Richey, Slim 2013-03-27
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General Interview Information
Interviewee Name: Slim Richey
Additional Parties Recorded:
Date: March 27, 2013
Location:
Interviewer: Andy Wilkinson
Length: 02:10:17
Abstract
Life, Born 2/11/1938, Born in Atlanta, TX, Actual name is David Michael Richey, Grandfather came to Texas when he was 13 years old from Walhalla, SC, He was looking for his brother, He lost his ticket for his luggage and had to wait 60 days to find it, It took him a few years to find him but he finally did in Houston, Uncle Billy, Didn’t want to be Irish here, He eventually went into timber, Slim’s sister sang and played, She went to SMU, Her name his Robin Richey Williams, His mother is musical and played the piano by ear, His father wasn’t musical, His mother and sister sang together, Took piano lessons, He plays the harmonica, He bought a Ukulele from his sister for $3, Traded that for a guitar, He was 12 or 13 when he got his guitar, Radio is what started him with music, His sister wouldn’t let him use her radio, He would just listen to records that his parents had, Bought his own radio eventually, Used his cousins radio, He was only about 14 at the time, He listened to WWLC, He also liked jazz, He liked Johnny Smith, Jet Atkins, Sister went in 1954 and saw a jazz concert, She gave him a record of Billy Goodman at Carnegie Hall, Jimmy Bryant, Speedy West, They did a bunch of instrumental hits, Ocho Clark, Radio stations used them for bumpers, This was in the 1950’s, Still lived in Atlanta until he went to college, He went to OU for college, Also Tulane and Texarkana junior college, He went to college for a little then stopped and got married then went back, Started off in petroleum engineering but ended with a degree in education, He double minored in chemistry and physics, Taught chemistry and algebra but didn’t like it, Band Life, Started Gig’n in high school, He had a band in high school and played with others, He played in an 8 piece swing band, He quit football and basketball to join band, Played Dangerfield proms, Got in trouble sometimes about money, Played in a band called the Black Bio Buckaroos, Al Bolt was their singer and he played guitar, He named the band which was a 4 piece band, Played mandolin so that he could be a part of the band, His grandfather taught him how to play mandolin but couldn’t teach him fiddle, His grandfather hadn’t played in so long it wouldn’t work, In college he taught guitar lessons, Got into the business part by accident, He bought some Goya’s directly from them, He was working at a mental institution, He could hardly read music, Started teaching kids to play, Started off with about 30 students on Saturdays, He was living in Norman at the time, He was making more at the doing guitar lessons than at the institution, Quit the institution, When he was teaching chemistry and guitar lessons he was making a lot of money, He taught privately, He was teaching in Forth Worth, He moved to Seattle and taught up there and worked at a music store, He then moved to Ft. Worth, He played a lot of gigs while he was in college, His first semester he made really good grades in college, His 2nd semester they dropped and he almost flunked out, He was driving to Ardmore to play, He was offered jobs in Arizona but parents didn’t let him, He was playing mostly country in high school, In college he was mostly playing Jazz, They put together a band called “The Contemporaries”, He wanted a female lead singer, Linda Parish, She was really good and he worked with her a lot, Was doing a lot of classic jazz, They were called “The Lime Lighters”, Played with a band called “The Ramblers”, Barney Kessal, Bryce McDade, They called Barney “fruitcake”, Ramblers were run by Kent Kitwell, Started going to OU in 1958, Rock ’N’ Roll started getting popular at that time, Wrote songs for some bands, Also wrote tunes for others, Started out selling Carvin guitars, Got a job selling Aircraft parts, Started the inventors club of America, Helped inventors get patents, They were doing ok with customers, He had to write most of the letters, He sold the company back to him, He had a store in Oklahoma, He started selling items for more money off to get more customers, He had all the ads keyed to be able to get the most readers, He did this for a year and each month he would advertise in a new place, Went to Florida and came back to $6000 in the mail box, Byron Burline, Gary Price, Made a record with Allen called Banjo Sandwich, Learned a lot about engineering records, Started making a good amount of albums, His label was called Ridge Runner Records, Made another one called Flying High records for non blue grass, Started another called Grass Mountain, For the b string players, Started another one called Tex Grass, Lenny Carlson, Electric Mandolin player, Buck White on Ridge Runner, Marty Stewart on Ridge Runner, A lot of them he found through the Country Gazette, Dan Hucklebee, Butch Robins helped him produce an album for Buck White, In Louisiana they weren’t into Elvis, Met a producer down there, Learned a few things from him, Produced most of the songs instead of actually being on them, They were into oldies black music in New Orleans, Played with a band called “The tunes”, Marty introduced him to a lot of people, Grandpa Jones, Did most of his recording at Buffalo Sound in Ft. Worth, Did several in Nashville, Did Marty’s at the House of Cash, Gordon Reed had an obscure studio that made it a pretty good, A&R studios in Dallas, Sam recorded one his albums there, Gordon was giving the best product even though his place didn’t look the best, Sam Bush, Found out that there is a ghost note that goes on bass note, Turn up the bass EQ not the bass volume, Makes it easier to play on medium sized speakers, He goes to Rob Halverson to master his songs now, Their singer doesn’t like him though so she goes somewhere else, Jerry Tub, Bugs Henderson, Slim isn’t doing any new projects now, His new band is called “Stray Gypsies”, A few of the members are in other bands though, Wife’s nickname is Meaux Jeaux, Meaux Clark real name, Jitter Bug Vipers is the new band, Masumi Jones is their drummer, She played drums in Tokyo, She went to school at Berkley, She played with Mark Divine, He hired her, He is real particular about drummers and bass players, Wife isn’t a great soloist but she is a solid player, She broke her wrist last April and couldn’t work for 6 months, She breaks