Wer war/ist Sonny Hall & The Echoes ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD und mehr

Sonny Hall & The Echoes

Although they were both connected with Gabe Tucker at one time, this Sonny Hall was not, as Colin Escott speculated in the notes to 'The Complete 'D' Singles, Volume 1,' the veteran guitarist Morris 'Sonny' Hall who had recorded for Blue Bonnet in 1947 and Macy's in 1950 and was based in Houston throughout the 1950s and 1960s before dying in Nashville in the 1980s. He was, rather, the far younger David 'Sonny' Hall from -- as Escott noted correctly -- Ponchatoula, Louisiana, and was the first artist brought to Daily and Tucker by Fred Henley. As Hall told Andrew Brown in 1998, "I was trying to get into rockabilly, because country was dying. They had a little Jamboree over in Bogalusa (Louisiana).

I was playing there on Saturday nights with a lot of other artists. Nobody around here had seen Elvis, and I had. And I incorporated his movements into my so-called act. Those people in Bogalusa had never seen that before. They went crazy, went wild." Hall remembered that Henley was "a religious quartet singer. He'd moved to Houston after this Jamboree had ended. He was the one who got me the deal (with Daily). He was always the type of person who would mingle with people 'in the know.' At the time, he knew Gabe Tucker and 'Pappy' Daily...You had to give him [Henley] a piece of [the song]. He didn't write a damn thing of mine. But, he told me to send him some tapes I had made. They selected 2 songs and said, 'Come to Houston for an audition.' So I went for an audition. And Daily, to put it point blank, wanted a white boy that sounded like a nigger. So that's how I got the deal, in a nutshell." The record was cut at Gold Star with studio regulars, probably including Hal Harris on lead guitar, Doc Lewis on piano, etc., and Hall was pretty successful at sounding black -- Little Richard is the clear model here.

But, as he explained to Brown, "The deejays wouldn't play it 'cause it sounded too black. 'Pappy' Daily had a reputation for being a country producer. Consequently, all the records went to country deejays, who just threw it in the trash can." Hall did get a spot on the Louisiana Hayride through Lost John Miller and made a second 'D' record The Day You Walked Away b/w Men Do Cry later in '58. "Those were made here at a radio station. It was the only radio station in Covington, Louisiana at the time. I forget the call letters. Rick Webb, the country deejay at that station, produced it. The Samford Brothers, two brothers from Bogalusa, were on that. They played lead and rhythm guitar [and received co-composer credit on 'The Day You Walked Away']. I sent it (the tape) over there, and 'Pappy' Daily sent me 300 records. I guess that was all he had pressed." Hall cut a few more sides at Pee Wee Maddux's studio in Biloxi in the early '60s, but that was it. "I lost faith in the whole situation. I said to hell with the music business, and so I just did a nine to five job."

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Excerpt from
Various - That'll Flat Git It!
Vol.19 - Rockabilly From The Vaults Of D & Dart Records (CD)

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