Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [167]
40. Gold Star 646.
41. Brown, July 22, 2008.
42. Chris Strachwitz, interview by Alan Govenar, May 20, 2009.
43. SugarHill studios now occupies the Quinn’s old residence and the second Gold Star building, not the one on Telephone Road where Lightnin’ did most of his recording.
44. Andy Bradley, interview by Alan Govenar, August 11, 2008.
45. Ibid.
46. Strachwitz, May 20, 2009. Strachwitz also recalled that Quinn told him that he had difficulty finding out how records were pressed. He tried to contact the pressing plants of several major labels, but they refused to help him. He checked encyclopedias, but didn’t find much information and apparently learned the process on his own.
47. In 1948, Eddie Henry, who owned record shops on Dowling Street in the Third Ward and on Lyons Avenue in the Fifth Ward and was, according to the Informer, one of the larger record distributors in the Southwest, started his own label. He put out releases by such local musicians as Conrad Johnson, Little Willie Littlefield, and Clarence Green, but never had any hits and shut down his label a year later. Sol Kahal, a doughnut shop operator and musician from Vermont, moved to Houston in 1948 and started the Freedom label, first acquiring some of Eddie’s masters, and then producing a blues, country, and gospel series, which lasted until late 1951 or early 1952. Goree Carter, Sammy Harris, L. C. Williams, Lonnie Lyons, Big Joe Turner, and even Texas Alexander recorded for Freedom. Around 1947, Macy Lela Henry and her husband, Charlie, got their start as record distributors, but then started the Macy’s label in 1949, probably the first to be run by a woman in the South. Over the next two years, Macy’s had about sixty country releases, and twenty blues, but with two significant regional hits, Lester Williams’s “Wintertime Blues” and Clarence Garlow’s “Bon Ton Roulet.”
48. For more information see Alan Govenar, The Early Years of Rhythm and Blues (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 2004) and Galen Gart and Roy C. Ames, Duke/Peacock Records: An Illustrated History and Discography (Milford, New Hampshire: Nickel Publications, 1990.
49. Bill Minutaglio, “Saying Goodbye,” Houston Chronicle, February 2, 1982.
50. E-mail correspondence from Bill “Rascal” McCaskill, September 1, 2008.
51. Johnny Brown, July 22, 2008.
52. The “Race Records” chart was introduced by Billboard in 1945 as a catchall for all African American recordings to replace the chart called “Harlem Hit Parade,” which had been in use since 1942. In 1949 the “Race Records” chart was renamed “Rhythm and Blues.”
53. Billboard, February 25, 1949.
54. Mack McCormick, liner notes to A Treasury of Field Recordings, Vol. 2, pp. 37. For more information see Bruce Jackson, Wake Up Dead Man: Afro-American Worksongs from Texas Prisons (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). Also, Joseph “Chinaman” Johnson’s recording of “Three Moore Brothers” appears on Bruce Jackson’s 1966 LP “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” Elektra EKL-296.
55. Billboard, August 13, 1949.
56. Huey P. Meaux Papers, 1940–1994, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, box 96-384/23.
57. For more information see Alan B. Govenar and Jay F. Brakefield, Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds Converged (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998), p. 26.
58. “The government excise tax on discs calls for a 10 percent fee at the first level of sale.” Billboard, February 7, 1948, p. 19. Also, “House Comm. Exempts Penny Machines From Excise Tax; See Other Levies Remaining,” Billboard, May 6, 1950, p. 107. E-mail correspondence from Andrew Brown, June 6, 2009.
59. “When the US Government slapped a $26,000 fine and penalty on Gold Star Records, Bill (Quinn) quit record production and went back to operating a custom studio …” (Chris Strachwitz, liner notes to Texas Blues: