House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (4 page)

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trial by pleading guilty to all charges: two counts of sexual assault of a child, one count of possession of cocaine, one count of child pornography, and one count of bond jumping. He was sentenced to fi fteen years’ imprisonment at a Texas Department of Corrections unit in Huntsville.

Following the sentencing, most of the nonevidentiary contents of Meaux’s rented offi

ce were returned to the building. As time passed, most of us at SugarHill went about our business as usual, albeit with a heightened appreciation of a normal workday. Nevertheless, through the end of the 1990s it seemed that I was regularly encountering people who inquired whether SugarHill had closed or, presuming it had, asked where I was now working.

The night following the raid, I had walked silently through the debris within Meaux’s trashed-out offi

ce, exhausted yet trying to fulfi ll my assignment to

close and somehow lock the mutilated doors. As I surveyed the damage and thought about the unsettling events that had transpired, I wondered if this was perhaps the darkest day in the history of this venerable recording studio complex. Like others familiar with the lore of the building, I had heard stories of misdeeds and convictions of one of its previous affi

liates. But the sensa-

tionalism generated by the Meaux arrest certainly topped that one, especially in terms of media exposure and public disdain. To say it made me uneasy is an understatement.

However, even then something inside me realized that this was likely eventually to be, in retrospect, just one small chapter in the story of this historic building. I thought of the hundreds of musicians, singers, producers, and engineers who had previously done such signifi cant work here. Then I wished, and I believed, that all of this Meaux-induced bad karma would dis-sipate like a violent storm and that, yes, the sun would shine on SugarHill again.

t h e r a i d

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Domestic Crude

n many respects,
the recording studio company currently known as SugarHill aptly refl ects the unusual city in which it came into being and evolved. Given the eccentricities of its origin, its expanded physical structure, and its development into a nexus for the recording of so many variant types of music, it seems reasonable to surmise that such a unique studio complex could exist, and for so many years, only in Houston.

The largest municipality in Texas, and the fourth-largest in the nation, Houston is still at its core a supersized boomtown characterized in part by the crap-shoot speculation, grimy realities, and occasionally lucrative windfalls of its signature major industry: oil. Though named in honor of the fi rst president of the Republic of Texas, the city was founded in 1836 as a moneymaking venture by a pair of real estate developers from New York. Relatively free of pretension regarding its social history, this international port city has been consistently receptive to a diverse infl ux of newcomers off ering skills, capital, or ideas to exploit in the open marketplace. Despite its various shortcom-ings, Houston has proven itself to be a pretty good place to fi nd a job, build a business, or, in these ways or otherwise, start over in life. Local government has long championed free enterprise and the entrepreneurial spirit, seemingly taking a kind of perverse pride in its no-zoning policy—unique for an American city of its size.

In these ways Houston refl ects the origins and evolution of the recording company that Bill Quinn launched there in 1941. For both this multifaceted studio enterprise and the metropolis that is its home emerged from humble origins far removed from the established centers of fi nancial or cultural Bradley_4319_BK.indd 6

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power. Yet both—through ingenuity, hard work, a no-zoning mentality, and a capacity for unmitigated expansion—evolved into forces that have impacted the world at large.

The Gold Star/SugarHill legacy is thus inextricably a Houston story—and, as such, a Texas story. Key elements of the city’s character and composition are essential factors in the studio’s very existence, its independence, and its uncanny success.

As David G. McComb notes in
The Portable Handbook of Texas,
Houston had fi rst established itself in the 1800s as a rail center and market hub for cot-ton and lumber, but it was the discovery of oil in 1901 at the nearby Spindletop fi eld that “dramatically changed the Houston economy in the twentieth century.” With that discovery, and the opening of the Houston Ship Channel in 1914, the city soon established itself as the petrochemical capital of the nation, attracting thousands of immigrants each year in the process. After 1945

Houston’s postwar economy accelerated rapidly, and its population followed suit, soaring from approximately 500,000 to over 1.5 million inhabitants by the early 1960s. This tremendous infl ux of people also stimulated a blossom-ing club scene for regional strands of popular music. In turn, the vibrant live-music market encouraged the talent that became the basis for the growth of independent record companies and the studios that served their needs.

In these facilities singers, musicians, record producers, songwriters, and audio engineers from all over the area would gather in controlled environ-ments in hopes of creating a hit record. If that elusive goal was fulfi lled, it then became a source of revenue for the principals and perhaps a way of making a career. In terms of big dreams, disappointments, calculated risks, and potential rewards, independently prospecting for a hit record was a lot like wildcat drilling for oil. The Houston mentality, of a piece with that of oil-rich Texas at large, not only understood but seemed to relish such challenges.

Whether one were hoping for hit records or oil deposits, nothing was ever guaranteed. But the allure of proving one’s instincts to be trustworthy, almost as much as the desire for a lucrative payoff , proved irresistible to a certain breed of speculator.

