Beginnings

July 1967, Austin, Texas. A typical toasty Central Texas summer. For months, Sonobeat co-founders Bill Josey Sr. and Bill Josey Jr. had been planning the launch of a new, Austin-based record label, gathering recording equipment and holding practice recording sessions. Bill Jr., a deejay at Austin’s KAZZ-FM., who used the air name “Rim Kelley”, and Bill Sr., KAZZ’s general manager, knew all the top local music venues – Jade Room, Club Saracen, Action Club, IL Club, Swingers A Go-Go, and The New Orleans Club – where they frequently hung out, looking for the “right” rock band to record for Sonobeat’s first commercial release. Two months earlier, in May, using an Ampex 354 tape deck and microphones borrowed from KAZZ, the Joseys held practice recording sessions with Austin semi-psychedelic band Leo and the Prophets, recording the band in the parking lot at Lake Austin Inn, and recording another hot Austin rock band, Sweetarts, at Club Saracen in downtown Austin; however, neither session produced useable tracks because of audio mixer distortion. By July, the Joseys were finally ready for a real recording session, again with Leo and the Prophets, this time using Swingers Club in north Austin as a remote recording studio. But the Prophets had only one finished song, so their session failed to yield a flip side for a commercial 45 RPM vinyl release.

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Waiting in the wings

Backing up a moment to fall 1963, Dwight Dow and Ernie Gammage had just started at The University of Texas, Dwight as a junior transferee from North Texas State UniversityNorth Texas State University became The University of North Texas (UNT) in 1988. Its main campus is located in Denton, Texas, just north of Dallas-Ft. Worth. and Ernie as a freshman. During rush, the two connected with Austin musician Charlie Hatchett (who later became a legendary Austin band booking agent) to form cover band The Fabulous Chevelles (not to be confused with another Texas band that formed almost ten years later, The Fabulous Thunderbirds). The Chevelles played all the regular Austin music venues and University of Texas fraternity parties. The money was good and helped Dwight and Ernie pay their way through college. But by 1965, the two had moved on to co-found the Sweettarts – note that the original spelling of the band’s name mirrored, but as one word, the spelling of the popular candy Sweet Tarts, which had been introduced in 1963. The new band – at the time nameless – got a call during rehearsal from a frat party booker who asked who they were. Dwight, munching Sweet Tarts at the time, as a joke gave the booker that name. It stuck.

When Dwight and Ernie formed the ’Tarts, they recruited two African-American musicians and promoted the band as “The Sweettarts – half black, half white. You gotta hear ’em, they’re outta sight”. But that first incarnation of the band didn’t last long, largely because The University of Texas fraternity party scene, which generously subsidized Austin rock bands every weekend, was unsure whether the ’Tarts were a rock & roll band or a rhythm & blues band, so bookings began to dry up. Version two of the Sweettarts featured the line-up that initially recorded and released the single So Many Times, in 1966, for Dallas-based Vandan Records. Perhaps, after the Vandan release, it was a call from Sweet Tarts manufacturer Sunline’s trademark attorneys that resulted in a change in spelling of the band’s name to Sweetarts, with just one “t” in the middle, or perhaps it was just a smart tweak to make sure the band’s name was spelled correctly in night club newspaper ads and on club marquees.

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When the Sweettarts’ Vandan single came out, it was well promoted nationally and, although it didn’t make the national charts, it was a bona fide regional hit and naturally sold well in the band’s hometown, Austin. KAZZ, at the time the only FM station regularly playing top 40 music anywhere in the U.S., happily played singles by Austin bands, including those by Leo and the Prophets, The 13th Floor Elevators, and... the Sweettarts. In 1966, KAZZ afternoon deejay Rim Kelley pretty much played the grooves off So Many Times and in February 1967 hosted a KAZZ live remote broadcast that featured the band performing at Club Saracen in downtown Austin. At that broadcast, the Sweetarts came off as a tight, virtuoso unit, playing original material alongside familiar Beatles and Otis Redding covers. But it was the band’s crowd-pleasing performance of its original song Without You that convinced Rim to offer to record the Sweetarts for the start-up Sonobeat label.

