Samantha Fox Records

[Kizzy Burnworth]

TheRegional Historical Resources Depositories program of the Archives and Information Services Division of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission collects, preserves, and makes available for public use the historical records of the local governments of Texas.

The RHRDs operate under Chapter 441.153, Subchapter J, Government Code. The 24 depositories are located throughout the state in academic libraries and other institutions that meet criteria adopted by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

The majority of the record series found at the depositories have fulfilled their administrative, legal, and fiscal values and are permanent only because of their historical value. Without the RHRDs, many of these records would not be as accessible to the public if the local governments retained them in their possession.

The Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center has made the list of its holdings available online. The county records listings accessed here represent the paper holdings of the Center only. Microfilmed copies of local government records from many Texas counties are available and may be borrowed through the interlibrary loan network. For information on county records available on microfilm, please visit www.tsl.texas.gov/arc/local/index.html

The Record Series is the title of the record which has been standardized according to a key list prepared by the Sam Houston Center staff which primarily follows the state records retention schedules. This standardization is significant since there are many variants of title for the same type of records series among local governments.

Dates are presented as either conclusive or inclusive. The entry "1940-1960" would indicate that the records are complete for those years. The entry 1940 ... 1960, would indicate that there are several months missing and the record series is not complete or appears not to be complete. The entry "1940; 1950; 1960" indicates that there are only three years of records and the significant gaps were noted.

No. of Vols: This number refers to the total number of bound volumes that are within the record series. The number of bound volumes does not indicate physical volume or the size of the bound records. It can be helpful to the researcher especially for certain record series to know if the records are bound or unbound. The dimensions of the bound volumes vary greatly. Unbound series -- or series where some records are bound and others are loose -- are indicated with an empty field in the table.

Cu. Ft.: This number indicates the physical volume of the record series. A cubic foot is twelve inches of material or 1,000 sheets of letter-sized paper. Further processing work may reduce the volume of materials and future additions to the record series may increase the volume. The figure ".10 cu.ft." is the smallest measurement listed inthe guide. This may indicate a volume of material ranging from one sheet of paper to a stack of papers 1-inch thick.

The record series are listed within the offices of which they were found. For example, in some counties, the county treasurer maintains the finance ledger even though it falls under the purview of the county clerk. Researchers should check several offices of a local government before determining that the given record series is incomplete or unavailable.

All of the local government records were transferred to the Sam Houston Center by the appropriate local government officials from 1977 until 1995. The accession logs and copies of the signed transfer forms are on file and available at the Center. The original transfer forms are on file in the Archives & Information Services Division of the Texas State Library in Austin.

The scope and content notes for the records series are not included for space reasons. The notes are available at the Center and can be found in other published materials including the Inventories of County Records. A separate publication describing all permanent local government record series is under preparation.

Sam Phillips, who died on July 30, 2003 at the age of 80, was one of the true musical pioneers of the 20th century. A man who redefined the cultural landscape by producing and engineering local talent in his modest Southern studio and distributing the results on his own Sun Records label, he was one of the main people responsible for breaking down the barriers between white and black music, melding country with blues, and creating the genre that we now refer to as rock & roll.

Phillips attained only moderate results with discoveries such as Howlin'' Wolf, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and BB King, but he hit the jackpot with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. In the process, and not without design, he paved the way for so much that was to follow, and he achieved this in less than a decade while running the aforementioned label and studio located at 706 Union Avenue, close to the heart of Memphis, Tennessee.

"At the same time, I think that there was a real, real close association between country music and rock & roll. I remember the first record I ever heard in my life, on an old Victrola with a steel needle, was a Jimmie Rodgers song; I don't recall if it was 'Blue Yodel No.1' or 'Waiting For A Train'. With his Southern accent and the way he sang the blues, I can tell you, there was really more cross-pollination between Southern white music, Southern white gospel, and black gospel. I don't believe there's any relationship in any other category of music that comes closer than the country blues, especially the type that Jimmie Rodgers started in the '20s and '30s. He was a person who contributed so much, and he kind of parted the waters so that we could see the dual influence."

