Sonobeat Features


Remembering Bill Josey Sr.

Sonobeat and Sonosong co-founder • 1921-1976

Remembering Bill Josey Sr.


1921 to 1959

Born in Houston, Texas, on December 14, 1921, William (Bill) Josey was the only child of James and Grace Josey. He grew up in the home his father and grandfather built in the small Houston neighborhood of South Side Place. He attended public schools in Houston and then The University of Texas in Austin, where he earned undergraduate and masters degrees in psychology. It also was at The University of Texas that Bill met his future bride, Austin native Marie Joyce.

During World War II, Bill served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, commanding a Patrol Torpedo boat in the Pacific theater. Returning from active duty in 1946, he married Marie in Miami, Florida. On completion of his military service, the couple relocated to Bill’s hometown, Houston. Their first child, Bill Jr., was born in 1947, and in 1948 the young family moved to Galveston, where Bill Sr. attended The University of Texas Medical School. His medical education was permanently derailed when he contracted mumps and was bedridden for weeks. The family then returned to Houston. There, Bill Sr. opened a solo psychology practice catering to the booming post-war industrial complex – primarily chemical and oil companies – along the Texas Gulf Coast. Caught up in the 1950s Red ScareAn extreme fear arising during the decade immediately following the end of World War II that Communists and Communist sympathizers were infiltrating the U.S. government and military-industrial complex. The term was derived from equating Communists with Soviet Russians, whose national flag was red. and, reacting to an unfounded belief that Communists were infiltrating U.S. businesses, these industries engaged psychologists, Bill among them, to screen potential employees using personality and occupational tests. By 1958, the Red Scare had subsided and the previous high demand for industrial psychologists had waned. That meant changes for the Josey family.

Bill’s story continues below ↓

Remembering Bill Josey Sr.
Bill Josey with dog Happy
Bill Josey and his dog Happy
Teenaged Bill Josey
A teenaged Bill Josey
Bill Josey Navy uniform
Bill Josey’s Navy headshot

Transplanted

In 1959, the Josey family, which by then had grown to four children, moved to Austin, where Bill began a series of career changes that led to work in radio ad sales and, in 1965, to the position of station manager of Austin’s KAZZ-FM, where Bill Jr., then an undergraduate at The University of Texas, was employed as a deejay. In ’66, Bill Sr. encouraged son Jack, then 13, to become the youngest working deejay in Texas radio, beginning Jack’s long career as a prominent Central Texas radio personality and entrepreneur.

Bill Sr. enjoyed producing and hosting live remote broadcasts of jazz, pop, and rock groups on KAZZ-FM from 1965 to 1967, and from the resulting connections Bill made with the musical acts and their managers, he and Bill Jr. had access to dozens of local bands to record when they formed Sonobeat Recording Company and Sonobeat Records in mid-1967.

The Josey family circa 1970
Bill Sr. and children (circa 1970)

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.

Bill’s thoughts on recording different genres

Bill was interviewed in the May 7, 1973, issue of Austin underground newspaper The Rag. Among the many topics he covered were his summary thoughts on how to record different genres, including an amusing afterthought:


There are differences in how you treat each style. In country music, the vocalist must sell the lyrics, so you put the voice way out in front. Rock singers, however, are engulfed in the music and become a part of it. Rhythm and blues has a so-called syncopated beat, and you keep the voice and instruments at the same level because the spurts of voice and music don’t overlap. I prefer just cutting instrumentals, actually.”


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.



[Bill] sincerely cared about the people he worked with, and bent over backwards to accommodate our needs and musical goals. When we met Bill we were unaware that he had a serious medical condition – he never allowed his failing health to affect his attitude or work ethic. The memory of Bill’s long hours working with us in the studio, and afterwards in engineering and mixing our music, is both inspiring and heart-wrenching. He passed away just 6 months after completing our album work tape. To this day, he is one of my greatest heroes.”


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.


Bill Josey's Sonobeat business card
Bill’s business card
Bill’s office at Blue Hole Sounds
Bill’s office at Blue Hole Sounds
Blue Hole Sounds interior
The Blue Hole Sounds equipment rack
Exterior of Blue Hole Sounds studio
Blue Hole Sounds exterior and grounds


Bill strived for excellence... He was a perfectionist who had no qualms about ‘do overs’ if a recording we were working on didn’t come out just right. This is not to say that Bill was any sort of ‘taskmaster’. He was one of the most gentle, easygoing people you’d ever want to meet. He took a genuine interest in finding new, unrecorded talent (like us) and giving them their dream shot! He was a huge contributor to the Austin alternative-music scene and helped a lot of people up the ladder, many of whom would later go on to become major players in the R&R scene, such as progressive-blues guitarist Johnny Winter.”


Bill was not only a good friend, he was a bright light with a lot of good ideas. His head swam with them. He was a man truly ahead of his time.”



I owe my whole career choice to Bill Sr. I could have been content to just write songs and play in bands but he took the time to teach me recording and I had a host of great teachers that followed but I consider knowing Bill Josey ... as precious as knowing Sam Phillips or Les Paul...”


KAZZ-FM live remote broadcasts

Dating from 1966 and 1967, we’re pleased to present two of Bill’s KAZZ-FM live remote broadcasts, both originating from the Embassy Room at The Club Seville in the Sheraton CrestWhen it opened in January 1966, the Crest Motor Inn in downtown Austin was known as Wilbur Clark’s Crest Hotel. Over the years, through ownership changes, it became the Crest Motor Inn, the Sheraton Crest, the Radisson, and, now, The LINE Austin. in downtown Austin. The Variety IV, featured in the first broadcast, were Carmen Hamm (vocals and drums), Jack Hamm (piano), Jane Bartell (guitar and bass), and Tony Bartell (trumpet and vibes). The Michael Stevens IV, featured in the second broadcast, were Michael Stevens (piano and vibes), Mark Chaney (bass violin), Billy West (drums), and Ike Ramirez (trumpet).

Listen!
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Bill Josey’s KAZZ-FM live music broadcasts
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