One of the most prominent of such individuals in the local music business was Don Robey (1903–1975), a native son of the city and a self-described gambler. Between 1949 and 1973 he owned and developed at least fi ve record labels—and sometimes used Gold Star Studios to produce his sessions. As Nelson George says in
The Death of Rhythm and Blues,
“Don Robey built an empire worth millions in a city far removed from the main line of entertainment.” His remarkable success was the equivalent of hitting a series of huge gushers in the oil fi elds, and it surely stimulated lots of would-be imitators in the city, some of whom succeeded too.

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But other factors also fueled the sudden rise of the independents both in and beyond Houston. Following a period of commercial dormancy during World War II, the mainstream American recording industry resumed operations but substantially altered its ways, in part because the rise of broadcast television was quickly changing the nature of the game. As the established companies began to make enormous profi ts from nationwide hit singles produced in their own recording studios (and sometimes promoted to millions of potential customers via national television exposure), major-label executives soon decided that the expenses and risks of recording localized talent for regional markets were no longer justifi ed. In short, the big record labels stopped going out into the fi eld to make their recordings. Their withdrawal thus opened the door for the growth of the independent recording industry in places such as Texas, despite a dearth of studio facilities there at the time.

Another scenario was the sudden postwar presence of recently discharged veterans who possessed previously rare knowledge and skills concerning electronics. Bill Holford of ACA Studios, the chief competitor to Bill Quinn’s Gold Star Studios, was one such military-trained innovator. He and various other entrepreneurs and independent engineers like him built most of the early studios and manufacturing plants in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.

Quinn’s original pressing plant and, some years later, Gaspar Puccio’s Houston Records were among the fi rst. These were all self-reliant projects, for it was not until the early 1970s (when technological groundbreakers such as Rupert Neve began producing high-quality recording equipment in quantities to supply the needs of the burgeoning fi eld) that studio owners generally stopped designing and building their own equipment.

Since the 1930s Houston had been a particularly fertile area for country singers and dance bands, the original focus of Quinn’s involvement in the music recording business. Bill C. Malone, in
Country Music, U.S.A.,
cites Gold Star Studios as his fi rst example of the many small recording companies that had come into being by the 1950s. Yet, despite the fact that it originally announced itself to the world via the slogan “King of the Hillbillies,” Quinn’s fl edging enterprise, as far back as 1947, was already crossing the racial barriers of the time to record African American music. Why? More so perhaps than any other city in the state, Houston was the center of a thriving black community. Hence, by the late 1940s, it was making its mark on the popular genres of blues, R&B, and gospel, with artists such as Lightnin’ Hopkins and moguls such as Robey leading the way. Despite the rigid segregation in place at the time, Quinn was, almost from the start, a major documentarian of the sounds of mid-century black Houston.

By the 1950s Quinn’s studios were also home to the Starday and D Records labels owned by Harold W. “Pappy” Daily (1902–1987), a native of Southeast Texas who became a prominent music publisher, producer, and promoter.

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Among other achievements, Daily helped to launch the recording careers of George Jones, the Big Bopper, Johnny Preston, Frankie Miller, Roger Miller, and several other members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Almost from the start Quinn was recording both country music by whites and blues by black performers. These two categories of roots music represent the dominant sounds of the otherwise mostly segregated white and black working classes of the era. Quinn recorded Mexican American music too.

Together these styles formed the foundation not only for the early success of the Gold Star venture but also for the larger music culture of Houston—and that of Texas in general.

However, although country and blues sensibilities best characterize the music fi rst produced by Quinn, multiple varieties of rock, jazz, zydeco, pop, Tejano, R&B, rap, classical, contemporary Christian, and other genres ultimately become part of the story too. Now well into the twenty-fi rst century, this historic studio company still exists in a structure built onto what was once his family home. Where else could such a phenomenon occur? Only in a city that has always allowed property owners to build pretty much whatever they want on their land, even if it is situated in a residential neighborhood.

And only in a city that has been a hotbed of talent for so many diff erent styles of music. And, even more to the point, only at a studio company that has long embraced a no-zoning philosophy in its approach to music recording.

Like Houston itself, the Gold Star/SugarHill complex is a sprawling, seemingly unplanned and unrestricted, multicultural place. Compared to certain high-class counterparts elsewhere, both the city and the recording facility may seem unimpressive at fi rst glance. Yet beyond their funky exteriors, both share some rare achievements and distinctions. One is tempted to say that they share a common spirit or soul, a certain intangibility.

Perhaps noted rock journalist Chet Flippo sums it up best when he de-fi nes the essence of Texas music as “crude grace.” That oxymoronic phrase may refer to the musical heritage of the Lone Star State at large, but it also evokes the particular essence of Houston, of Quinn’s self-taught genius, and of many of the producers and artists who have made music on the site that he established.