Sonobeat’s only gospel recordings

June 25, 1971 – just a few days into summer, it was already a hot Central Texas day. Sonobeat Records co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. was in session with gospel group The Royal Light Singers (which Bill mis-credited as The Royal Lights Singers, with an “s” at the end of Light") at Sonobeat’s then-new studios in the KVET Building at 705 North Lamar in Austin. The session resulted in two singles, Will You Be Ready backed with My Rock, that Sonobeat commercially released as stereo 45 RPM single G-s119, and Creation backed with I Know My Jesus Is Watching, as Sonobeat release G-s120 but that, for reasons undocumented in the Sonobeat archives, appears never to have been commercially released but instead appears to have been a custom pressing for The Royal Light Singers’ direct distribution.

Although James Polk and the Brothers’ 1969 Sonobeat single, Stick-To-It-Tive-Ness, has a gospel groove, The Royal Light Singers was the only true gospel act Sonobeat ever recorded, adding another distinctive musical genre to the label’s eclectic output.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing more about The Royal Light Singers in the Sonobeat archives, but our research in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper archives provided the names of the members of the group at the time of the Sonobeat recordings and tracked the group’s many performances in and around Central Texas.

The Royal Light Singers Sonobeat release (1971)

The Royal Light Singers second release

The Royal Light Singers Sonobeat release (1971)

The Royal Light Singers performed at the inaugural 1972 Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas, about 105 miles west of Austin, where they made repeat performances in 1973, ’74, and ’77. The unit went on to release a single on its own Royal label, I Was There When the Spirit Came backed with Come Out in the Wilderness, but there’s no indication in the Sonobeat archives whether these tracks were recorded at the Sonobeat studios. Two earlier singles released in the late ’50s or early ’60s on New York’s Derby Records label, I, John, Saw the Holy Number backed with Lord Will Provide and Downward Road backed with My God Called Me This Morning are credited to the Royal Light Singers, but it seems unlikely these recordings were by the Austin-based group. Similarly, in the mid 1950s, there was a Royal Light Singers based in Cleveland, Ohio. Now a quintet, the Austin-based Royal Light Singers is known as The New Sensational Royal Lights (not to be confused with a similarly-named gospel group currently performing in the northeast U.S.). The New Sensational Royal Lights, continuing the tradition passed down by the talented gospel group that recorded with Sonobeat more than four decades earlier, performs throughout Central Texas.