House of Hits : : The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios / / Roger Wood, Andy Bradley.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Bradley, Andy,; Wood, Roger,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.)

Founded in a working-class neighborhood in southeast Houston in 1941, Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios is a major independent studio that has produced a multitude of influential hit records in an astonishingly diverse range of genres. Its roster of recorded musicians includes Lightnin' Hopkins, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Junior Parker, Clifton Chenier, Sir Douglas Quintet, 13th Floor Elevators, Freddy Fender, Kinky Friedman, Ray Benson, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Beyoncé and Destiny's Child, and many, many more. In House of Hits, Andy Bradley and Roger Wood chronicle the fascinating history of Gold Star/SugarHill, telling a story that effectively covers the postwar popular music industry. They describe how Houston's lack of zoning ordinances allowed founder Bill Quinn's house studio to grow into a large studio complex, just as SugarHill's willingness to transcend musical boundaries transformed it into of one of the most storied recording enterprises in America. The authors offer behind-the-scenes accounts of numerous hit recordings, spiced with anecdotes from studio insiders and musicians who recorded at SugarHill. Bradley and Wood also place significant emphasis on the role of technology in shaping the music and the evolution of the music business. They include in-depth biographies of regional stars and analysis of the various styles of music they represent, as well as a list of all of Gold Star/SugarHill's recordings that made the Billboard charts and extensive selected historical discographies of the studio's recordings.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The case for greatness -- 1. The Raid -- 2. Domestic Crude -- 3. The Independent Quinn -- 4. Gold Star Records -- 5. Label’s Demise, New Studio’s Rise: Recording in the House -- 6. Pappy Daily and Starday Records -- 7. The Big Studio Room Expansion -- 8. Daily’s Dominance and D Records -- 9. Little Labels: Blues, Country, and Sharks -- 10. Into the ’60s and Quinn’s Last Sessions -- 11. Duke-Peacock: The Gold Star Connection -- 12. The HSP Corporation Experiment Begins -- 13. A House of Rock, Despite the Muck -- 14. The HSP Aftermath and a New Direction -- 15. International Artists Record Company: The Psychedelic Business Plan -- 16. Disillusioned Dissolution -- 17. Meaux Moves In, SugarHill Ascends -- 18. The Freddy Fender Phenomenon -- 19. The Later ’70s and Early ’80s -- 20. Meaux’s Final Phase -- 21. Modern Music (Ad)Ventures -- 22. Emergence of a RAD Idea -- 23. Millennial Destiny -- 24. Still Tracking in the Twenty-first Century -- Appendix A Catalogue of Interviews -- Appendix B Chart Records from the House of Hits -- Appendix C Selected Discographies: A Partial History -- Appendix D Chronology of Gold Star/ SugarHill Engineers -- Bibliography -- Index: Page numbers in italics refer to photographs