THE MACY’S RECORDINGS
Reeves made his first commercial recordings
for the Macy’s label, a subsidiary of Macy’s
Record Distributors of Houston. ‘Billboard’
made an announcement on July 2
nd
1949 on
the company’s formation by the owners of one
of the largest independent record distributors
in Texas, run by Charles D. Henry and his
wife Macy Lela. It was Macy who ran the
fledgling label and the bright yellow 78 rpm
record labels were emblazoned with her
name ‘Macy’s Recordings - Queen of Hits.’
The label’s original headquarters was at 2631
Oakcliff Street, Houston, which served as their office-cum-
warehouse. But by the end of 1949, it had moved into new premises at 1913
Leeland Ave. The company began trading in July 1949 and Reeves cut his lone
session in October of that year at Bill Holford’s local ACA recording studio. Macy’s
released hillbilly, R&B and a handful of pop recordings to a regional market and
was initially successful with its R&B singles. Macy herself A&R’ed the hillbilly
sessions; she was an accomplished ragtime pianist and mandolinist, who released
several piano instrumentals in the label’s pop series (as ‘Macy and her Old Barroom
Band’) and played mandolin on several early releases in the hillbilly series. The
R&B series was chiefly handled by the Henry’s stock distributor clerk, John ‘Steve’
Poncio. While the hillbilly series boasted one bonafide star in Cajun fiddler Harry
Choates, like so many other ambitious small independents, Macy’s unfortunately
overstretched itself with a busy schedule of releases, hoping for a hit recording to
sell or lease to the majors –or better, a hit song that might be covered by the majors
and make a killing in publishing royalties. The Henrys knew from the beginning
that true money in the record business lay in song copyrights and the resultant
royalties, and all of Macy’s releases featured songs that were signed to the label’s
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