Kurt Linhof on the Decline and Fall of International Artists

Above: Kurt Linhof (second from left) with the Spidels in San Antonio c. 1966.


After decades of research, we now know plenty about the International Artists label during their early glory days of 1966-67. Far less attention has been paid to its shadowy and mysterious final year before declaring bankruptcy and shutting the doors in resigned anonymity in 1971. Unbelievably, what had been one of the most promising up-and-coming record labels in the Southwest just a couple of years before was by then a hemorrhaging mess of a company, having careened from the top of the pop charts with "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" to shambolic nothingness in no time.

One of the few surviving witnesses from this dark period is musician Kurt Linhof. A member of the San Antonio '60s band The Spidels (pictured above), he was in Houston working with The Children when he heard about a job opening at International Artists in early 1970. He was soon working 100 hours a week refurbishing the Brock Street studio, a renovation that never actually reached completion. Very little was recorded at IA during this final period, and only a few singles and one album (Endle St. Cloud's disappointing Thank You All Very Much) made it to vinyl. Kurt reveals all the gory details in our conversation below.

Remarkably, the surviving Children reformed for a session at IA (now Sugar Hill Studios) in 2004. Linhof recalls, "It was amazing to click like we had in '72-3, or whenever the last time together was. I think we figured 32 years since we'd all been together at once. It was kind of magic that we were still right in the groove together. The studio sounds much better than it used to and is so comfortable to work in."

Kurt is better known today for his line of Linhof custom guitars. A true guitar and amp guru, he is also working on finishing what should be one of the definitive books on Fender amps, entitled The Pre-CBS Fender Amp Collectors and Investors Guide.


KURT LINHOF: In 1969, I went up to Virginia to go to Antioch's experimental branch, then gave that up after a semester. When I came back in January '70, I played bass with the Children and took a job at International Artists, recording test sessions while helping wire the new 16-track board. They were pretty much bankrupt, so I was getting $2.50 an hour, working over 100 hours a week. We had to get this 16-track up, 'cause they had no income. They tore out the old recording shit to rewire it. We put in, like, 52 miles of wire. It was a 16-track; it was a big deal. It never worked, either. Because instead of hiring a real engineer to design it, they hired this guy that'd just come out of Elkins Institute (laughs)...and paid him, you know, four dollars an hour (laughs) to design this massively complex state of the art studio.

What is the Elkins Institute?

It's like DeVry Institutes are today. It's a tech school, trade school. I applied that summer, the summer of '70. Honest to God, they wouldn't let me in 'cause my hair was too long (laughs). I couldn't even pay 'em money to be a student!

This was in Houston?

Yeah. I was assigned as production engineer for a new band IA had found named Denim. And this is what's really cool: I was 19, and I got a credit in Billboard as Production Engineer (of Denim). I think it was the July 18th (1970) issue. I thought it was front page, it was actually on page 18, after seeing the copy. "Producer"....can you imagine? I was 19. I'd been riding the knobs for all of about two weeks.

Below: Billboard, July 18, 1970.



This board, we could never get more than 9 channels working. Once you got into the tenth channel, the whole system would go into some sort of parasitic oscillation (laughs)...all the meters would peg and everything would blow up.

So, it really wasn't happening. And they called in experts -- we bought a bunch of real expensive modules -- and they called in experts from Tektronix or whoever had built the modules, and they couldn't figure 'em out. 'Cause this guy from Elkins had designed this Frankenstein system with hundreds of ground loops.

They never really got the studio working. They'd hired Dale Hawkins as the President. The guy who wrote "Susie-Q." And Dale showed up once in awhile. He never, ever oversaw me on a session. Even though I was his lead engineer, I guess. There were two of us...so I don't know what I was. But anyway, Hawkins would show up once in awhile and one time -- he had a sidekick named "Steve" -- they both came to the studio one day wearing zoot suits. Dale had an Eldorado convertible. And they had a chrome-plated Thompson (machine gun) with 'em, playing gangsters. Driving around Houston, drinking, with a Thompson under the seat...a chrome-plated Thompson.

Below: Dale Hawkins.




It was crazy. The whole place was bugged. J.L. Patterson and what was that other guy...

Bill Dillard?