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The 1967 sessions

The Swingers Club in North Austin, where the Joseys recorded Leo and the Prophets, proved to be a good make-shift remote studio with plenty of floor space and good acoustics, so Sonobeat returned there for a July 18, 1967, afternoon session with the Sweetarts. That session produced the basic instrumental tracks for what became Sonobeat’s first release. A week later, in a late-night session at KAZZ-FM’s downtown Austin studios, Rim combined the instrumental backing tracks with vocal, tambourine, and shaker overdubs on a mix-down from KAZZ’s Ampex 354 quarter-inch 2-track tape deck to its Ampex 350 2-track deck. KAZZ’s facilities presented both a challenge and an opportunity: the station’s offices and studios were on the 10th floor of the Perry Brooks Building. The north and south sides of the 10th floor were divided by a tunnel-like hallway. KAZZ occupied offices on one side of the long hallway, facing Austin’s classical music station KMFA-FM on the other side. For the Sweetarts overdub session, Rim set up a mike for vocals in the hallway just outside KAZZ’s office entrance and another mike at the far end of the hallway to capture its natural reverberation. He threaded the mike cables into the KAZZ production room, then coordinated with KAZZ’s deejay (KMFA didn’t broadcast late at night) to avoid recording when the deejay was announcing on-air. Between each take the band members gathered in KAZZ’s production room to listen until all agreed on the takes that were keepers.

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The 45 RPM stereo single

Ernie Gammage’s A Picture of Me is an innovative and well-crafted pop tune by any standard, with a lot going for it: thoughtful lyrics, Ernie’s solid lead vocal, an infectious beat, a tight band performance with an unusual four bar break – probably influenced by the Beatles’ We Can Work It Out – and polished backup harmonies that dramatically end the song on a minor chord.

Without You, also a Gammage original, is an equally impressive and solid rock romp with a good bit of country influence, punctuated by Tom Van Zandt’s Farfisa organ riffs, Pat Whitefield‘s clever bass break, and a neat little hi-hat trick courtesy of Dwight Dow.

As good as both songs were, though, there was never any doubt in producer Rim Kelley’s mind that A Picture of Me would be the single’s “A” side.

When both the Sweetarts and Sonobeat were satisfied with the vocal overdubs, Bill Josey Sr. drove the master tape – along with the master tape for Sonobeat‘s first jazz single, by the Lee Arlano Trio, recorded a week before the Sweetarts’ sessions – to Houston, Texas, where Houston Records, Inc., pressed 1,000 to 1,500 copies of each single. Packaged in a black and white picture sleeve, the Sweetarts’ stereo 45 RPM single was released throughout Central Texas during Labor Day week in 1967. The Lee Arlano Trio single was released a week later.

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Sonobeat promoted A Picture of Me as the first monaural-compatible stereo 45 RPM single in the U.S., although some major labels previously had dabbled in, then abandoned, stereo singles. The Sweetarts’ single also was packaged in a picture sleeve, an unusual extra expense that small regional labels typically eschewed but that was part of Sonobeat‘s marketing plan. Although the Sweetarts’ single was distributed only in Austin and Central Texas record stores, the Joseys considered their first release a success particularly because, somewhat unexpectedly, it picked up a national review in music industry trade journal Cash Box. The single also was San Antonio, Texas, radio station KTSA’s “pick hit of the week” (as reported in the September 17, 1967, edition of the San Antonio Express and News) and a featured pick of the week by San Antonio’s top rated rock station KONO (as reported by record and radio trade journal Record World in its October 7, 1967 issue).

The Sweetarts entered the 1968 Austin Aqua Festival Battle of the Bands, appearing August 9th in the Austin City Coliseum among only 12 finalists culled from over 50 competing acts. The ‘Tarts won first place and took home a $500 cash prize (worth over $4,500 in 2024 dollars).

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The 1969 sessions

The Sweetarts returned to Sonobeat in July 1969 to record new original material. These sessions occurred during a musical transition for the ’Tarts, who in mid-’68 added vocalist Randy Thornton and guitarist Steve Weisberg and began a transition from top 40-style frat rock to rhythm & blues and experimental original material. The 1969 sessions focused on Ernie Gammage’s ballad Lady, recorded in multiple versions. There’s debate about a second song attributed to the Sweetarts in the July ’69 sessions: Summer Sunshine is a complex, highly crafted tune and performance with instrumentation that largely parallels that of Lady, but Ernie Gammage didn’t sing lead. The label on the session master tape in the Sonobeat archives credits Summer Sunshine to the Sweetarts, but no one in the band has recalled composing or recording it. Perhaps it’s a Steve Weisberg or Randy Thornton song. We’re left with an air of mystery and uncertainty about Summer Sunshine, which we can’t say definitively is a Sweetarts recording but that we’ll continue to attribute to the ’Tarts unless we find convincing evidence to the contrary.

