From introduction to recording sessions

Club Seville manager Don Dean introduced Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. to Geneva on a KAZZ-FM live remote broadcast in late 1966, when Bill was manager of the station and hosted the broadcasts, but before he and son Bill Jr. founded Sonobeat Records. Sonobeat launched in May 1967, but years passed before Bill Sr. sought a fresh jazz act to record and chose Geneva and Her Gentlemen, which by then had downsized from a combo of six musicians to a trio consisting of Geneva, Lionel, and Leotis Duffie Sr., known best in Austin jazz circles simply as “Duffy”, on drums.

The Sonobeat archives don’t document the dates Sonobeat recorded Geneva’s tracks, but we’re able to loosely bracket the time frame during which the sessions occurred because the master tape box is labeled using a Liberty Recorders tracking sheet that Sonobeat didn’t have in its possession until January 1969. That was when the Joseys trekked to Liberty Records in Los Angeles to deliver the Johnny Winter album it had just sold to Liberty’s Imperial label. And it was then that they grabbed a stash of the tape box labels during a visit to Liberty’s Hollywood recording studios.

Rim Kelley“Rim Kelley” was the radio air name used by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Jr. as a deejay in Austin, Texas, during the 1960s that he continued to use as a Sonobeat producer from 1967 to 1970. recalls tracking the Geneva sessions on Sonobeat’s half-inch 4-track Scully 280. Because he left Sonobeat and moved to Houston in August 1970, we confidently can place Geneva’s recording sessions between late-January 1969 and mid-summer 1970; however, our more educated guess is that the sessions occurred entirely during 1969. This is because Rim also recalls recording the basic instrumental tracks at The Club Seville, Sonobeat’s favorite venue for recording pop and jazz artists, including the Lee Arlano Trio, Don Dean, Paul New, Bach-Yen, and Fran Nelson. Sonobeat stopped using The Club Seville in late ’69, which further narrows the time frame for Geneva’s sessions. Like other sessions Sonobeat conducted during the same time frame, vocal overdubs were recorded at its home-based Western Hills Drive studio in northwest Austin, likely within a few days after the basic instrumental tracks were recorded. Bill Sr. indicated in his notes on the master tape box that Woke Up This Morning, a cover of the B.B. King classic, and the instrumental You Got Me (which may have been a Geneva original) were candidates for a Sonobeat stereo 45 RPM single, but the single never materialized. The 4-track session master of Woke Up This Morning in the Sonobeat archives contains a poorly-recorded vocal guide track, but the final 2-track stereo mix features a clean vocal overdub, although we’ve been unable to locate that version on any of the Geneva 4-track masters in the library. None of Geneva and Her Gentlemen’s Sonobeat recordings have ever been released.

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Geneva’s 4-track session master tape contains five cuts: two versions of the instrumental You Got Me, Duffy’s jazz vocal interpretation of Woke Up This Morning, Geneva’s languid solo vocal take on Nobody Else But Me from the Broadway classic Showboat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, and Geneva and husband Lionel’s harmonious duet on the jazz classic Mood Indigo, composed by Duke Ellington and Barney Bigard with lyrics by Irving Mills. We like the sultry smooth jazz of Geneva and Her Gentlemen and think you will, too, so take a listen to excerpts below.

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Although Geneva and Her Gentlemen ended its run as an organized group toward the end of the 1970s, Geneva continued to perform as a solo jazz pianist and vocalist in Central Texas throughout the 1980s and ’90s, often donating her time and musical talents in support of Austin’s Women & Their Work, a non-profit focused on nurturing and public exhibition of contemporary art by women in Texas. From 1977 to 2007, Geneva also served as Director of Music for Wesley United Methodist Church in Central East Austin. Duffy did double-time while drumming for Geneva, bartending at the Rio Club at the Rio Motel in East Austin, just off Interstate 35, and in 1975 he opened his own tavern called Duffie’s What Else?. Leotis Duffie passed away on January 10, 2008, at age 78. Lionel, by then Geneva’s ex-husband, passed away on December 8, 2014, at age 83. Jimmy Hamilton died on September 4, 1993. Geneva’s original drummer, Billy Joe Walker, died on June 3, 2020, at age 83. Born on January 9, 1930, in Guthrie, Oklahoma, as an adult Geneva made Austin her home, passing away on June 10, 2020, at age 90.

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