B.J. Dillard. And J.L. Patterson. I don't know if they were friends, or...they didn't show up much, either. They'd come sometimes late at night, sneak up to the upstairs office, and have meetings. I'd see 'em around, because I was working 24 hours a day. Anyway, the place was bugged. They had wires running back to their houses so they could listen to each other and what was going on at IA in their absence . I forget who bugged who. Either B.J. had done it, or... J.L. had the place bugged, so he could listen to what Dillard was saying about him behind his back.

Dennis, the Elkins engineer, had helped wire this up. And Dennis was also probably helping build the blue boxes, where you could make free long distance calls. There was a little of that going on. And either Patterson or Dillard was into that deal. Don't know who they sold them to, but it was a "living."

Yeah, I think Patterson went to jail for that later.

That's right. And Dennis knew about it but didn't get busted. Dennis got hired away and went to work for IMC Drilling Mud. They probably paid him like seven times what he was making there (at IA).

Below: International Artists Studio. Click to enlarge.




Do you remember Dennis's last name? He's not credited on any of the IA records or papers.

Bledsoe, but he didn't do any of the "art", he was strictly a wire jockey. And apparently had no music talent at all. He also owned a PA system. Homebrew. Real powerful. He would rent it, but he would have to run it. He rented it out to Steve Miller once, who had his own guy running it. But Dennis had to babysit it. And they had it turned up too loud. Dennis turned it off, unplugged it, and said that, you know, "You can't use this." This was at a gig! Dennis took his toy and went home.

Did you ever see guys like Ray Rush or Fred Carroll at IA?

I think Fred Carroll came around once or twice, but there was nothing to do... 'cause there was no system.

The other famous thing about IA that I remember was, for monitors, they used three Altec A-7 Voice of Theater speakers (because they had used 3-track Ampexes forever). Those giant things you'd find in an old movie theater? They had three of those. And the control room was the size of a small kitchen. So there's these giant boxes in your face. It's no wonder early IA's recordings sound like they do (laughs). 'Cause that's what we mixed on. God, it was...I ran a mix, I think it was for Denim, and I came up to Denver. Walt Andrus had given me the name of a guy, Dick Darnell, who had the best studio in Denver. I took this tape that I had done and put it on his system -- he had a flat system, a real recording studio -- and it was the worst sound I'd ever heard. And that was my work. I was up there, kind of looking for work. Fat chance with that example...

So you thought you'd play him this tape, he might be impressed...

Yeah. I play this tape and it was unbelievably bad. God, it was awful. It brought me right back to where I belonged. I even spun a few untouchable settings on the monitor system to balance it - and of course, blamed it on IA's system, but it was just as much my lack of training as our terrible mix facility. Darnell wasn't happy.

So even Bubble Puppy had left IA by this time?

Yeah. "Hot Smoke and Sassafrass" had sold 600,000 copies or something, and it bought IA new carpet and a new sofa. They were very proud of that. Really. They talked about it. We (The Children) did some gigs with them around south Texas, made no money, then they headed for L.A., to become "Demian", after apparently "borrowing" their IA masters one night. That's all hearsay, but I have no reason to doubt it.



My Favorite Memory was - the front closet in the waiting room was completely full of "defective" Elevators record returns. Thousands of 'em. I took a few. They were "defective" I think because of the jug. (Laughs) People would listen to 'em and go, "What's that noise?" I'm serious. Like a record store owner in Arkansas would put the record on, and hear that jug, say, "there's something wrong with this record," and send it back. And it was also just returns, because the Elevators -- they're not gonna sell in Arkansas. Just too fuckin' weird, man. But there were boxes of 'em. This whole closet was full of albums and singles. There were thousands, literally. A good percentage of Elevator records were probably in this closet!

So how long did you work there? A few months?

Yeah, maybe three or four months. Maybe six. And, like I said, Dale Hawkins was never around. And he was on some sort of big retainer, I guess. But he got my name in Billboard. I mean, he still had that kind of clout.

