House of hits : the story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios / by Andy Bradley and Roger Wood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bradley, Andy, 1951-

Contributor:

Wood, Charles Roger, 1956-

Series:

Brad and Michele Moore roots music series.

Brad and Michele Moore roots music series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sound recording industry--Texas--Houston--History.

Sound recording industry.

SugarHill Recording Studios.

Gold Star Studios.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (353 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Founded in a working-class neighborhood in southeast Houston in 1941, Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios is a major independent studio that has produced a multitude of influential hit records in an astonishingly diverse range of genres. Its roster of recorded musicians includes Lightnin' Hopkins, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Junior Parker, Clifton Chenier, Sir Douglas Quintet, 13th Floor Elevators, Freddy Fender, Kinky Friedman, Ray Benson, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Beyoncé and Destiny's Child, and many, many more. In House of Hits, Andy Bradley and Roger Wood chronicle the fascinating history of Gold Star/SugarHill, telling a story that effectively covers the postwar popular music industry. They describe how Houston's lack of zoning ordinances allowed founder Bill Quinn's house studio to grow into a large studio complex, just as SugarHill's willingness to transcend musical boundaries transformed it into of one of the most storied recording enterprises in America. The authors offer behind-the-scenes accounts of numerous hit recordings, spiced with anecdotes from studio insiders and musicians who recorded at SugarHill. Bradley and Wood also place significant emphasis on the role of technology in shaping the music and the evolution of the music business. They include in-depth biographies of regional stars and analysis of the various styles of music they represent, as well as a list of all of Gold Star/SugarHill's recordings that made the Billboard charts and extensive selected historical discographies of the studio's recordings.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The case for greatness

1. The Raid

2. Domestic Crude

3. The Independent Quinn

4. Gold Star Records

5. Label’s Demise, New Studio’s Rise: Recording in the House

6. Pappy Daily and Starday Records

7. The Big Studio Room Expansion

8. Daily’s Dominance and D Records

9. Little Labels: Blues, Country, and Sharks

10. Into the ’60s and Quinn’s Last Sessions

11. Duke-Peacock: The Gold Star Connection

12. The HSP Corporation Experiment Begins

13. A House of Rock, Despite the Muck

14. The HSP Aftermath and a New Direction

15. International Artists Record Company: The Psychedelic Business Plan

16. Disillusioned Dissolution

17. Meaux Moves In, SugarHill Ascends

18. The Freddy Fender Phenomenon

19. The Later ’70s and Early ’80s

20. Meaux’s Final Phase

21. Modern Music (Ad)Ventures

22. Emergence of a RAD Idea

23. Millennial Destiny

24. Still Tracking in the Twenty-first Century

Appendix A Catalogue of Interviews

Appendix B Chart Records from the House of Hits

Appendix C Selected Discographies: A Partial History

Appendix D Chronology of Gold Star/ SugarHill Engineers

Bibliography

Index: Page numbers in italics refer to photographs

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-292-79311-1

OCLC:

610030219