Not all bad, but not all good

Sonobeat’s tough times bled over from 1971 and escalated during the beginning of 1972, forcing Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. to continue to offer out his North Lamar studios just west of downtown Austin for custom work. Throughout the year he continued to develop talent he hoped to release on the Sonobeat label or sell to national labels, but there were no Sonobeat Records releases during 1972. Manchaca, Texas, country-folk artist Cody Hubach, who recorded an unreleased single with Sonobeat in ’69, returned to record a full-length album in ’72 that featured a mix of original songs and covers of songs by other Austin singer-songwriters, but Cody’s album also went unreleased.

In mid-year, Bill began making quadraphonic recordings, believing quad – a surrounding sound format that uses a pair of stereo speakers in front of and a pair behind the listener – would be the next big consumer audio craze. Initially Bill organized a hand-picked studio band that he named Base, but the quad recordings with the group were purely experimental and not intended for commercial release. He invested in retrofitting his custom 16-channel mixing console with quad mixing modules designed by Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Jr., who had left the company in 1970 to attend law school in Houston but still kept a distant finger in Sonobeat’s activities.

Other acts recording potential Sonobeat releases during 1972 included The Pleasant Street Band from Indianapolis, Indiana, Michele Murphy from nearby Liberty Hill, Texas, and Austin’s Jess DeMaine and Tommy Hill & the Country Music Revue. The personal and professional disappointments of the three preceding years finally took their toll, and Bill had no choice but to focus on custom work, for which he charged an hourly studio and engineering rate, to make ends meet. Something had to change, but it wouldn’t be until 1973 that any positive change would materialize.

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