International Artists in Billboard, March 15, 1969

The music industry trade press took very little notice of the International Artists label. That's what makes this 1969 article in Billboard so surprising. Datelined "New York" (?), we learn that IA is currently planning an ambitious expansion after a "management overhaul" eight months prior. The circumstances of that overhaul are unknown, as Bill Dillard, Noble Ginther, and J.L. Patterson, "Houston businessmen" (no mention is made of the law firm), were in charge before the overhaul. Lelan Rogers was long gone by this point, and Ray Rush was now the general manager. (Fred Carroll was also back in the fold by then, but is not mentioned.) The idea that IA would be releasing "a minimum" of two albums a month is quite puzzling when we consider that the label only released three LPs total between then and the bankruptcy in 1971. The Shades LP never materialised.

Bubble Puppy was hitting with "Hot Smoke and Sassafrass" at the time but, they, too, didn't get a mention.

Mr. Rogers' Cabinet of Curiosities: Dissecting "Epitaph For A Legend"

Various Artists - Epitaph For A Legend 2CD digipack with 40 page booklet (Charly/International Artists Snax 620)

Official webpage.

The 1980 IA retrospective, Epitaph For A Legend, is now on its third or fourth go-round in the digital era. This 2010 iteration from Charly is, by all appearances, the 'definitive' version, if such a term can accurately be ascribed to an album that's mostly famous among record collectors for being so remarkably un-definitive.

A large part of the problem with Epitaph is its maddening lack of self-definition. Is it a greatest hits package? No. IA only had two of those, and neither are here. Is it a rarities package? No, because several of the rarest singles are excluded. Is it a smorgasbord of previously unissued goodies, carefully selected for quality? No, nearly one-third of the 27 cuts had been released. Epitaph, then, is 'none of the above,' a jumbled potpurri of sounds, presided over by their original producer and Svengali, Lelan Rogers. Epitaph less resembles a dignified 'epitaph' than it does a hastily-organized rummage sale held by distant relatives after the death of an eccentric but somewhat appreciated uncle. Some jewels are to be discovered, to be sure, but one has to dig through piles of rubbish to find them. For example, Bubble Puppy, IA’s biggest group, are nowhere to be found on Epitaph -- the first clue to the buyer that things here are quite amiss. (Years would pass before we realized why: the Puppy had been produced by Ray Rush, not Rogers, and Lelan was only-too-happy to keep the focus on two bands he produced, the Elevators and the Red Crayola. Despite its Top 20 status, 'Hot Smoke & Sassafrass' passes unmentioned in Jon Savage's interview with Rogers, enclosed within both the original double LP and this CD.)

And it wouldn’t be an IA album without a garish, hand-drawn cover too amateurish-looking even for a tax write-off or vanity labels. Each of the original 12 LPs are given their own tombstone (the singles apparently weren’t given a proper burial -- an unintentionally ironic statement on the album’s contents). Anyone expecting, say, a photograph or two of the bands has clearly set their expectations way too high. In the packaging department, Epitaph for a Legend fully complements the DIY non-aesthetic of contemporaneous early garage-psych bootlegs like Boulders and Texas Flashbacks. 

Retrospectives of this sort almost always include some information on the artists. Even the most oblivious, only-in-it-for-the-money discount label knows this. But clearly this, also, is expecting too much of Lelan Rogers, who instead of providing information on the bands or recordings, merely inserted his 1978 Jon Savage interview into the original package, as if it constituted the final word of IA. Actually, the interview raises more questions that it answers (not the least for its omission of Bubble Puppy), and much of what Rogers says is of questionable accuracy. It is not wholly without value, but I believe much of what he said has since been supplanted by better research. This is not to denigrate the man too much. We should not forget that Lelan's job at all times was to sell records, not write history books, and at least he was making an effort to do something, within his limitations.


Lelan Rogers, amidst his paisley curtains, working the phones in an attempt to create a hit, 1960s.

Mistaking the enthusiasm of a few LA, Texas, and UK record collectors for a larger, general interest, Rogers pressed several thousand copies of Epitaph, but his naïve optimism for the revived IA label was soon met with cold reality: only a few hundred copies actually sold at the time of release, and Lelan was forced to wholesale the rest at cost to Midnight Records in New York (where it was a list staple now for decades). It probably never occurred to him that sales might have been stronger had the album been responsibly packaged and logically laid out. Lelan’s timing was off, too – interest in obscure sixties labels and music was only then getting off the ground (Pebbles Volume 1 had just appeared), and years passed before a real market developed for this kind of thing. If he had waited until 1986, and had spent a little more thought on packaging and track selection, Lelan might well have had an underground 'hit' with Epitaph.



