HARRY BRAY AND THE WHEELS- When Gabriel Blows His Horn b/w A Drink of Mescal Wine (Twixt Tween 1117)
Texas, as well as anybody, has a penchant for turning out music folk who don’t seem to work, create, or live in the same world as the rest of us. Lubbock, Texas birthed Norman Odom whose vision was so at odds with all that was acceptable in the Hub City he almost turned his crazed wailings into a hit as the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. He made such a racket he even influenced David Bowie. There was Fort Worth promoter Major Bill Smith whose story if properly told would jump from names of hit makers like Paul and Paula and Bruce Channel to 100s of well as never-made-its like the Legendary Stardust Cowboy himself and then onto an unbelievable tale about Elvis in hiding. And what about Bennie Hess from southeast Texas who never really understood what the current world of country music needed or would accept, but lived his life giving it a go regardless.
And then there’s Harry Bray of Plainview, Texas… songwriter, player, producer, used car salesman. There is little publicly known of Mr. Bray aside from the information that can be gathered from the handful of records he released on his labels Twixt-Tween and Satin. And there is the interesting detail about an underground, cinder block storage room on the property of his used car lot that Bray himself converted into a recording studio. Much of what we do know comes from Amarillo-area music historian Robin Brown (who once actually auditioned for Bennie).
Harry Bray was born in 1914 and had attended High School in Turkey,TX. There is some mention of him playing a horn in the high school band and with an old friend, Otho Arnold. He also later played with a local guitar player named Archie Montgomery and they may have had a trio with Arnold, at one time.
After raising one son (Ronald) and being in the laundry business for a number of years Harry decided to get back into music. This time he bought a 4-string tenor guitar and learned to play it, basically on his own. By c. 1960 he had decided to do some recording with another trio he had formed in Quitaque,TX. For the next several years he practiced with various local musicians but first recorded with Garrett Morrison (Quitaque) and Dick Polk (Silverton). He also began writing songs to use on his recording ventures.
By approximately 1961 Bray had recorded two instrumentals that he thought might be commercial. Somehow he heard of a record company in Houston and he seems to have traveled there to promote his tapes. It was at the Allstar company that he learned the sad news: he needed better recording equipment and better recordings! (Allstar was a record label created by dj/musician Dan Mechura in the mid-1950s. In the label's decade-long history it had releases on everybody from Eddie Noack and Link Davis to folks like Red Mansel of Amarillo. It would not be too much a stretch to assume that perhaps Bray found out about Allstar after a local encounter with Mansel. It is even more likely that Bray caught one of Allstar's send-in-your-songs advertisements in a sheet music rag of the day.) At home again, he received a recorder to use in his make shift studio. This time he was able to do sound-on-sound recordings and with Garrett Morrison's help he also learned how to create 'echo effects' with the new recorder. Almost overnight the trio's recordings began sounding more commercial! It was not long after this that Bray and his two partners had their only release on the Allstar label. Harry had attached his name to both songs as the sole writer. The two songs, both instrumentals, were titled "Guitars" and "So Lonely."
The first place that Harry got his new record played was on the jukebox at Mrs. Netherland's Drive-In in downtown Quitaque (any LoneStarStomp readers wanting to visit this Harry Bray holy spot just holler for directions... I would hate for you to get turned around downtown and wind up lost). Since Harry lived right behind the hamburger stand he knew every time one of his songs was played. Some of the local teenagers got a kick out of playing it, mainly because it was by Harry, Garrett, & Dick. One of the few radio stations in the area that played Harry's first record was KFLD in Floydada. Truth is, very few stations ever gave Bray's records a spin because his music was steeped in the sounds of the music of the thirties and forties.
In the mid-60s Harry and his wife Zula moved up atop the Caprock to the town of Plainview where they took up residence on the southeast side of town and Bray got into the used car business. It was at about began to focus on producing records for not only himself but other locals acts as well, a task that was supposedly undertaken in an underground studio on the property of his used car lot. Working with local area acts such as the Coachmen and soul man Jackie Johnson (Stomped HERE) Bray released a series of records on Twixt-Tween and Satin labels.
Even in production Harry's touch was a tad bit primitive, perhaps too much so for some locals. Unhappy with their first Twixt-Tween release the Coachmen headed south to Tommy Allsup's studio in Odessa to record a second single which was released by Bray as Buzz Barnhill & the Four Counts(story to come). Other releases on the label are stamped with odd rhythms and even a drum machine.
Of what I’ve heard from Bray himself, little could be considered ‘of its time’. Bray's own releases on his labels continued to feature trebly, multi-layered instrumentals that carried an almost pixie-like quality. His instrumentals-whether from the 60s or 70s- have a sound that was no longer en vogue with current trends, sometimes sounding like a poor man's attempt to mimic the likes of Les Paul. Other tracks sounded ahead of their time. And then there's that drum machine to contend with.
"When Gabriel Blows His Horn" from 1969 might stand as Bray's most interesting release. I can almost imagine Bray, inspired by the Sunday sermon, heading to his basement studio to carry out the Lord's work in some small way. According Robin Brown, the session was shared with the three individuals whose names are listed on the label pictured above: son Ron Bray on bass, Dick Polk on guitar, and Joe Birchfield on drums. While this may be true there's something almost romantic about the thought of a lone Harry sitting in a dimly lit studio brewing up "When Gabriel Blows His Horn" one instrumental passage at a time and wrapping it around an Apocalyptic lyric. This is the religion of someone who knows the church and knows the gospel, but whose view of Christianity has been more greatly shaped by Revelations rather than "Go ye unto all the world..."
On the flip Bray serves up a song that- at least lyrically- might be considered to be more traditional country. Laced with a shot of Oaxaca, Mexico's most famous export, Mescal Wine, the song breaks no new thematic ground. But it sounds like you feel after a night of imbibing.
Does it even need to be said... neither side of this single were a hit.
Harry Bray passed away in 1984.
