Sonobeat Artists
The Conqueroo
The roots of The Conqueroo’s origins
in October 1965, Powell St. John, who a year later would become a frequent 13th Floor Elevators collaborator, founded The Conqueroo under its original name St. John the Conqueroo Roots. The band’s first line-up included Powell (harmonica), Tary Owens (guitar), Johnny Moyer (percussion), and future 13th Floor Elevators co-founder Tommy Hall (amplified jug). The band was billed as a jug band and specialized in a mashup of ragtime and blues with an added dash of rhythm and blues. Only months after the band formed, Bill Carr and Tom Bright joined, and the band dropped “Roots” from the end of its name. Sonobeat co-founders Bill Josey Sr. and 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. first heard The Conqueroo perform in January 1967, double-billed with the 13th Floor Elevators at Austin&rsquos Doris Miller Auditorium. Rim emceed the show on behalf of the Elevators, who were the headliners. Ultimately, though, it was The Conqueroo’s regular performances throughout 1967 at The Vulcan, a fertile venue the Joseys frequented to find new and rising talent, that convince Bill Sr. and Rim that they should record the band.
All the founding members had moved on by the time Sonobeat recorded the band, which had rebranded itself as simply The Conqueroo. In mid-’67, before the Sonobeat sessions, The Conqueroo played San Antonio, Texas, venues almost every weekend, with a line-up including Guinn, Prichard, and Brown, but also including Wallace Listening Tree (bass, organ, and tamborine) and New York City native Stephen Petrovcik (drums). Of the line-up Sonobeat recorded, only Guinn, Prichard, and Brown remained from the earlier incarnations. Drummer Gerry Storm had a long history in Austin jazz music circles, and before joining The Conqueroo was a founding member of jazz combo The Blue Crew, which was credited with reinvigorating the Austin jazz scene in 1965 and ’66. By summer 1968, The Conqueroo trekked to California, playing the Bay Area before finally breaking up in 1969. While the band was playing in the Bay Area, the Los Angeles Free Press, picked up the Sonobeat single and reviewed it, incorrectly crediting The Conqueroo as a “San Francisco group of musicians”. Although Brown and Prichard remained in California for a few months after The Conqueroo broke up, briefly playing in the Angel Band, Brown returned to Austin and in 1971 recorded again with Sonobeat, this time fronting the country-folk band Kingfish. In case you didn’t make the connection (and we did a double-take when it finally hit us), Powell St. John’s original naming of the band – St. John and the Conqueroo Roots – was a clever, mystical double entendre referring to both Powell’s last name and to High John the Conqueroo (or sometimes John the Conqueror), quite literally the root of the Ipomoea purga plant that’s a staple in African American hoodoo folk magic. Lyrics in Willie Dixon’s blues standard Hootchie Cootchie Man refer to the John the Conqueroo root as well as to a “black cat’s bone” (an original Johnny Winter song bears the similar title, Black Cat Bone, in homage to Willie) and a mojo tooth (also used in African American lore to cast magic spells).
The Vulcan sessions
To record The Conqueroo, Sonobeat rented The Vulcan Gas Company during off-hours as a makeshift studio – initially in December 1967 and again in March ’68 – because at the time Sonobeat had no recording studio of its own. The Vulcan was a music hall with a vast floor, so it provided plenty of room for the band to set up its amp speaker boxes far enough apart to create isolation for stereo recording separation. The December ’67 sessions felt rushed and neither the Joseys nor the band were happy with the instrumental backing tracks, so no vocals were overdubbed. By contrast, the March ’68 sessions were far more relaxed, evidenced by slightly slower versions of the two songs eventually selected for The Conqueroo’s single. The ’68 sessions yielded Sonobeat’s fifth release, a stereo 45 RPM single pairing Ed Guinn’s I’ve Got Time (featuring an enigmatically dramatic, yet strangely reserved, duet) with 1 to 3 (featuring an equally dramatic but uninhibited vocal by composer Bob Brown). Sonobeat used no fancy recording techniques or special audio effects; the single was nothing short of two great songs performed passionately by great musicians, captured just a little raw at one of Sonobeat’s favorite venues. The Sonobeat stereo 45 was The Conqueroo’s only commercially-released single.
