Background

Sonobeat (rhymes with “oh-no-beet”) Recording Company was founded in Austin, Texas, by the father-son team of Bill Josey Sr. and Bill Josey Jr. at the beginning of 1967, but its roots date from October ’64, when Bill Jr. began working as a deejay at KAZZ-FMKAZZ-FM was the second FM station licensed to the Austin, Texas, market, commencing broadcast in October 1957 on 95.5 MHz. Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. both worked at KAZZ from fall 1964 to January 1968, Bill Sr. initially serving as commercial sales manager and then as station manager and Bill Jr., using the air name “Rim Kelley”, as a deejay and later as program director. KAZZ was sold to country station KOKE-AM in January 1968, its staff pink-slipped and its call letters changed to KOKE-FM. KAZZ’s frequency, 95.5 MHz, is now assigned to KKMJ-FM in Austin. in Austin. Notably, and tied to Bill Jr.’s arrival at the station, KAZZ-FM was credited by Billboard Magazine as the first FM station in the U.S. to regularly program rock ’n’ roll music. In the mid-’60s, KAZZ offered an alternative to Austin’s dominant top 40 AM station, KNOW (now KJFK, the AM sister station to KJFK-FM). Although hardly a serious competitor in the Austin market – broadcasting with only 840 watts, about the same power as a dozen incandescent light bulbs – KAZZ was the only Central Texas radio station to showcase local and regional musical talent in regularly-scheduled live remote broadcasts from Austin nightclubs, including The 11th Door, New Orleans Old World Night Club, Jade Room, Club Saracen, and The Club Seville at the Sheraton Crest Inn (now The LINE Austin). Among the local acts that appeared on KAZZ’s live broadcasts were The 13th Floor Elevators (Elevators front man Roky Erickson and Bill Jr. were high school acquaintances in the early ’60s), the Sweetarts, Janis Joplin, Jerry Jeff Walker, Allen Damron, Ernie Mae Miller, and Don Dean. KAZZ also played the occasional records by local acts, including The 13th Floor Elevators, Leo and the Prophets, and the Sweetarts, that were usually ignored by KNOW and other Central Texas radio stations. Further, because Austin was home to The University of Texas, a constant stream of national recording artists, appealing to college audiences, stopped by KAZZ during their promotional tours, illuminating for the Joseys, through on- and off-air interviews, the ins and outs of the record business. In the ’60s, radio and the music business were joined at the proverbial hip.

KAZZ’s influence

The formation of Sonobeat was a natural extension of KAZZ’s live remote broadcasts, if not of KAZZ itself. Beginning in 1965, Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. alternately hosted the majority of KAZZ’s Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday remote broadcasts. The live remotes introduced the Joseys directly to a broad cross-section of talented Austin musicians and their managers. And when the Joseys launched Sonobeat in May 1967, KAZZ offered access to equipment and facilities they couldn’t otherwise afford.

But even giving due credit to KAZZ’s influence, Sonobeat really began as a dream separate and distinct from the KAZZ live remote broadcasts: one of Bill Jr.’s high school classmates composed religious music – hymns and chorales – and was frustrated by his inability to attract established music companies to publish his works. Desiring to help his friend promote his music, in 1964 Bill Jr. formed a music publishing company, nameless at the time, that later morphed into Sonobeat’s publishing affiliate Sonosong Music Company. Conceptually, Bill Jr. envisioned that his publishing company would record and distribute albums of Austin church choirs performing his friend’s works, and the recordings would be used to publicize the works’ availability. Although Bill Jr.’s music publishing venture never did record or publish any of his friend’s compositions, it seeded in both Bill Jr. and his father, Bill Sr., the idea for a combined recording studio, record label, and music publishing company designed to serve the rapidly growing Central Texas music scene. But it was the KAZZ live music broadcasts that solidified the idea.

The KAZZ connection

At the time Bill Jr. began working at KAZZ-FM, the station was owned by Monroe Lopez, who also owned Austin’s Big 4 Mexican Restaurants (no longer in business). The Big 4 sponsored the printed music hit lists that KAZZ distributed weekly to the public via record stores throughout the Austin area. The hit list distribution mechanism introduced the Joseys to the owners and managers of every Central Texas record shop, including the music departments of larger department stores, such as Kresge (which in 1962 spawned K-Mart) and Sage (an early Texas discount department store chain similar to Target). Those relationships proved valuable when Sonobeat launched in 1967.

KAZZ-FM was outfitted with Ampex 350 and 354 professional 2-track tape decks that the Joseys could borrow. Although KAZZ had a portable audio console used for producing local commercials and for the station’s remote broadcasts, the console was designed for playing records, not for recording music. Professional mixing consoles were far too expensive for the Joseys’ modest startup, so KAZZ’s chief engineer, Bill Curtis, designed a compact portable stereo mixer using inexpensive field-effect transistors. The mixer was battery powered and accommodated six microphone or line-level inputs. Curtis started researching audio mixer circuit designs at the end of 1966, but didn’t start building the mixer until March 1967. In the meantime, the Joseys had an opportunity to make practice recordings using KAZZ’s studios and equipment, and the first was of Austin folk duo John and Cathy (last names now forgotten) performing See See Rider. Bill Jr. plugged ElectroVoice 665 microphones directly into KAZZ’s Ampex 354 two-track tape deck to record John and Cathy playing and singing simultaneously, then made a mono mix by bouncing the stereo tracks down to KAZZ’s Ampex 350. Why mono? KAZZ wasn’t equipped to broadcast in stereo. KAZZ evening deejay Kirk Wilson featured the recording on his Folkways program in November ’66, helping accelerate the Joseys’ plans to launch Sonobeat the following spring.

An Ampex 354 of the type KAZZ-FM had rack mounted in its production studio

An ElectroVoice 665 microphone of the type KAZZ-FM used for remote broadcasts