House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) by Roger Wood Andy Bradley

more bass or “bottom end” at the start of a session. Apparently Quinn’s recordings tended to be trebly, no matter how much he fi ddled with capacitors or resistors. Yet the musicians report that he was usually willing to strive to achieve the desired sonic results.
    Country singer James O’Gwynn says, “Bill Quinn was a good guy and he took a lot of pains with us to get a good sound. He did the best you could with the type of equipment you had in those days.” Remembering the origi-3 6
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    Musicians (left to right: Lou Frisby, Herb
    Remington, Ernie Hunter, and Doc Lewis)
    in front of Gold Star Studios, 1955
    nal setup at the Brock Street facility, he adds, “He had egg crates all over the walls, and his recording equipment was kind of primitive, but he got a good sound.”
    O’Gwynn’s eventual Starday Records label-mate Frankie Miller concurs:
    “Bill Quinn was so good to work with because he would work hard to try to get you a good sound. In his day he was real good.”

    Starday Records president Don Pierce, after signing a deal to merge with Mercury Records in 1957, assessed Quinn’s skills as quoted by John Tynan in Country and Western Jamboree magazine: “Bill is an old timer in the business and knows how to work with country artists and musicians. He knows how to get a real twangy country sound that sells.”

    The eventual Grand Ole Opry star O’Gwynn (b. 1928—and billed as “The Smiling Irishman of Country Music,” even though he was born in Mississippi) recorded frequently for various labels at Quinn’s facility in the 1950s. “I did about twenty-six or twenty-eight sides over there at Gold Star Studios,” he says.
    Today O’Gwynn is best remembered for the 1958 hit “Talk to Me Lonesome Heart,” which he recorded at Gold Star Studios for D Records (#1006). But his earliest affi
    liation with Quinn yielded “Love in an Old Fashioned Way”
    and “Bottle Talk” (#2020), as well as “I Wish You Wuz My Darling But You Ain’t” and “Love Made Slave” (#2023), both on Nucraft Records. Quinn next l a b e l ’ s d e m i s e , n e w s t u d i o ’ s r i s e 3 7
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    recorded O’Gwynn singing “Your Love Is Strong (But Your Heart Is Weak)”
    and “Ready for Freddy” for the Azalea label (#106).

    Country music defi ned much of Quinn’s studio career. Though the stylistic pursuits of his clientele remained somewhat varied, the entrepreneur who had envisioned his short-lived label as “King of the Hillbillies” was surely in his element now working with artists such as O’Gwynn.
    throughout the 1950s, quinn recorded numerous other tracks for independent record labels, with the results being issued on the newer 45 rpm discs. One such label was Nucraft Records, owned and operated by Boyd Leisy, a would-be mogul who ran his record companies out of his Houston tamale restaurant. From 1953 through 1959 Leisy released at least nineteen singles, all recorded at Gold Star Studios, featuring artists such as James O’Gwynn, the Hooper Twins, the Harmonica Kid, Link Davis, and Floyd Tillman.

    Another of Quinn’s regular clients was Freedom Records (not to be confused with a later jazz label of the same name), a local company owned by the Kahal family. Representative examples of the many country music sessions that Quinn engineered for that label include “Jelly Roll Blues” by Cotton Thompson, backed by Olin Davidson and His Village Boys (#5010), produced in 1950. Drew Miller and Wink Lewis’s Dude Ranchers cut a song called “What’s a Matter Baby” (#5016) featuring a solo by steel guitarist Ralph
    “Dusty” Stewart. Johnny Nelms and the Sunset Cowboys, who had recorded earlier for the Gold Star label, came to Quinn’s new studio to record the song
    “If I Can’t Have You” for Freedom (#5018).
    For the same label, Charlie Harris with R. D. Hendon and His Western