Roger Wood

In the clubs, ballrooms, and barbecue joints of neighborhoods such as Third Ward, Frenchtown, Sunnyside, and Double Bayou, Houston's African American community birthed a vibrant and unique slice of the blues. Ranging from the down-home sounds of Lightnin' Hopkins to the more refined orchestrations of the Duke-Peacock recording empire and beyond, Houston blues was and is the voice of a working-class community, an ongoing conversation about good times and hard times, smokin' Saturday nights and Blue Mondays. Since 1995, Roger Wood and James Fraher have been gathering the story of the blues in Houston. In this book, they draw on dozens of interviews with blues musicians, club owners, audience members, and music producers, as well as dramatic black-and-white photographs of performers and venues, to present a lovingly detailed portrait of the Houston blues scene, past and present. Going back to the early days with Lightnin' Hopkins, they follow the blues from the streets of Houston's Third and Fifth Wards to its impact on the wider American blues scene. Along the way, they remember the vigorous blues community that sprang up after World War II, mourn its decline in the Civil Rights era, and celebrate the lively, if sometimes overlooked, blues culture that still calls Houston home. Wood and Fraher conclude the book with an unforgettable reunion of Houston blues legends that they held on January 3, 1998.

Bayou City Blues

Down in Houston

Mary Clarke

Shakespeare at the Old Vic

Andy Bradley

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.

The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios

House of Hits

James Fraher

Texas Zydeco

Shakespeare at the Old Vic: 1957-58 season: Hamlet. King Henry VI (pts. 1, 2 and 3). Measure for measure. A midsummer night's dream. King Lear. Twelfth night. King Henry VIII

Harriet Wallin

Royal Society of Chemistry (Great Britain). Information Services

Anders Nilsson

Covering those areas of direct importance to food analysis laboratories, this book serves as an aid to laboratories when introducing new measures and justifying those chosen.

Quality in the Food Analysis Laboratory

Roger Wood

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