Bob & His Agents and the Believers, Alpine

Here's a couple for DJ Danny out there in Marfa, Tejas...

I've always enjoyed Danny's neck of the woods. The Big Bend region is so vast, so open, so many things. Mountains, forests, desert, an amazing national park... just so much going on, so much to see, so much to do. The beauty of it is that's there's also so much NOT to do. Some times you have to create your own 'to do'.

In the southern foothills of the Davis Mountains (Mt. Livermore pictured to the left) sits the region's biggest city, Alpine. With just over 6,000 people it hosts the only stop to get on a train between San Antonio and El Paso, a vibrant arts scene, a magnificent place to watch live music (Railroad Blues), and one of the regions oldest colleges... Sul Ross University (est. in 1923 as a college to train teachers).

It was the convergence of so many factors that led to the creation of two Alpine/Sul Ross combos in the mid-60s.



In the mid-60s Bob and His Agents went into Alpine's Highland Sound Company and recorded two tracks which were released as a single for Odessa's AOK label(making it one of the few releases on the label that wasn't recorded out on East County Road here in Odessa). "One-Sided" is a nice mid-tempo piece with a slight California feel, its main fault being the lack of a real guitar break, a fault with many a lesser song. A break woulda really moved it along.

Whether influenced by the growing folk movement or Colorado's Astronauts (not that the Astronauts were the only group to latch on to the tune), the Agents chose to record the traditional and always popular "Green Back Dollar" for the flip . Decent version, but again... no real break. Perhaps guitarist Agent wasn't real strong in that department.

Bob Simonetti later front another AOK recording combo, the New Roadrunners. Perhaps a future blog.


The second Alpine group actually found themselves with a national release.




Recorded at roughly the same time as the Agents disk, Granger Hunt and the Believers headed northeast to Ron Newdoll's Accurate Sound Studios in San Angelo (Askel Records, the Remaining Few, J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, Abilene's Livin' End) where they recorded this particular single.

"Motor Mouth"'s closest relative, upon initial listening, would seem to come from a certain family of Bird songs.

(photo above from either the '66 or '67 Sul Ross Yearbook)

The Believers also had releases on Noah and Kelly which I've never seen hide nor hair of... any leads on acquisition of these west Texas artifacts would be GREATLY appreciated.

NOTE: Aside from the label scans and the Mt. Livermore postcard all photos on this particular blog came from the Phantom Productions website.