June of 2005
My son, Christopher[16], with one of his play pretties
HEY YA'LL:
For the life of me, I don't understand why Christopher gets off so much on scaring people with varmints. Maybe he gets it from his Uncle Bill who used to ride around with a gator in his trunk.
{Wow, that reminds me: I used to do the same thing with eastern diamondback rattlesnakes}
Anyway, Christopher is teaching Canoeing Merit Badge to the campers at the Black Warrior Boy Scout Council's Camp Horne this summer. Saturday he got to take a canoe ride down Hurricane Creek during that gully washer Arlene delivered us[I warned him beforehand about the barbed wire he'd encounter if he got throwed out in the flood and the boy really made me proud when he told me he used one of my old cheating techniques to help a little one armed boy get his Canoeing Merit Badge. He showed this little Korean boy how he could use his nub to pin the paddle against the rail of the canoe and push out so he could perform the required J stroke]
This week he'll use his MasterCard to buy his plane ticket to Minnesota for his two week adventure in July on the Boundary Waters Canoe Trail. http://www.ntier.org/
http://www.ely.org/
Guess my boy is finally growing up.
best,
roberto http://rockpilgrimage.blogspot.com
From:
"Al Kooper"
To:
robertoreg2003@yahoo.com
Subject:
Al Kooper's Update June 2005
Date:
Mon, 13 Jun 2005 07:51:40 -0700
JOE BILLY Singing his 1969 hit CHERRY HILL PARK at Bull Shoals Theatre in August '04 courtesy of http://bullshoalstheater.com/billy-joe-royal/
Click here to see more of Billy Joe Royal and listen to "Down In The Boondocks", "Cherry Hill Park" and others http://bullshoalstheater.com/billy-joe-royal/
"Joe Billy is one of the best guys around.
You've never known a person so unencumbered with celebrity.
Loves a good joke, or story, and is the type of guy that wishes well of everyone,and was an inspiration to me.Not just for how he could sing but for how he treated people."
Rockin' Rodney Justo
EMORY GORDY
Read Emory's bio at http://tonysheridan.com/html/tcb.html
"Emory Gordy was a really good musician. Known as a bassist ( note I didn't say bass player) he was the guy that The Candymen would hire to play piano whenever Dean Daughtry was required to go away for 2 weeks active duty because he was in the National Guard.
He could really pick up stuff quick and then all he had to do was follow the stop,pause, soft, loud,or start, hand signals.
He used to tell me that we paid more than any group he'd worked with. Of course that ended when he went to work with Neil Diamond.
When Nix refers to him as ARS first bass player I think that he's referring to the fact that Paul got mad during the recording of the first album and kinda' quit, so we had to use Emory on Another man's woman and maybe another song.
I think that he's the only one that got paid anything."
RODNEY JUSTO
Atlanta Studio Pioneer Richardson Dies http://www.prosoundnews.com/stories/2003/april/0430.2.shtml
Stuart, FL (April 30, 2003)--Legendary Atlanta studio pioneer, Bob Richardson, died in Stuart, FL on April 15, 2003. Prior to his retirement in 1992, Richardson's career had embraced the whole of modern recording history.
As an aspiring engineer in the 1950s, Richardson taped regional bands in his North Carolina basement. In 1966, he recorded the Swingin' Medallions' fraternity anthem, "Double Shot (of My Baby's Love)." Beginning in 1972, Richardson's Atlanta studio, Mastersound, became one of the first American studios to have full console automation, multiple 24-track synchronization, and Quadraphonic mixing capability, making it a haven for such R&B titans as Issac Hayes.
Born in Charlotte, NC in 1927, Richardson was a professional musician by age 14, playing upright bass around his hometown during the World War II years. He worked briefly for National Shirt Shops, and Richardson always credited his youthful background in retail for the business skills he would require to survive in the music industry. As district sales manager for Columbia Records, Richardson's frequent visits to Nashville recording facilities compelled him to build his own studio in his Charlotte home in 1958. Using an Ampex 300 tape deck, he scored a modest success with the Delacardos' "On the Beach" in 1962.
As a regional rep for Mercury Records in the early '60s, Richardson visited an Atlanta photo session for Ray "Ahab the Arab" Stevens, where he first met music publisher Bill Lowery. Sensing a solid opportunity, Richardson relocated to Atlanta and became partners with Lowery in the early Mastersound studio, located in an old suburban schoolhouse. Richardson was soon engineering hits for the performers associated with the Lowery publishing and production company. In 1965, he tracked Billy Joe Royal's classic, "Down in the Boondocks," and, later, the Classics IV 1967 chart-toppers, "Spooky" and "Stormy."
These were the days before the mass manufacture of recording consoles; Mastersound used a custom board designed by the inventor, Jeep Harned, who would presently establish an international reputation as the sole owner of MCI, builders of modern studio gear. Richardson and Harned formed a lifelong association that would only end with Harned's recent death on March 13, one month in advance of Richardson's passing.
In the early 1970s, Richardson built the new Mastersound studio in midtown Atlanta, which he managed with his wife, Babs. Lou Bradley, the renowned Nashville engineer/producer, comments, "Bob had a dream to build and own a recording studio, and he did. He was a bulldog."
Richardson's sharp entrepreneurial instincts provided a motivation that kept him well in advance of technological developments. The Mastersound facility was designed by Tom Hidley and George Augspurger, known for their innovative blueprint at Westlake Studio in Los Angeles. Harned installed one of the early automated consoles on the East Coast. Later, when Mastersound became one of the first (and few) Quadrophonic studios in America, Harned retrofitted his deck with special panning and bussing capabilities.
Richardson always saw the need to provide his clients with state-of-the-art gear and quality sound engineers, like Lou Bradley and Joe Neil, whose experimentation he approved. Neil, who joined Mastersound in 1974, successfully modified a video synchronizer in a trailblazing attempt to lock together two 24-track tape machines. Mastersound also became the first Atlanta studio to offer post-production technology for film, even installing a projector booth that doubled as a vocal chamber.
Under Richardson's direction, Mastersound continued to stay on the cutting edge of the era's technology, installing one of the first Solid State Logic (SSL) consoles in America. Mastersound was the first Atlanta studio to purchase a digital multitrack recorder. At the time of his award in 1987, Richardson was the only studio owner and engineer to be inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
"Poor Bob Richardson.
We worked him so hard once, that he was kinda punchy, and he was so scared that he was going to accidentally erase,or screw something up, he just refused to work any more.
We didn't quite get how someone could just say" I'm tired and can't go any more" but we softened up, when he explained that he had too much respect for us and our work to not be at his best
As far as Lou Bradley goes, he was always a very positive and steady force.
He went on to a VERY responsible position in Nashville.I wish that we would have stayed in touch
I think that I saw him there when I was putting the strings on a Beaverteeth album........OK Nix when's his birthday ?
When you guys see Joe Billy tell him Hi for me.
RODNEY JUSTO
FREDDY WELLER
Read Freddy's bio at http://www.gatalent.com/Acts/Freddy_Weller/freddy_weller.html
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