Base

In 1972, Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. began experimenting with 4-channel audio recording and mixing techniques, anticipating that American consumers would flock to adopt at least one of the many new quadraphonic playback systems that had been introduced beginning in 1970. The emerging leaders in the quad race were ElectroVoice's EV-4, CBS/Sony's SQ, and Sansui's QS systems. Before 1972, many Sonobeat singles had been recorded on 4-track machines, but none had been recorded or mixed for playback on 4 speakers -- front left, front right, rear left, and rear right -- to create a surround sound experience. Although the Sonobeat logo on the Lee Arlano Trio's Jazz to the Third Power album includes the words "Surrounding Sound", none of Sonobeat's commercial single or album releases actually were mixed or encoded for quadraphonic playback.

To conduct his earliest quadraphonic experiments, Bill organized an elite group of Austin rock musicians into a studio band he called "Base", either a play on "bass", since at least three different bass players performed on the recordings, or a reflection that this core group of musicians represented his "base" for creating a new sound. The 1972 Base sessions were recorded and mixed at the Sonobeat Studios in the KVET building on North Lamar in Austin, Texas.

The June and July '72 Base sessions featured a cast of luminary musicians with whom Bill had worked previously or who were otherwise "friends" of Sonobeat: guitar whiz kid Eric Johnson (Mariani), drummers Bobby Rector (Golden Dawn, a contemporary of the 13th Floor Elevators) and Jay Meade (New Atlantis), and bassists Ronnie Leatherman (13th Floor Elevators), Danny Galindo (13th Floor Elevators and Fast Cotton), and Mike Reed (New Atlantis). Ronnie Leatherman recalls that Stacy Sutherland (a founding member of the Elevators) jammed with Eric Johnson on at least one Base track. After recording several sessions with Base, Bill turned to other projects, only to return to Base a year later with a new mix of musicians, headlined by Sonobeat favorite Ernie Gammage (Sweetarts and Fast Cotton).

Bill Josey's leader tape notes

There are no known stereo mixes -- and none may ever have existed -- of the 1972 Base tracks, which include several freeform jams. Fortunately, the original 4-track session masters have been preserved and served as the source for three of the sound bites we present below, including a track featuring Eric Johnson, who at age 15 recorded for Sonobeat as a founding member of the rock fusion band Mariani. When we began digitizing the 4-track masters, we discovered that Bill wrote track notes on the paper leader tape spliced into the master tape to separate takes. These notes along with Bill's annotations on the master tape boxes themselves help form a picture of what he was trying to achieve by building what could have become one of Austin's supergroups of the '70s. But in 1972, that wasn't his goal.

We offer three sound bites from the 1972 Base sessions: in the first, "David", whose last name is not listed in the Sonobeat archives, appears to be teaching a new song to the band; the second, a jam in which Bill offers instructions to the musicians and which features two bass guitars; and the third, a spectacular clip of Eric Johnson in an imaginative guitar jam.

In 1972, Base may have been nothing more than producer Bill Josey's controlled recording experiment, but when he remade the band in 1973, he had a commercial end game in mind for the new "Ernie Gammage and Base".

Tommy Hill and the Country Music Revue

Tommy Hill and the Country Music Revue master tape box

Rockabilly fiddler, guitarist, and singer Tommy Hill had a long career in Hollywood and Nashville as a successful songwriter, band member, and producer for a slew of marquee country stars including Johnny Horton, Webb Pierce, Ray Price, Jim Reeves, Kitty Wells, and Hank Williams. Beginning in the 1950s, the Texas native, born and reared in a small town outside San Antonio, had a succession of recording contracts with Decca, Hickory, Starday, and MGM, but was never successful as a recording artist in his own right. In the '60s Hill formed the short-lived Stop label, recording and releasing singles by the Jordanaires, who often sang back-up for Elvis. In 1972 he formed another record company, Gusto, and it was may have been for this fledgling label that he came to record an album of 10 tunes at the Sonobeat studios on North Lamar in Austin. Or, Sonobeat owner/producer Bill Josey Sr. may have recorded Hill with a view to capitalizing on the surging "outlaw" country music movement in Austin at the time. The Outlaw Movement was led by Central Texas singer/songwriter Willie Nelson, and to some extent, Hill's material and delivery share that Outlaw feel. Unfortunately, nothing in the Sonobeat archives indicates whether Bill Sr. ever offered the Hill masters to national record labels.

The musicians who performed with Hill on the Sonobeat recording are introduced by him in the first song on the tape. They include Benny McArthur on lead guitar, George Rodriguez on drums, Larry Gentry on bass guitar, Jess DeMaine on organ and guitar, and Carl Gertz on steel guitar. Ten tracks were recorded, or at least mixed down, as demos in November 1972. Other than the first "intro" song, we believe the other 9 tracks were covers, including the sound bite we present below of a Willie Nelson classic.

Hill penned dozens of country hits for other performers. His most successful tune was Teddy Bear that took country singer Red Sovine to number 1 on the country charts in 1976. A member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, Hill passed away in 2001 at age 72.

Next: 1973