In addition to the Sweetarts new sound, the 1969 sessions, recorded at Sonobeat’s Western Hills Drive studio, were technically superior to the 1967 sessions. By 1969 Sonobeat had built a small studio on the lower level of the Josey family’s split-level home in northwest Austin. The home-based studio included a drum and vocal isolation booth. Between the Sweetarts’ 1967 and 1969 sessions, Sonobeat acquired a top tier half-inch 4-track Scully 280 tape recorder and an array of professional microphones, including a matched pair of Sony ECM-22 electret condenser mikes, and built a 10-channel custom solid state stereo mixer and massive steel plate reverb. In January 1969, the Joseys delivered their master recordings of Johnny Winter’s The Progressive Blues Experiment album to Liberty Records in Los Angeles, to whom they’d sold the commercial rights, and visited Liberty’s Hollywood recording studios, where they nabbed a stash of Liberty Recorders tape box labels. Weeks later, back in Austin, they used one of the labels to document the Sweetarts’ 1969 sessions, thinking Sonobeat might be able to sell this new batch of Sweetarts recordings to Liberty, too. But work on the second Sweetarts single ended with little completed due to the band’s ongoing personnel changes, and before the sessions were completed the band regrouped as Fast Cotton. The timing wasn’t right to shift the sessions to the band’s new incarnation as Fast Cotton, but that moment arrived in 1970, so the second round of Sweetarts tapes were shelved.

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The 2013 and 2014 reunions

Sometimes great bands take long breaks: on March 13, 2013, during SXSWSouth By Southwest, also known as “SXSW” or “South By” and whose name was inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock thriller North By Northwest, began in 1987 as a local music festival and since has expanded to cover feature films and interactive media on an international scale. SXSW pretty much takes over Austin during The University of Texas spring break every March. in Austin, the Sweetarts reunited at Tom’s Tabooley/Antone’s Records for only their second performance since disbanding in 1969 to form Fast Cotton. Rim Kelley introduced the ’Tarts at the 2013 event. On February 9, 2014, the Sweetarts reunited once more, also at Tom’s Tabooley/Antone’s Records, to support Ricky Stein’s book signing event (for his History Press edition of Sonobeat Records: Pioneering the Austin Sound in the ’60s). In March 2014, Sonobeat Historical Archives reissued restored and remastered versions of A Picture of Me and Without You, on iTunes and Amazon Music. The band took a final bow with an appearance on July 26, 2014, at Saxon Pub in Austin with fellow Austin bandmates Lavender Hill Express to help celebrate the digital reissue of all three Lavender Hill Express Sonobeat singles.

Sweetarts bass player Pat Whitefield died in Austin, Texas, at age 72 on August 5, 2019, following brain surgery on July 3rd to remove a glioblastoma.

Watch Ernie Gammage’s recollections of the Sweetarts and Sonobeat on Austin Music History’s YouTube channel.

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50th anniversary digital reissue

For its 50th anniversary digital reissue of the Sweetarts’ single in 2017, Sonobeat Historical Archives commissioned Colin Leonard at SING Mastering in Atlanta, Georgia, to remaster A Picture of Me. Colin’s impressive mastering credits include albums and singles by Alessia Cara, Justin Bieber, Jay-Z, Bryson Tiller, Echosmith, Leona Lewis, Migos, Icona Pop, Mastodon, Kimbra, Indigo Girls, and Gucci Mane. A Picture of Me is available on Apple Music in a sparkling Apple Digital Master edition, remastered by Colin, using his patented using SING Technology, directly from a high resolution 88.2 kHz/24 bit transfer from Sonobeat’s original analog session master tape. Sonobeat Historical Archives remastered Without You in-house, also using an 88.2 KHz/24 bit transfer from the original analog session master tape.

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More on the band members