Free House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) by Roger Wood Andy Bradley Page A
Authors: Roger Wood Andy Bradley
Company of America. For the eighteen months prior to this, Holford had been operating an audio business out of his house. ACA soon 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 3
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became an important Houston recording base for various labels (such as Freedom, Peacock, Macy’s, and Trumpet) and hundreds of musicians. As writer Gary Hickinbotham says, it was “one of the premier Texas studios of the post–World War II period.”
Nonetheless, Quinn’s new recording facility, installed on the ground fl oor of his family residence, was a worthy rival—and even more so after it would be expanded and refurbished several times in years to come. From the start, it provided ample space outfi tted with proven professional equipment manned by a fi rst-rate audio engineer. Following Quinn’s initial transformation of his house, the bottom fl oor contained the main studio room, a control room, a vocal booth, the interior staircase, and the kitchen. The overall dimensions were twenty-eight feet long by twenty-eight feet wide, with a ten-foot-high ceiling.
From the front door perspective, the control room was in the back right-hand corner of the house. At fi rst, however, it off ered no window into the main studio. So the musicians had to wait for a red “record” light to know when to begin playing.
The baby grand piano was located in the opposite back corner, by the stairway. Quinn had removed its top and used a cable attached to the ceiling to suspend a microphone above it.
In the left front corner of the fi rst-fl oor room was the vocal booth. Musician Glenn Barber describes the basic recording setup:
Bill built that booth around 1952 or so. It had wheels on it so he could move it around, but it stayed on the left as you walked in the front door most of the time. He had one of those classic Shure mics in the vocal booth, one of those chrome-plated-looking things. Then out in the studio he was using one of those big diamond-shaped RCA ribbon mics.
Judging from photographs and oral histories, the fl ooring was likely a vinyl product. Johnny Bush, who fi rst recorded there in 1956 as a drummer behind country singer Mickey Gilley, describes it as “kind of an asphalt tile fl oor.”
The studio walls were covered in a sound-baffl
ing material improvised
from egg cartons. Ted Marek’s 1957 Houston Chronicle article quotes Quinn’s explanation:
I found that regular sound-proofi ng killed the echo but made a “dead” room.
I tried material after material on the walls to no avail, but then I discovered the egg carton. I found that the compressed papier-mâché cartons with the peaks and valleys were the answer. I tacked thousands of the cartons up on 3 4
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 34
1/26/10 1:12:11 PM
the walls and came up with the perfect room sound. There is no echo but the room is “live” and musicians can hear their own voices and instruments in all parts of the studio.
This space, fully remodeled, is now the state-of-the-art Studio A at the present-day SugarHill Studios complex. But in the Gold Star era, the Quinn family (and their Afghan hounds, which reportedly often lounged in the studio) maintained private residential quarters on the now-removed second fl oor.
Record producer, promoter, and entrepreneur Slick Norris adds his memory of the place: “The front door of the house led straight into the studio. He had no waiting room or reception room at all. It was pretty primitive, but the man had some ability to get a sound.”
Shelby Singleton (1931–2009), former owner of the famous Sun Records Studio in Memphis, recalls his impressions of the Gold Star space and Quinn, both before and after a major expansion: “I remember the fi rst time I met him. I was working for Pappy Daily, and I thought it was very strange to be recording in someone’s living room. But then he built the big studio in the back, and that was much
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 33
1/26/10 1:12:11 PM
became an important Houston recording base for various labels (such as Freedom, Peacock, Macy’s, and Trumpet) and hundreds of musicians. As writer Gary Hickinbotham says, it was “one of the premier Texas studios of the post–World War II period.”
Nonetheless, Quinn’s new recording facility, installed on the ground fl oor of his family residence, was a worthy rival—and even more so after it would be expanded and refurbished several times in years to come. From the start, it provided ample space outfi tted with proven professional equipment manned by a fi rst-rate audio engineer. Following Quinn’s initial transformation of his house, the bottom fl oor contained the main studio room, a control room, a vocal booth, the interior staircase, and the kitchen. The overall dimensions were twenty-eight feet long by twenty-eight feet wide, with a ten-foot-high ceiling.
From the front door perspective, the control room was in the back right-hand corner of the house. At fi rst, however, it off ered no window into the main studio. So the musicians had to wait for a red “record” light to know when to begin playing.
The baby grand piano was located in the opposite back corner, by the stairway. Quinn had removed its top and used a cable attached to the ceiling to suspend a microphone above it.
In the left front corner of the fi rst-fl oor room was the vocal booth. Musician Glenn Barber describes the basic recording setup:
Bill built that booth around 1952 or so. It had wheels on it so he could move it around, but it stayed on the left as you walked in the front door most of the time. He had one of those classic Shure mics in the vocal booth, one of those chrome-plated-looking things. Then out in the studio he was using one of those big diamond-shaped RCA ribbon mics.
Judging from photographs and oral histories, the fl ooring was likely a vinyl product. Johnny Bush, who fi rst recorded there in 1956 as a drummer behind country singer Mickey Gilley, describes it as “kind of an asphalt tile fl oor.”
The studio walls were covered in a sound-baffl
ing material improvised
from egg cartons. Ted Marek’s 1957 Houston Chronicle article quotes Quinn’s explanation:
I found that regular sound-proofi ng killed the echo but made a “dead” room.
I tried material after material on the walls to no avail, but then I discovered the egg carton. I found that the compressed papier-mâché cartons with the peaks and valleys were the answer. I tacked thousands of the cartons up on 3 4
h o u s e o f h i t s
Bradley_4319_BK.indd 34
1/26/10 1:12:11 PM
the walls and came up with the perfect room sound. There is no echo but the room is “live” and musicians can hear their own voices and instruments in all parts of the studio.
This space, fully remodeled, is now the state-of-the-art Studio A at the present-day SugarHill Studios complex. But in the Gold Star era, the Quinn family (and their Afghan hounds, which reportedly often lounged in the studio) maintained private residential quarters on the now-removed second fl oor.
Record producer, promoter, and entrepreneur Slick Norris adds his memory of the place: “The front door of the house led straight into the studio. He had no waiting room or reception room at all. It was pretty primitive, but the man had some ability to get a sound.”
Shelby Singleton (1931–2009), former owner of the famous Sun Records Studio in Memphis, recalls his impressions of the Gold Star space and Quinn, both before and after a major expansion: “I remember the fi rst time I met him. I was working for Pappy Daily, and I thought it was very strange to be recording in someone’s living room. But then he built the big studio in the back, and that was much
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