things a lot, She broke her arm the day before they went to Europe, Sarah Sharp is the singer for the Jitter Bug Vipers, The first singer was Emmy Gimble, She got out because she got too busy, Then they hired Katy Holmes, She was too busy also, Sarah Sharp was the substitute that helped, Before she sang for that one she sang with him in Dream Lovers, They were the one that went to Italy, The Italian bass players could play but they didn’t have a pulse, Didn’t work with what he wanted to do but they played a bunch of gigs, Sarah has been the lead singer for the past 3 years, He played at Lamberts, Elephant’s room and in NYC at Rock wood hall, He’s played at the High Times Cannabis festival in Amsterdam, A lot of people were asking them to smoke their weed to try it, He opened for Patty Knight, He has nothing else going on at the time, After the record business he was broke, He was close to going bankrupt, Record business took a fall in the 1980’s, He went back to doing lessons, He was trying to teach 3 years of lessons on 6 tapes, He still sells videos of how to play, Wife does most of the booking, The drummer has a trice weekly internet show, They have an internet show the second Monday of every month, Sarah is making a lot of decisions about where they are doing the recording now, Mail ordering business, The business was called warehouse music at first, Then it was changed to warehouse music sales, He was the reason that music stores had to start bargaining with their prices, He was a pioneer in that area, He moved to Ft. Worth and he had to shut down his store in Norman, When he was shutting it down a lot of people were asking him for money, Took a lot of the stuff back here and put it in his garage, He started selling the stuff out of his garage, Arnold and Morgan Music store was where he ordered his guitars and mandolins from, They were the biggest store in Texas, He would order from them and then sell at a discounted price, He would start selling them, He was in a business without any stock, He went into business and mostly ordered from him, He would buy it for 40% off and sell it for 30% off and was making really good money, The sellers didn’t say anything to him and let him go, Arnold and Morgan music store wouldn’t have sold a lot of these guitars otherwise, He wind up buying some from a studio in Ft. Smith Arkansas, That fell through too, Made a lot of stores lose their licenses to sell, Norman, Store in Norman was called Mike Ritchie’s Guitar center, Started in an apartment, Then moved it to a duplex, Then he bought a store on White Street, Sons name is Tom Ritchie, Conway Twitty came in there sometimes, Leon Russell came in a lot, Sundance Club, Run by bootlegger that killed his brother and ran from cops all the time, They had a band called “The band”, Ronny Martin, Not as big as Bob Dylan but still well known, Sold everything even cheap stuff, He didn’t sell Morgan’s until he was in Garland, People use to hang out at the guitar center and still do, Meet a lot of people like that, Tom Ritchie is his son’s name, It was right down the street from the University, Blind guy would always come in and would ask to “see the guitars”, Some Jewish guy beat down Joe Don Looney, Bud Wilkinson didn’t like Joe, Slim met him in Alpine and hung out with him there, He ran off a mountain on a motorcycle and died, Tom Paxton learned from him also, Growing up in Atlanta, In high school he was playing a lot, He was playing mostly guitar, They were playing mostly jazz, He was learning from a chord book, He got into a fight with his father and left and moved to Dallas, He went back home and made a band that was supposed to be another one, They opened for that person speech the rest of the summer, They merged their band after some of them lost players, They played 4 or 5 gigs a day, Went to a theatrical supply to get more stuff, They bought a sound effects record and played it on that record player, They went to a place and played the sound effects of a car wreck on it out loud, They did this going to a canyon, They went back to hotel and listened on the short wave radio, A lot of fire trucks showed up to the place where they played the sound effect, They went back with pens and paper acting as reporters to ask what happened, The fireman said there was a big real accident but they can’t find any cars, There were people in the creek look for the cars that weren’t there, They were going to do one with an air raid but they never did, That fake accident made the Dallas Morning News, At OU he played at the 315 club, It was next door to campus electronics, Played with a man named Sam Miller that played bass who was a fraternity brother, Brent played piano and was a Beta fraternity brother, Jim Rivers played saxophone, He got a job playing in a black 16 piece crew up in Oklahoma City, He met a lot of people who are usually hard to meet, They ordered the Black union and white union to merge, A lot of country players were in it because it was only $40 bucks to join, The White union had all these restrictions when the 2 merged, The Black union couldn’t use the union hall for 1 year, He `went to Pennsylvania to represent the union, Met people that he’s glad were on his side, Arie Spears played a lot at Bryant Center, Had a club called the Top Hat club that they played at sometimes, Played with jazz guitar player Charles Burton, Played mostly at black functions, He wasn’t allowed to go through the food line and had to eat in the kitchen at event, One of the trombone players (Harold Roberts) played for Lionel Hampton, Slims style was Barney Kassel influenced, Moved Jazz Pharaohs, Moved down there from Ft. Worth in 1992, Most of his work was on fiddle at the time, Eric Hoken was a guitar player, Met Freddy Mendoza from the Jazz Pharaohs and sat in with them, Carl Siddles who was a piano player in the Band New Policy, He asked slim to join that band and he played guitar their, In Ft. Worth he hardly played guitar, They played mostly restaurants, Mostly made a living selling blue grass shirts for a while, He tried playing it while in high school but gave up, He decided to pick it up again and taught himself, He learned fiddle after he moved to Ft. Worth, Met Ricky, Keith and Jimmy Martin there, Slim sold a guitar to Mets Castleberry, He was selling some guitars and festivals, He got producer credit on James Clay Album, He made it sound a lot better, Whole thing was done wrong
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