House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (11 page)

nity for it, Daily had, as writer Linda Hellinger puts it, “developed an ear for country music by listening to the records in his jukeboxes.” He was likely well aware too of Bill Quinn’s recent run as a local independent record company owner (since Quinn had probably placed Gold Star Records releases such as “Jole Blon” in Daily’s store). Daily may have been prescient enough to infer that he could locate and promote regional talent more eff ectively than the reticent sound engineer. Moreover, as Escott’s essay points out, Daily had some previous experience, though “only a marginal involvement,”

in a short-lived mid-1940s label called Melody, which had issued a couple of records by Jerry Jericho and Ben Christian. He had also made initial recordings and placed “some marketable singers” with the 4-Star Records label in California. Drawing from that background, in 1952 or early ’53 Daily formed a partnership with a Beaumont nightclub owner and talent booker named Jack Starnes, and together they launched a new record label.

They called it Starday, based on a combination of the fi rst syllable from each of their surnames. That fl edging company would be the Southeast Texas home of some of the essential country music of the 1950s, as well as a regional launching pad for the newly defi ned rockabilly genre. Daily and his partner had started out self-reliantly recording in makeshift fashion on a Magnacord tape deck in the Starnes family house in Beaumont. Before long they had graduated to a more professional setting, doing sessions for a while at Bill Holford’s ACA Studios in Houston.

However, within two years of Starday’s birth, they had established their primary recording base at Quinn’s Gold Star Studios. This affi liation was signifi cant not only for the classic songs it produced (such as the fi rst hit by George Jones), but also because the Daily-Quinn relationship would later lead to renovation and expansion of the Gold Star property.

Ted Marek’s 1957 feature article on Gold Star Studios yields some insights regarding Daily’s role there. While an accompanying photo depicts Quinn doing studio work, others show Starday singer Jeanette Hicks cutting songs
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for upcoming release (according to the text: “Tomorrow I’ll Be Gone” and

“Extra, Extra, Read All about It”). There is also a shot of another Starday artist, rockabilly singer Rudy Grayzell. Along with various session musicians (such as Clyde Brewer and Frank Juricek), the only non-musician other than Quinn who appears in these images is Daily. Most tellingly, the article identifi es him as a “co-owner” of the studio with Quinn and quotes him philosophizing on the record business as follows:

It helps to be luckier than smart in the tune-picking industry. I’ve given up trying to predict which tune will click. I let the artists pick the ones they like.

If they’re enthusiastic about a number I’ll go along with them because they’ll put something extra into the recording. I wish I could pick ’em.

Despite his modest self-assessment as a forecaster of hits, by the time this article ran, Daily had already produced several big sellers, especially with Jones. Moreover, within a year, he would record—again at Gold Star Studios—one of his all-time greatest hits, “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper, for D Records.

Musician Slick Norris says, “Pappy had the knowledge of how to sell records. He was both a wholesaler and a retailer from his own shop. Pappy really didn’t know the making part of it as well as he knew how to sell and market them.” Indeed, given Quinn’s technical skills and facility, he could record and master whatever product Daily might choose to pay for.

By the late 1950s Daily evidently was willing, and certainly fi nancially able, to invest in some improvements at Gold Star Studios. In fact, a fairly common rumor among musicians who worked there was that Daily was not a co-owner but actually funding the whole operation for a while. For instance, James O’Gwynn says, “Somebody told me that Pappy really owned the recording studio back then, and Bill Quinn was running it for him.” While there is no clear evidence, beyond such oral historical impressions, to establish that Daily ever assumed full control of Gold Star Studios, the Marek article and statements such as O’Gwynn’s point to the powerful presence that Daily established at Quinn’s facility. There he mastered the hit-making process, fi rst for the Starday label that he owned in part and later for the D label that he owned outright.

Though the Starday brand name would later survive for decades in Nashville, its Texan cofounders would both ultimately disassociate from it.