Billboard 13 October 1979


Charly has seen fit to finally give the album the proper liner notes it should have had back in '80. Mole from the Higher State has sorted out what was originally released and what wasn't, helpfully filling in whatever info has come to light over the last three decades. Jon Savage’s interview with Rogers is presented here yet again, with a thoughtful new introduction for context. Remarkably, Jon reveals that his introduction to IA came in 1971, when he discovered a copy of Easter Everywhere at Doug Dobell's 77 Charing Cross record store. He was thus as prepared as anyone to chat with Lelan, whom he recalls 'had exactly the right amount of passion mixed with just that hint of carnival chicanery' -- one of the 'old school' of record business operators who could work the phones and BS with enough DJs enough to help create a national hit, even for a local two-bit operation like IA.

Disc 1

The Chayns - Night Time (Is The Right Time)
Epitaph begins with a bit of a let-down: a San Antonio garage band’s inept and redundant version of the Strangeloves. This was released on the strictly-local 'Alamo Audio' label first, and, after apparently becoming a minor hit, was licensed by IA for some hoped-for larger distribution that never happened. (This 'buy-in' was unusual; most of what IA released was recorded by them.) One wonders if Lelan was even aware of the Strangeloves’ vastly superior version, which hit #30 in the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1965.



The Patterns - In My Own Time
This is more like it: an unknown group tackling a little-known Bee Gees album cut. Would have made a respectable single at the time.

The Chaparrels - I Tried So Hard

Another unknown group, but presumably the same Houston bunch who put out 'Roxanne' on the Notsuoh label when IA passed on them (comped on the Houston Hallucinations LP). One of the few real surprises of Epitaph, 'I Tried So Hard' is an energetically fuzz-driven, harder-rocking cop of 'Along Comes Mary' that practically screams 'hit.' Though Lelan presumably produced the original session, no explanation is given as to why it was left unreleased.

Thursday's Children - A Part Of You
One of Houston’s better rock bands of the era, Thursday’s Children had two highly regarded singles for IA. They didn’t sell, and were rare and unheard at the time of Epitaph. Surely that meant their inclusion was warranted here, yes? Er, no. Instead we’re treated to 'A Part of You,' which is decent, but sounds demo-y, and not nearly as good as any of the four single sides.

The Rubayyat - If I Were A Carpenter
Strangely credited to Electric Rubayyat on the original Epitaph LP, we now know that this was Danny Galindo’s post-Elevators group, comprised of Austin and San Antonio players (including Bill Hallmark from the Golden Dawn). This was released as a single in early 1968, and is a pleasant though pedestrian cover of the Tim Hardin/Bobby Darin hit from two years prior. The American Blues released a stronger version at approximately the same time.

Sonny Hall - Poor Planet Earth
Forgettable novelty nonsense from a washed-up lounge/country singer, completely out-of-place here. This didn’t deserve its’ original 45 release, much less a reappearance on what was supposed to be a rock/psych-oriented retrospective.

Inner Scene - Communication Breakdown
Led Zeppelin goes to the garage. A fun, originally unissued version, though, like the Rubayyat’s 'If I Were a Carpenter,' redundant, and hardly worth dredging up when far superior material was left waiting in the wings.

The Red Crayola - Hurricane Fighter Plane
Mono version of the master take of this psych goodie, the closest any Texas band got to sounding like early Pink Floyd; presented here sans the extraneous 'freakout' noise (and lousy fidelity) of the familiar fake-stereo version heard on Parable for Arable Land.

The Red Crayola - Pink Stainless Tail (Demo) / Nickle Niceness (Demo) / Vile, Vile Grass (Demo) / Transparent Radiation (Demo)
Rough drafts for songs that were re-recorded for Parable. Lelan obviously had a soft spot for this group, whom he thought were 'gimmicky' enough to hit as a novelty act, a la the Mothers of Invention or Tiny Tim. One demo would have been appropriate here; four is excessive overkill.

The Emperors - I Want My Woman
Los Angeles-area group who recorded this for Lelan’s Sabra label in 1965. