The Sonobeat years

An amateur musician, Bill developed theories about the primal function and importance of the rhythm and “beat” in music, which were reflected in his preference for jazz, R&B, and rock. He loved meeting, encouraging, and producing aspiring artists and actively fostered the growth of the Austin music scene from the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s, during which he produced hundreds of recordings with dozens of Central Texas’ most promising and talented songwriters, singers, and musicians. He encouraged the artists he worked with to be “commercial” – that is, to perform songs with a beat, with drums, that could be danced to – in order to be successful. At the same time, he encouraged originality and experimentation, which, beginning in the mid-’60s, became a hallmark of Austin and Central Texas music. A staunch advocate of freedom of artistic expression, Bill stood as a character witness at the drug bust trial of 13th Floor Elevators’ front man Roky Erickson.

As a producer and recording engineer, Bill Sr. pushed Sonobeat’s recording equipment beyond reasonable expectations, finding unique ways to meet and beat challenging conditions. Always resourceful, during Sonobeat’s early years, when it had no recording studio of its own, he arranged for Sonobeat to use Austin nighclubs (ranging from Swingers Club in north Austin to the iconic Vulcan Gas Company in downtown Austin) and even his church’s auditorium as makeshift recording studios. One of Bill’s notable wild experiments was recording progressive rock group Mariani in an open field on a 100 acre ranch outside Austin, providing the musicians a rare opportunity to perform at uninhibited volume levels. He converted the ground-level bedroom suite in the family’s Western Hills Drive home into a mini-recording studio, adding a drum and vocal isolation booth using part of the garage. With Bill Jr., he built two of Sonobeat’s three custom recording and mixing consoles and its steel plate reverb. Bill also was an early experimenter in quadraphonic recording techniques, retrofitting Sonobeat’s custom recording console with quad mixing modules, even constructing a studio recording band composed of a selection of Austin musicians he had previously worked with to record quad material, submitting several samples to his contacts at the major national labels.

In mid-1973, Bill moved the Sonobeat studios from Austin to the outskirts of rural Liberty Hill in the beautiful Central Texas hill country, 30 miles north of Austin, converting an old stone church into a comfortable and inviting recording environment, “Blue Hole Sounds”, that served as Sonobeat’s home base until Bill’s death in September 1976. During those final years at Blue Hole Sounds, Bill recorded dozens of musicians and, even toward the end, when he was seriously ill, pushed on, inspired and fortified by the artists he recorded.

Under the huge live oak trees surrounding Blue Hole Sounds, Bill threw a Texas-size barbecue party in May 1976 for his oldest daughter, Deb, celebrating her graduation from The University of Texas. Two months later he walked his youngest daughter, Jan, down the aisle for her wedding only days before checking himself into the Veterans Administration Hospital in nearby Temple, Texas. Bill succumbed to lymphocarcinoma at the Veterans Hospital on September 28, 1976.