House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (40 page)

But ultimately, no matter how much push a producer or a DJ might give, the fi ckle public had to respond. And in 1975, when Americans of various generations, ethnic backgrounds, and musical tastes heard Fender’s exquisite tenor articulating this dual-language heart ballad, millions of them connected with it—making it one of the greatest recordings ever produced at the oldest continuously operating studio in Texas.

six months after “teardrop” had climbed the charts, Meaux released a new version of one of Fender’s older songs, originally recorded in 1959—the swamp-pop classic “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.” This single quickly claimed the number one slot on the country charts, duplicating its predecessor’s achievement. It also made the Top Ten on the pop charts, cresting at number eight. “Wasted Days” solidifi ed Fender’s status as an established star, and, paired with the previous hit ballad, it showcased his versatility as a singer.

It would be followed by even more astounding success. As John Morthland notes in
Texas Monthly,
“From January 1975 to the end of 1977, Freddy had twelve straight Top 20 country hits, nine of them in the Top 10, four reaching number one.”

Another SugarHill engineer, Mickey Moody, relates his memories of the sessions that produced Fender’s second round of hits:

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My fi rst recordings with Freddy included “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.”

That electric harpsichord solo was Bruce Ewen. Randy Cornor played guitar.

Donny King was on bass. Dahrell Norris played drums. I put at least three rhythm guitars on it, and Tracey Balin did the background vocals. That song was recorded from the ground up [as opposed to being based on a preexist-ing instrumental track].

Given Fender’s previous nationwide hit, “Wasted Days” bypassed Meaux’s little Crazy Cajun imprint and was released right away on the high-profi le major label ABC/Dot Records (#17558).

The subsequent third-in-a-row number one country single for Fender,

“Secret Love,” was released near the end of 1975 on ABC/Dot. This composition, by the Hollywood songwriting team of Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, was already an oldie, having won the Oscar Award for Best Original Film Song for its interpretation by Doris Day in
Calamity Jane.
Released also as a Day single, the song had hit number one on the pop charts in 1954—and thereafter was covered by various singers. But nobody had sung it the way Fender did in his SugarHill session, where taking his cue from the “Teardrop”

success, he made a point to sing one verse in Spanish. In addition to achieving fi rst place in the country rankings, that record also made the pop charts, peaking at number twenty. Moody says that this one “was also totally recorded from scratch here at the studio with members of the Houston Symphony on strings.” The poignant ballad received lush accompaniment, and Cornor provided some tasteful guitar embellishment. In fact, Cornor’s work on several Fender records led him to a contract, as an artist in his own right, with ABC/

Dot Records.

Moody tells how he had come to be affi

liated with the studio where he fi rst

worked with Fender:

I was producing a group called the Cate Brothers. Tom Noonan—from the record company that I was leasing their album to—suggested adding voices and horns to their record. Then he asked me if I knew Huey Meaux. I was not familiar with him. But I said, “If you think we need to add those things, set it up.”

Meaux called me about a week later and asked me when I could bring the masters. They were on four-track; he wanted to transfer them to eight-track and do his work on them. That thrilled me because I had only heard vague tales about eight-track machines existing. So I brought them down, and we went from there on to other projects and talked about production and started working together.

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left to right: Huey Meaux, Leo O’Neil, and Mickey Moody, at SugarHill Studios, 1976

He asked me to come down to Houston and take over the engineering department at SugarHill. I was happy to do it, especially after I had found out about some of the credits that he had.

In April of 1976 Asylum Records released a single called “Union Man”

and an eponymous album from the Arkansas-based Cate Brothers. Although formally produced and mixed by Steve Cropper in Memphis, Moody actually engineered some parts of the recordings at SugarHill. Moreover, he and Meaux shared the publishing rights for both sides of the single and eight songs from the album. Moody comments, “The fi rst hit record we worked on was the Cates. I did vocal overdubs here at SugarHill on that record.”

Around the time of the Cate Brothers releases, Fender had a new album out on ABC/Dot Records, called
Rockin’ Country,
and the fi rst single released was an old Hank Williams nugget, “I Can’t Help It.”

The fourth of Fender’s SugarHill-produced number one hit records came with a distinguished pedigree. Back in 1962 Meaux had scored a crossover hit with the song “You’ll Lose a Good Thing,” written and performed by Barbara Lynn (though Meaux secured the offi

cial songwriting credit, and hence royal-

ties, for himself). That song, originally recorded in New Orleans and released on the Jamie label (#1220), had topped the national R&B charts and soared as
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high as number eight on the pop charts for Lynn, making it one of Meaux’s early big successes. It also demonstrated his uncanny ability to fi nd hit songs and unusual artists such as Lynn, who was probably the fi rst left-handed female R&B guitarist ever to have a hit record.

Approximately fourteen years later Meaux’s production of Fender’s croon-ing cover of her signature song not only topped the country charts but also made the pop Top 40, registering highest at number thirty-two.

