own. For instance, in 1965 country singer Mickey Gilley visited the studios at least eight times to record demos or masters, including the songs “I Miss You So” and “Lotta Loving,” which were later released on Astro Records
1 3 2

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 132

1/26/10 1:12:17 PM

left to right: Huey Meaux, Doyle Jones, and the Dawgs, at Gold Star Studios, 1965

(photo courtesy of Gaylan Latimer, third from right)

(#106). Gilley says, “Doyle Jones engineered those for me over at Gold Star.

About six months later we did another session, and the songs that we did were ‘If I Didn’t Have a Dime’ and a B-side. . . . released on Astro [#110] in 1966.”

Meanwhile, the Houston-based producer Steve Poncio came to Gold Star Studios at least six times between May 1965 and September 1966 for recording, mixing, and mastering on blues or rock artists such as Don Cherry, Joe Hughes, Jimmy “T-99” Nelson, Piano Slim, Joe Medwick, and C.L. and the Pictures.

Not all of the clients were pop bands, however. In early November 1965, members of the Houston Symphony Orchestra returned to Gold Star Studios to record. This project, produced by Dr. Paul Carlin, featured selected orchestra musicians grouped in a smaller ensemble, conducted by Dick Anthony, performing with a special all-star choir comprising some of the best religious singers from the region. The result was a contemporary gospel album titled
What Manner Love.
It featured the singer Jerry Wayne Bernard with music written by Bill Harvey and others and arrangements by Dick Anthony. Lurie staged, recorded, mixed, and mastered the album over the course of four days.

This sort of project underscores again the importance of the Quinn-designed big studio room in the Gold Star legacy.

t h e h s p c o r p o r at i o n e x p e r i m e n t b eg i n s
1 3 3

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 133

1/26/10 1:12:17 PM

But regardless of the quality of the facility and the artists it recorded, like any business Gold Star Studios required competent, honest management to succeed in the long run. And the HSP Corporation run was not very long.

Though its tenure marked a particularly productive era in terms of numbers and types of sessions, there was trouble ahead. Legal issues resulting in serious charges against Patterson would soon surface, threatening to destroy the whole enterprise forever. Some members of the corporation had seen it coming and got out before the situation deteriorated. Others lingered there through HSP’s demise. And a few, like the engineer Jones, simply got themselves fi red. He says,

I recorded a lot of great sessions at that studio: Roy Head, the Sir Douglas Quintet, the Pozo Seco Singers, a bunch of Duke and Peacock Records artists. I worked a lot with Huey P. Meaux, Charlie Booth, and Don Robey’s people, like Joe Scott and Wilmer Shakesnider. . . . But it didn’t work in the long run. Jack [Clement] and Bill Hall pulled out and went to Nashville.

. . . I got fi red because I had diff erences with Patterson. I thought he was a thief and told him so, and that ended my involvement with the studio. Bill Holford and Bert [Frilot] pulled out just a couple of months after I left. . . .

I quickly got tired of the scams that J. L. Patterson was running and not getting paid for my work.

Yet before this obviously bitter ending, Jones and others had a little more history to make.

1 3 4

h o u s e o f h i t s

Bradley_4319_BK.indd 134

1/26/10 1:12:17 PM

13

A House of Rock,

Despite the Muck

he hsp corporation remained
intact for less than a full year, dissolving as key members and unhappy employees gradually

pulled out. But during its brief existence, its operations included the making of hundreds of recordings at Gold Star Studios, and some of those are undeniably historic. Despite the ill will generated among insiders by J. L. Patterson’s emerging reputation for bad checks, half truths, and scheming opportunism, HSP’s strong start and an especially propitious regional music scene fueled an explosion of new business that kept Gold Star Studios functioning. HSP had begun with a large engineering staff , so it took a while for Patterson’s antics to deplete the whole roster. In the meantime, groups such as the Sir Douglas Quintet and the 13th Floor Elevators, among others, used the facility to forge fundamental tracks. No matter how much bad management may have sullied the company, a new breed of clientele was clamoring to make records, some of which would become classics.

Jeff Millar’s
Houston Post
article from September 1965 provides a view of Gold Star Studios at essentially the halfway point of the HSP era. In recounting the recent national success of locally produced artists (such as Roy Head, whose “Treat Her Right” is cited as having already sold some 300,000

copies), Millar focuses on ACA/Gold Star Studios as Houston’s main house of hits, lauding its size and reputation. In particular, Millar quotes the company’s vice president/general manager and engineer, Bill Holford, who notes that—along with many sessions for pop music groups, commercials, and high school bands and orchestras—he had recorded six tracks there for the Kingston Trio a few months earlier.

An accompanying photograph depicts Mickey Gilley’s band recording in Studio B with Holford at the controls. Millar says the studio has so much work that it operates approximately eighteen hours per day. Ultimately, Holford ex-Bradley_4319_BK.indd 135

1/26/10 1:12:17 PM

plains the company’s bottom line: “We charge $32 an hour for our recording services. Figure three hours to cut two songs, both sides of a [45 rpm] record.

There’s a little more time needed for re-mixing and mastering. Each acetate master is $10. The average recording session runs around $110.” This description covers the minimum starting point for making a record—a process that would yield a single tape and one acetate master. For the cycle to come to fruition, that master would then have to be pressed to make suffi cient copies to send to DJs and retailers, entailing additional expenses. Yet the ACA/

Gold Star Studios prices for recording, remixing, and mastering were quite reasonable for the time, suggesting that economical rates may have fueled the prolifi c level of recording activity.

As previously noted, producer Huey Meaux paid to use the studio frequently through August 1965, when he moved to his own facility for a while.

Perhaps his decision to depart was triggered by HSP’s plan to monopolize local recording services. Creating his own studio may have been Meaux’s de-fi ant assertion of independence, his unwillingness to have his projects controlled by the likes of Patterson. Whatever the case, before leaving, Meaux staged some of the sessions most important to the legacy of Gold Star Studios, featuring a group that he had dubbed the Sir Douglas Quintet.

Meaux’s concept in naming that band is well known in Texas music folklore. Given the intense public appetite for mid-1960s English rock groups performing music based on American blues and R&B, Meaux decided that Sahm could be the catalyst for a grand scheme. As Gary Hartman writes in
The History of Texas Music,

Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the British Invasion, Meaux apparently selected the name Sir Douglas Quintet because it sounded “English,”

and he encouraged Sahm and the others to wear the “mod” clothing and hairstyles of their British counterparts. They may have looked much like the popular British bands of the day (despite the fact that two members of Sahm’s group were Mexican American), but the Sir Douglas Quintet’s music clearly refl ected the band’s eclectic Texas-based musical background.

Prior to that group’s fi rst session at Gold Star Studios, Sahm had been pestering Meaux to record him for at least a year. However, Meaux was busy producing and promoting hits with artists such as Barbara Lynn or Dale and Grace. But when Beatlemania began to alter the pop cultural landscape, Meaux brainstormed a new tactic. He reportedly called Sahm, told him to grow his hair long, assemble a band, and write a song with a Cajun two-step beat—a sound echoed in the familiar conjunto music of Sahm’s hometown, San Antonio.

1 3 6

h o u s e o f h i t s