Bill [Josey Sr.] said ‘Just go ahead and play your tune.’ Our sessions were pretty easy, comfortable ... [but] the room sounded pretty awful. I was unimpressed by the boom, the crashiness, but I think it turned out pretty well. It certainly captured what we were doing.”
The Austin ‘Grateful Dead’ – a well-recorded, excellent example of Austin Psychedelia. I’ve Got Time sounds like a Dead, Airplane and Charlatans jam session. 1 two [sic] 3 is a bit heavier and could be a hit today [in 1975]. The Austin 60’s sound never ceases to amaze me – these boys were doing it all and seemed to equal anything ‘San Fran’ could dream up.”
Sonobeat issued The Conqueroo’s single in a double-sided black and white picture sleeve designed by legendary Austin illustrator Gilbert Shelton, creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers underground comic (at the time the recordings were made, Gilbert lived with The Conqueroo and other assorted characters in an old house on Grandview Street, a couple of blocks off North Lamar near Shoal Creek in Austin). An imaginative tableau staged by celebrated Austin photographer Belmer Wright (not to be confused with another celebrated Austin photographer of the era, Burton Wilson) completef The Conqueroo’s picture sleeve, which shared much of the look and feel of The Vulcan Gas Company’s famous concert posters and handbills. Another shot from the same photo session appeared in the December 4, 1973, edition of The University of Texas’ newspaper, The Daily Texan, as part of a ’60s Austin music retrospective. Belmer also was a co-creator of the Jomo Disaster Light Show, a spectacular liquid light showPut water and colored oils in a small glass tray, add heat and an overhead projector, and you get a kinetic visual experience that plays well with hallucinogens. projected on the walls and ceiling of the Vulcan during performances. Both sides of the single’s sleeve are identical except for the song titles, which hand lettered by Shelton. Shelton’s sleeve art referred to “The Conqueroo”, as does the Sonobeat single’s label, but the group was known interchangeably as “The Conqueroo” and “Conqueroo”. The Q in “Conqueroo” on the sleeve forms a long tail through the double OOs, proclaiming “Recorded Live at the Vulcan Gas Co.”, but the single actually was recorded before only a tiny inner circle of band friends and family in an otherwise empty Vulcan – not, as the banner suggests, during one of the band’s public performances. That said, there was an ethereal “other worldness” to The Conqueroo’s recordings, as rapturous as any of the band’s live performances, enhanced by the vast acoustics imparted by the massive empty cistern under The Vulcan’s floor.
We had Gilbert [Shelton] do a lot of work for us; he was very talented, extremely co-operative and wonderful to work with.”
Originally scheduled as release R-s104 (collectors will find this etched in the single’s dead wax), The Conqueroo release moved up to R-s103 on Sonobeat’s schedule after Shiva’s Headband had second thoughts about the impending release of its Sonobeat single, also recorded at The Vulcan and originally scheduled for release a week or two ahead of The Conqueroo’s. Rather than have the acetates (used to make the vinyl record pressing plates) remastered with the new release number inscribed in the dead wax, Bill Sr. simply had the labels for The Conqueroo single printed with the new catalog number and proceeded with its release ahead of schedule. Neither side of the single is the “A” side because both songs are equally strong; however, when Sonobeat mailed out promo copies to radio stations and reviewers, Bill Sr. rubber stamped 1 to 3 with a , indicating it was the side he believed had the greater potential for airplay. The single was released during the week of April 8, 1968, and six weeks later The Conqueroo performsed at HemisFair ’68, San Antonio’s world’s fair, joining another Sonobeat act, Wali and the Afro-Caravan, on the stage at the fair’s Project Y sports and games pavilion. In its June 8th issue, Billboard Magazine reported that Houston’s progressive rock station KFMK-FM had named The Conqueroo’s single as the station’s “Biggest Leftfield Happening” (whatever that meant).
While inventorying the Sonobeat master tape archives in 2008, we discovered two instrumental tracks recorded during The Conqueroo’s March ’68 sessions. Both sound like instrumental backings for vocals that were never overdubbed, so we assumed these were incomplete versions. One of the unfinished tracks appears to be titled None of Your Business, Waitress.