The Memphis Recording Service (now Sun Studio) at 706 Union Avenue.This was a little storefront property housing a front office, a 20 x 35-foot live area and a small control room equipped with a portable, five-input Presto mixing console and amateur Crestwood and Bell tape recorders. These were soon supplanted by a portable Presto PT900 machine; yet, unsure about the quality and durability of tape, Phillips recorded most of his earliest commercial efforts to 16-inch acetate discs, cutting them at 78rpm with a Presto 6N lathe that was hooked up to a Presto turntable. Still, it was another setup that subsequently helped endow both Phillips and Sun Records with legendary status.

"I liked to use very sparse instrumentation," he explained, "and this was not just for economic considerations, although I certainly had every reason for it to be. I was also the first one to employ slapback, feeding the tape back through the board. You see, the human ear doesn't like hearing something that is aurally so different to the point of being strange. It likes something different so far as the total confluence of the sound and the song and how it's done. I knew that people had heard records on jukeboxes in live little restaurants and dives, and what I tried to do with that type of echo and the sparse instrumentation was to make the sound not too foreign to the average ear. The acoustics of the room [on 706 Union Avenue] were good, but miking has an awful lot to do with the finished product. Of course, everything at that time was monaural, and I'm big on miking and I'm big on using the right mic, although I couldn't buy real expensive microphones."

"I was really impressed with the fact that his voice was so different, so unusually 'bad' , but so honest that it fascinated me, and the Wolf and I worked together better than I did with any other artist, Phillips remarked. I just enjoyed working with the Wolf. When he went to Chess I don't think they really ever gave that psychological bent that the Wolf needed. In my view very few people honestly had that ability, and Wolf was one of those people who had to believe that you believed in him. I'm not saying that the Chess brothers didn't, I'm not speaking disparagingly about them, but they never did capture his potential, and had I continued to have the Wolf, I think he would have been a mammoth seller in the white community as well as the black.

"I had a lot of different things that I wanted to do with the Wolf. This Wolf had really a lot of potential that you just didn't hear on the few records that were out both on Sun and on Chess. I had other routes and other approaches, like I did with Elvis Presley, that I wanted to attempt with the Wolf, but after he left and went to Chess Records I didn't get to do my laboratory work with him."

And it was also one of many instances in the annals of popular music when a classic recording evolved out of adversity and innovation. En route to the Memphis session from Clarksdale, Mississippi, guitarist Willie Kizart's amp fell off the roof of the band's car, ruining the speaker cone. Sam Phillips' makeshift solution was to stuff paper into the cone and then actually over-amplify the distorted sound rather than submerge it, making Kizart's fuzzy guitar riff the centerpiece of a rhythm track that also featured Ike Turner's piano and Raymond Hill's wailing tenor sax.

"I had to tell Ike that I wanted to know if he had somebody in his band who could sing," Phillips recalled. "Ike was singing and of course he was a hell of a talent, but I knew his voice was not quite what I was looking for. I don't want to say that ultimately I couldn't have done something with Ike, but anyway he told me that Jackie Brenston had a song called 'Rocket 88'. Jackie played the sax, but I put a mic in front of him and, man, as a singer he was a natural... 'Rocket 88' is, 'til this day, an exciting record, and that piano intro which Ike played on it is still a classic.

"Back in the early '50s I was looking to create something different. I was by nature an explorer, and I loved music, period, otherwise I would not have attempted to do what I did with raw talent. As a child on the farm in Alabama I had been exposed to music that was, in one way or another, not 'developed', so the last thing that I thought about when I went in the studio at any time was cutting a hit record. Now, I had sense enough to know that if these things didn't sell and I had no money, then I couldn't stay in business very long, but I had no ulterior motive of getting rich or of doing my artists wrong in any way from a business standpoint. I wanted to develop these artists, work with these artists, get their instincts out and capture that, and then I knew it was up me to go out and work my ass off and sell it.

3a8082e126