Leo O’Neil, a veteran of previous work at Gold Star Studios, returned to SugarHill to perform on that session and others. He says,

Huey brought me back here in late ’76 or early ’77. I remember Huey playing “Teardrop” to me over the telephone. When I came back to SugarHill, I used to keep a Mellotron [polyphonic keyboard] in Studio A and would play lots of string parts on it for the sessions. The fi rst song I ever played on for Freddy was . . . “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.” The players on that record were my band. Evan Arredondo played bass, Louis Broussard played drums, Eddie Nation played guitar, and I played piano.

Meanwhile, O’Neil did string arrangements and keyboard overdubbing for various other Fender songs, and his group backed the singer again on

“Talk to Me.” That song, which hit number thirteen on the country charts for Fender, was a remake of the 1958 R&B hit (sung by Little Willie John) that had been popularly covered again in 1963 by Fender’s fellow South Texan, Sunny Ozuna.

Starting in early 1975, musician Don Michael “Red” Young also played on sessions for Fender and other artists at SugarHill. It happened as a result of Young’s role in a Fort Worth–based band called the Ham Brothers. He says, We came down to Houston often to work on projects for Mickey [Moody]. My fi rst trip down was with Bill Ham and Bruce Ewen to work on an album for Freddy. Some of those cuts wound up on his
Before the Next Teardrop Falls
album. We would come down for a week and work on Freddy’s stuff , the Ham Brothers album, and other tracks. . . .

One of my primary jobs was arranging vocal parts. The studio had this chick singer named Tracey Balin, and she would do all the harmony parts on the records. Originally she lived in Florida, and they would fl y her in. . . . We would wind up working on twenty-fi ve or thirty songs over the course of a few days.

Musician Gaylan Latimer, a former member of the Dawgs, had recorded for Meaux earlier in his career in the duo Bob and Gaylan. By the 1970s, how-1 9 8

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ever, he was working regularly at SugarHill as an in-house songwriter and occasional session player. He comments on the facility’s level of activity during the peak of the Fender phenomenon:

In 1976, following the success of Freddy Fender, Huey signed a large number of writers to publishing contracts to write for Freddy and his other artists.

Back in the space that had been the original big studio, Huey set up a number of long tables and had as many as a dozen writers working on song ideas.

Oscar Perry, Danny Epps, Doak Walker, myself, and a number of others were being paid between fi fty and seventy-fi ve dollars a week to just come in and write. Huey would give us ideas and then turn us loose. . . .

During this time period both studios were working hard. In the B Studio, Mickey Moody was cutting tracks for Freddy Fender, Donny King, Tracey Balin, and other artists. . . . It was in 1977 that Freddy cut my song, “Think about Me.” It was on the ABC/Dot album
If You Don’t Love Me
(#2090), and in November of that year it peaked at number eighteen on the
Billboard
country charts.

Young adds, “Huey had a bunch of songwriters hanging around and cutting demos continually—guys like Lee Emerson, Gaylan Latimer, Oscar Perry, Danny Epps, and some other guys.” Meaux sought to craft more hits not only for Fender but also for other artists whom he was producing. Maintaining a songwriting staff contractually obligated to his publishing company was a key part of the process. And though Fender would continue to make numerous other recordings that sold well, Meaux kept prospecting in search of another star.

the first half of 1976 was a prolific time for SugarHill Studios. A new Kinky Friedman album was in the works for ABC/Dunhill Records.

Sahm was recording an album for ABC/Dot. Balin, a background vocalist on many Fender recordings, was making her own new recordings. Sherri Jerrico had just fi nished a Crazy Cajun single called “A Friend of Yours and Mine.” Donny King had recently recorded “Wake Me Gently” (written by Beth Thornton, Meaux’s executive secretary) for Warner Brothers Records. The former bassist with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Noel Redding, was recording a new album for RCA Records. Singer-songwriter Lee Emerson recorded a song called “Gospel Truth (Telling It Like It Is).” John Stuckey and the Magic Cowboy Band recorded a single with Jerry Jeff Walker: “Grandma’s Love” and

“Moonlight Mailman.”

Brady recalls other SugarHill recordings of that time:

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Donny King recorded a version of the old Cookie and the Cupcakes hit

“Mathilda.” Huey leased it to Warner Brothers Records, and it charted on
Billboard
country and went as high as number twenty. We also did a version of another old song, “I’m a Fool to Care,” . . . [which] charted [at number seventy-two].

Donny King . . . had been part of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys. “Mathilda”

was recorded in a style you would pretty much expect from a Wills sideman—some excellent swing. Huey released the record on his American Pla-boy label [#1983] for distribution through the Southwest. . . . Andy Wickham, head of Warner’s Country A&R, snapped it up and released it—and an album produced by Meaux.

Meaux pursued a new direction via an ongoing western swing revival, which had been triggered in part by two exceptional Austin-based neotraditionalist bands: Asleep at the Wheel (which would later record independently at SugarHill) and Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys. In 1975 Crow recorded a single for Meaux’s Crazy Cajun label, “Retirement Run” backed with “Country Ways” (#2001). The Pleasant Valley Boys featured a number of prominent talents, including Bobby Earl Smith on rhythm guitar and Herb Steiner on steel. But the record made little impact. Crow claims that was because Meaux was distracted from promoting it. “When Freddy Fender hit big,” he explains, “quite a number of the artists that Huey signed fell by the wayside.”