Frustrated by the University of Texas frat rock ’n’ roll scene, in which bands are expected to cover top 40 hits, The Conqueroo’s Ed Guinn approaches Austin’s IL Club owner Ira Littlefield, asking him to book the band so it can play its brand of ’crippled hippie folk music with rhythm and blues presumptions’.”
1 to 3
National review
1 to 3
Recording and release details
45 RPM stereo single
Side 1: 1 to 3 (Bob Brown) • 2:17
Side 2: I’ve Got time (Edward Guinn) • 3:14
Catalog number: R-s103
Double-sided black and white picture sleeve
Released week of April 8, 1968*
*Release date is approximated using best information available from the Sonobeat archives and public records
Produced and engineered by Rim Kelley
Recorded at The Vulcan Gas Company, Austin, Texas, on December 5, 1967, March 18, 1968, and March 23, 1968
Recorded using...
- ElectroVoice 665 dynamic microphones
- Ampex 350 and 354 quarter-inch 2-track tape decks
- Custom 6-channel portable stereo mixer
- 3M (Scotch) 201 tape stock
Between 1,000 and 1,500 copies pressed; approximately 100 copies rubber stamped “PROMO COPY”; 1 to 3 side of promo copies also rubber stamped with a to indicate the side radio stations should play
Lacquers and master plates manufactured by Longwear Plating, Long Island City, New York
Vinyl copies pressed by Houston Records, Inc., Houston, Texas
Label blanks and picture sleeve printed by Powell Offset Services, Austin, Texas
In the dead wax...
- 1 to 3: LW RS-104B-1
- I’ve Got Time: LW RS-104A-1
- “LW” indicates the lacquers and master plates were manufactured by Longwear Plating, Long Island City, New York
Unreleased recordings
None of Your Business, Waitress
Unidentified instrumental #2
Charlie Prichard was inducted to the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2004. He passed away in April 2017. Powell St. John died in August 2021.
Listen!
Digital reissue
On October 30, 2020, Sonobeat Historical Archives issued digitally restored and remastered editions of 1 To 3 and I’ve Got Time on dozens of music download and streaming services worldwide. Although we still love The Conqueroo’s single on Sonobeat’s stereo 45 RPM vinyl release, our goal was to restore the dynamic range and sonic clarity that was lost as a by-product of the vinyl mastering and pressing process. To accomplish this, we made high resolution digital transfers from the original session master tapes, then used state-of-the-art digital repair and remastering tools, including iZotope's RX7, RX8, and Ozone, on Adobe Audition and Logic Pro digital workstations to create the new digital masters.
1 to 3
2020 digital reissue of the 1968 single
Restored and remastered from the original analog session master tape
I’ve Got Time
2020 digital reissue of the 1968 single
Restored and remastered from the original analog session master tape
Digital reissue review
The January 2021 issue (#111) of the U.K.’s retro music and culture magazine Shindig! reviewed our restored and remastered digital reissue of The Conqueroo’s single, saying “Predating The 13th Floor Elevators as Austin’s first, and for awhile biggest, underground band, [The Conqueroo] were originally a vehicle for legendary songwriter Powell St John, but this excellent 1968 double A-side single, featuring a later line-up, remains pretty much their sole recorded legacy... These two tracks have been expertly re-mastered from the original tapes for digital release.”
Coda
Travis D. Stimeling gives a nod to The Conqueroo and Sonobeat in his 2011 book Cosmic Cowboys and New Hicks: The Countercultural Sounds of Austin’s Progressive Country Scene, counting The Conqueroo among the more progressive bands of the era and noting its interracial personnel, unusual during Austin in the ’60s. Notably, Ed Guinn was the first African-American member of the University of Texas Longhorn marching band before joining The Conqueroo. Ed also is quoted frequently in Barry Shank’s 1994 book Dissonant Identities: The Rock ’n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas to illustrate the diversity of Austin music in the ”60s and ’70s. And, Ed’s a man of many talents: he appeared as a cattle truck driver in Tobe Hooper's 1974 cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, filmed around Austin and Central Texas.