Sonobeat’s big quadraphonic experiment

Bill Josey Sr.’s belief in quad was deep enough that he converted Sonobeat’s custom 16-channel mixing console to quad using schematics and a four-channel mixing schema provided by Sonobeat co-founder Rim Kelley, that also included a simple method to convert Sonobeat’s steel plate stereo reverb to quad to reinforce the 360° aural experience. Bill convinced several artists he recorded from mid-1972 through mid-1973 to experiment with the format. He called his quadraphonic mixing technique “Sonoquad” and even, for a brief period, renamed his recording facility Sonoquad Studios, anticipating a recorded music trend that, in fact, fizzled out long before it had a chance to catch on with consumers. Quad’s downfall can be attributed to three factors: first, the lack of a single industry-standard technology meant there were too many incompatible competing formats that ended up confusing consumers; second, few albums and even fewer singles were available in any of the quad formats, discouraging consumer interest; and third, the cost of a quad system was more than double that of a standard two-channel, two-speaker stereo hi-fi system, putting it out of reach for all but audiophiles with money to burn. Although they failed as home playback systems, the ill-fated quad formats were the direct predecessors to the surround sound systems that first appeared in movie theaters in the 1990s and then finally led to the 5.1- and 7.1-style home television theater setups now available.

---

---

Prepping the Sonobeat mixing console for quad

To record in quad, Bill used Sonobeat’s Scully 280 and Stemco 500-4 half-inch 4-track tape decks, bouncing tracks between the machines to add overdubs and place instruments in the surrounding sound space. To achieve a quad mix, he retrofitted Sonobeat’s custom 16-channel 4-bus mixing console with quad panning modules designed by Sonobeat co-founder Rim Kelley“Rim Kelley” was the pseudonym used by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Jr. as a radio deejay in Austin, Texas, during the 1960s and as a Sonobeat producer from 1967 to 1970.. Rim prepared a detailed schematic in which joystick controllers would pan individual instruments and vocals in a 360° circle around the listener, but the joysticks proved too expensive, so Bill amended the schematic to use two simple panning controls for each input channel, one to place an instrument or voice in the left to right spectrum and the other to place it in the front to rear spectrum. He also added two additional pick-up microphones to Sonobeat’s custom stereo steel plate reverb to convert it to quad. Although retrofitting the mixing console wasn’t complex, it still took Bill around a month to complete because he also was conducting “regular”, that is standard stereo, recording sessions at the same time.

---

Enter Base, a hand-picked studio band

To kickstart his quadraphonic experiments, Bill organized an elite group of Austin rock musicians into a studio band he called Base. The name was inspired by the first track Bill recorded in quad, I Know Why, which featured guitar virtuoso >Eric Johnson on lead and three – yes, three – bass guitarists. And, the studio band Bill put together formed the “base” for his quad experiments. Hence, the name. The 1972 Base sessions were tracked and mixed at the Sonobeat Studios in the KVET Building at 705 North Lamar in Austin, Texas.

The June and July 1972 Base sessions featured a cast of luminary Austin musicians with whom Bill had worked previously or who were otherwise friends of Sonobeat: lead guitarist 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), Mike Reid (New Atlantis), and David Harrell. Bill had recorded every individual musician appearing in Base before assembling the group, with the exceptions of Rector, who Bill knew indirectly through Danny Galindo, and Harrell, who Bill met in 1971 when auditioning the Austin band YOU. Harrell also knew Eric Johnson, strengthening the connection. Ronnie Leatherman recalled that Stacy Sutherland (a founding member of the Elevators and whose tragic personal story is the subject of Vicki Welch Ayo’s 2015 book Down the Rabbit Hole), jammed with Eric on at least one Base recording.

The 1972 Base recordings include several freeform jams. There are no known stereo mixes of any of the Base tracks in the Sonobeat archives, and none ever may have existed. Fortunately, the original 4-track session masters, literally mixed for quad reproduction, are preserved in the archives and served as the source for new stereo mixes we present below, including a track featuring Eric Johnson, who at age 15 recorded with Sonobeat as a founding member of rock fusion band Mariani. When Sonobeat Historical Archives began digitizing the 4-track masters in 2008, we discovered that Bill Sr. had written track notes on the paper leader tape separating takes on the physical masters. These unusual notes, along with Bill’s annotations on the master tape boxes themselves, helped us form a picture of what he was trying to achieve in the early ’70s by building a potential Austin supergroup. But in 1972, a new supergroup wasn’t his specific goal. It was pure experimentation in the quad audio sphere.

As summer ’72 ended, Bill turned his attention to other recording projects, temporarily suspending his quad experiments, and put aside the Base tapes, but he didn’t let go of his desire to record and release quadraphonic singles and albums. Major labels – Capitol, Columbia, Decca, and MCA among them – and the leading hi-fi stereo equipment manufacturers were heavily promoting quad recordings and playback equipment, and Bill firmly believed quad was the next consumer audio breakthrough technology.

---

---

Base, rebooted, featuring Ernie Gammage

After a span of months occupied with other ”standard” recording sessions, Bill rebooted Base in mid-1973, when Austin rock songwriter, guitarist, and singer Ernie Gammage returned to Austin from a sabbatical in England. It’s clear from Bill’s actions that he now intended to produce commercial quad tracks with Base to sell to major record labels. Ernie, a seasoned songwriter with an ear for a great hook, was the headliner Bill believed would make that possible. With his participation in Base, Ernie racks up three appearances in groups Sonobeat recorded: first, in the Sweetarts, the band that launched Sonobeat with the 1967 45 RPM stereo release, A Picture of Me, then in Fast Cotton, that recorded five original songs with Sonobeat in 1970 but broke up before any could be released; and, finally, in this second incarnation of Base. The 1973 Base sessions that featured Ernie produced Lady, a soulful remake of his ballad that he first recorded with the Sweetarts and then again with Fast Cotton (both previous versions were never released and, together with the Base version, Lady was Sonobeat’s most recorded original song), and a cover of Taj Mahal’s She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride, a song borrowed from Fast Cotton’s live performance repertoire. Ernie’s participation in the ’73 sessions was so fundamental that Bill changed the name of the group to Ernie Gammage and Base. Ronnie Leatherman recalled that Roky Erickson and a reconstituted 13th Floor Elevators consisting of Ronnie, John Ike Walton, and Roky’s brother Donnie recorded at least one track, Maxine, as part of Sonobeat’s 1973 Base sessions, but we’ve never found that recording in the Sonobeat archives.

Bill sent the quad session tapes for Lady and She Caught the Katy to his friend Ron Bledsoe at Columbia Records for processing with a CBS/Sony SQ matrix encoder. The SQ encoder created a quad/stereo/mono compatible 2-track master. We present Bill’s audio instruction to Columbia SQ mastering engineer Bob McGraw below, which also provides a good description of how Bill miked, recorded, and mixed the Base sessions for these tracks. Bill circulated SQ-encoded 2-track open reel dubs of the tracks as well as audiocassette copies to major labels, but nothing came of the material, all of which remains unreleased.

---

---

---

---