In 1953, the year after creating Starday, Daily and Starnes allowed the West Coast–based businessman Don Pierce (1915–2005), whom Daily knew from 4-Star Records, to buy into the company. The college-educated Pierce soon assumed the corporate presidency, and Daily formally took the role of the A&R

p a p py d a i ly a n d s t a r d ay r e c o r d s

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man—the person in charge of “artists and repertoire.” In other words, Daily made the corporate decisions concerning which artists, supporting players, styles, and songs would be recorded for the label. Thus, he was not merely a titular producer who only provided funding and accounted for profi ts; he was a music producer, directly involved in the creative process of crafting records aimed at becoming hits. Generally speaking, Daily excelled at this assignment, though he would fulfi ll it for a variety of diff erent companies over the following years.

As for Daily’s work with Starday, it lasted through the end of 1957 or early 1958. Pierce had also independently purchased Hollywood Records of Los Angeles, and shortly after joining Starday, he consolidated the two label of-fi ces there. With Pierce running the company in California and Daily working the studio in Houston, the Beaumont-based Starnes became a less active partner, and in 1955 he sold out his interest to the other two. In 1957 Pierce moved the Starday-Hollywood offi

ces to Nashville. Meanwhile, Daily, riding

on the heels of the early hit singles, had produced the fi rst Starday LP,
Grand
Ole Opry’s New Star
by George Jones (#101), in 1956. Daily’s proven capacity for commercial success led to a 1957 Starday distribution agreement with the larger Nashville-based branch of Mercury Records.

John Tynan, writing about that merger in the March 1957 issue of
Country
and Western Jamboree
magazine, refers to Houston as “Hillbilly Heaven” due to the number of “down home” country singers it was introducing to the world via Starday Records—artists such as George Jones, Hank Locklin, Leon Payne, Benny Barnes, James O’Gwynn, Tibby Edwards, Jeanette Hicks, Eddie Noack, and many others. This article also quotes Pierce explaining the company’s approach to recording at Gold Star Studios:

At the session we try for a relaxed atmosphere so the artist and the musicians can create with feeling. In this connection we are pleased with the results we have obtained through Bill Quinn and his studio in Houston. . . . We try not to duplicate sounds from other records. We prefer musicians who play well and who have a style and sound that is fresh and new—but it must be country.

Suddenly this little upstart label from Southeast Texas was positioning itself as a major player in the Nashville-centric country music business. More to the point, its savvy A&R man—the guy everyone called “Pappy”—was gaining fame. And they were doing it as a result of recordings created at Gold Star Studios. Within another year Pierce bought out Daily’s share of the Starday company, and Daily began producing for Mercury in Nashville and for his own new label, D Records, down in Houston.

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“Pappy was a great man, and he done a lot for me. He carried me a long way, and I stayed with him for nearly four years,” said the singer O’Gwynn in 2004.

“Pappy’s publishing company still is my publishing company, Glad Music.”

O’Gwynn’s rise to country star status was fueled in large part by the Daily magic, which propelled him straight from Starday to the higher-profi le Mercury Records. As O’Gwynn relates,

We cut “Losing Game” and “If I Never Get to Heaven” [#266]. I cut that in 1956, and it was the only one that I did for Starday itself. I was voted “Most Promising [Country] Artist” in
Billboard
magazine on [the basis of ] that record, and it also got me on the
Louisiana Hayride
[radio program]. Then Pappy made a deal with Mercury Records, and he put me and George Jones out on Mercury/Starday. . . .

Though O’Gwynn soon found himself recording for a prestigious Nashville label, he was still making those records at Gold Star Studios. He continues, I cut a whole bunch of sides, nearly twenty, for Pappy over there at Quinn’s studio. In early 1957 I cut “Who’ll Be the Next One” and “Mule Skinner Blues” [Mercury #71066]. In the middle of that year we cut “I Cry” and “Do You Miss Me” [#71127]. And near the end of the year we did “Two Little Hearts” and “You’ve Always Won” [#71234] . . . among others.

Likewise, country singer Glenn Barber (1935–2008) credits Daily with transforming his career. After doing session work at Gold Star Studios as a teenage guitarist, his virgin attempt at recording under his own name was not for Starday, but it quickly landed him there. He recounts the evolution: I cut my fi rst session as an artist with a song called “Ring around the Moon”

and “You Took the Twinkle out of My Stars.” It was also the song that got me on Starday Records with Pappy Daily. I fi rst did this recording with some gentlemen by the name of Curt Peeples and Willie Jones, and we went over to Quinn’s to record it.

