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The mystery band, demystified

For decades we held a mysterious, unlabelled 33-1/3 RPM LP test pressing in the Sonobeat Records archives. The markings in the dead wax didn’t help us identify the band. The tracks on the test pressing were a little folksy, a little bluesy, with tinges of gospel here and there, and featured vocals that sounded familiar to us, but we just could’t place who the recording was by. Then, in 2008, as we were re-indexing the Sonobeat master tape library, we came upon two 10.5" tape reel boxes marked “Pleasant Street”. On a hunch we compared the ten songs on the test pressing to the ten songs on the Pleasant Street master tapes and, voilà, they were the same! Suddenly we realized the band’s lead vocalist was Bill Wilson, a virtuoso folk-blues singer-songwriter who we had recorded a few years earlier to showcase his original songs and in 1970 as a guest singer on Sonobeat’s Mariani hard rock demo album. Two more voilàs!

In 1971, Wilson, following completion of his military service at Austin’s Bergstrom Strategic Air Command base, returned to his native Bloomington, Indiana, taking a factory job in nearby Indianapolis, playing solo in small local clubs evenings and weekends. At some point in 1972, popular Indianapolis folk act The Pleasant Street Band was looking for a dobro player. Wilson didn’t play dobro, but that didn’t stop him. He learned the dobro, not all that different from the standard guitar he regularly played, almost overnight in order to audition for the band. Soon after being invited to join The Pleasant Street Band, Wilson took his new bandmates on a road trip to Austin, Texas, to record an album with his friend, Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. Although we’re not 100% sure who besides Wilson performed on Sonobeat’s Pleasant Street recordings, a bit of online research and emails exchanges with daughters of former band members helped us determine that the band was comprised of Wilson, Scott O’Malley, Tom Williams, Charles “Chuck” Cline, and Greg O’Haver. In the same time frame, there was a Pleasant Street String Band based in Evanston, Illinois, and a Pleasant Street Blues Band, originally formed in the ’60s in Springfield, Ohio, that still performs today, but neither the String nor Blues units were related to The Pleasant Street Band from Indianapolis that recorded with Sonobeat. Founded in 1968 as, simply, “Pleasant Street”, the group expanded its name to “The Pleasant Street Band” in 1971 or ’72.

The titles of the songs on The Pleasant Street Band’s master tapes and test pressing aren’t listed anywhere in the Sonobeat archives, so we guessed at the titles of many of them. But we did recognize covers of Rod Stewart’s Seems Like a Long Time, Neil Diamond’s hit Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show, and Harry Nilsson’s The Rainmaker, made famous by The 5th Dimension. One more is a guitar-accompanied spoken word adaptation of a Japanese and Chinese folk tale about the difference between heaven and hell (hint: they feed each other in heaven). And two more tracks are Bill Wilson compositions, Father Let Your Light Shine Down and Following My Lord, that eventually appeared on his Columbia Records solo album Ever Changing Minstrel. All the tunes are lovely folk-inflected, inspiring renditions.

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The Pleasant Street Band recordings have an unusual sonic quality, often sounding muddy and just as often with vocals buried by the instrumental backing, so it’s possible the recordings were intended as demos to gauge whether the band had commercial appeal. We feel fairly certain the group recorded at Sonobeat’s North Lamar studio in Austin during mid- to late-1972. The Sonobeat archives also hold a live concert tape of the band, perhaps recorded in Austin, but it’s unclear how that tape came into Sonobeat’s possession. And, because we have The Pleasant Street Band test pressing in the archives, we know that producer Bill Josey Sr. sent the master tapes off to Sidney J. Wakefield & Company in Phoenix, Arizona, for perhaps no more than a dozen copies to be mastered and pressed. We surmise that by having test pressings made Bill Sr. intended to circulate the album to his contacts at the major U.S. record labels, hoping to sell the album for a national release, but there was no sale, and the album was never released, even by Sonobeat itself.

The band found success in and around Indianapolis, opening The Pleasant Street Music Hall, a restaurant-bar-music venue combo. But, as 1974 came to an end, the band broke up and its members spread to other Indianapolis-area bands. Sonobeat worked with Bill Wilson on and off over several years: first, in 1969, Wilson recorded a song demo album for Sonosong composer Herman Nelson. Next, Wilson recorded a song demo of his own compositions. Then, he joined the “cast” of vocalists performing on Sonobeat’s Mariani album in 1970. Post-Pleasant Street, Wilson enjoyed a solo recording and performing career based in Indianapolis and Nashville, becoming a local legend in his hometown, Bloomington, Indiana. He succumbed to massive heart failure in 1993. Scott O’Malley left The Pleasant Street Band in the mid-’70s to form county-western (emphasis on “western”) group Buffalo Brothers, moving to Colorado, where he founded the Western Jubilee Recording Company. Scott died in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on December 22, 2023, at age 77. Greg O’Haver continues to sing and play 6- and 12-string guitar and banjo in the current line-up of The New Christy Minstrels, having joined the classic folk-rock troupe in 2010.

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