I had been at Quinn’s earlier as a session guitar player. I was sixteen years old at the time we recorded that song with Bill. My brother was one year younger than me and was playing bass. It was a teenage band of guys in high school, and that’s who played on the record. . . . The original was on Stampede Records, and we recorded that in late 1951 or early 1952. We recut the song later for Starday [“Ring around the Moon,” #166, released in 1954].

I recorded a song for Pappy called “Washed My Face in Ice Cold Water,” which was the B-Side to “Ring around the Moon.” . . . Starday
p a p py d a i ly a n d s t a r d ay r e c o r d s

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#249—“Shadow My Baby”/“Feeling No Pain”—received a
Billboard
mention on the 28th of July, 1956. Those two sides were my attempt at rockabilly for Starday. . . . The backup band on the record was some of my western swing band with Link Davis [sax] as a guest. Bucky Meadows, who played piano and guitar for many years for Willie Nelson, played piano on the song—and was only fourteen years old at the time. The drummer was Bill Kimbrough, and bass was Zane Compton. . . . Leon Thomas played steel. . . . Starday #214—

“Ain’t It Funny”/“Livin’ High and Wide”—was also recorded with Bucky and the same guys.

Many Texas musicians laid the late-1950s foundation for the undiluted country music of Starday Records. It was a pure sound based on raw emo-tions and simple arrangements, and it was soon drawing fans nationwide—

as well as the attention of the Nashville recording establishment. But one Southeast Texas singer in particular would uniquely personify it.

george jones was born in 1931 in Saratoga, a hamlet nestled in the Big Thicket region of the Lone Star State. When he was eleven years old, his family moved approximately thirty miles to the industrial boomtown of Beaumont. By 1943 Jones was strumming guitar and singing for tips on its streets, and from 1947 through 1951 he played various gigs in local honky-tonks. After a two-year stint in the marines, he returned to Beaumont and its nightclubs, one of which happened to be owned by the Starday cofounder Starnes, who signed him to the label.

Prior to the success Starday would fi nd with Jones, it had already scored a hit with the seminal version of the classic country anthem “Y’All Come,”

written and performed by a Beaumont-area English teacher named Arlie Duff (1924–1996). Originally identifi ed on the label as “You All Come” (#104, backed with “Poor Old Teacher”), that record unexpectedly rose to number seven on the country charts and won a 1953 BMI Music Award. Over the years so many country artists would cover this upbeat song that most fans today would never associate it with Arlie Duff or Starday. But those are the forces that collaboratively introduced this crowd-pleaser to the world. And in so doing, they had perhaps inspired Jones.

A story from promoter Slick Norris illustrates the point: “On March 9th, 1954, I went to Cook’s Hoedown, which was the number one club in Houston, right downtown at Capitol and Smith. Me and my buddy went in there, and they had this little old band from Beaumont. It was George Jones.”

After setting the scene, Norris describes an epiphany: “There was something commercial about the way George picked that guitar. The fi rst Starday hit was

‘Y’All Come’ by Arlie Duff . George picked guitar on the second turn-around on [his live performance of ] that record, and I just said, ‘Oh gosh!’”

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By late 1954 Jones had recorded four Starday singles, all produced in the Starnes house in Beaumont. His fi rst was “No Money in This Deal” backed with “You’re in My Heart” (#130). However, neither it nor its sequel, “Play It Cool Man, Play It Cool” (#146), garnered much notice.

Sometime in 1955 Daily brought Jones to Houston for his fi rst Gold Star Studios session. The result was a runaway hit called “Why Baby Why” (#202), cowritten by Jones and his boyhood pal Darrell Edwards. The record fi rst entered the
Billboard
charts on October 29, 1955, and it stayed there for eighteen weeks, peaking at the number four spot. In the process it also revived the hit-making tradition at Gold Star Studios.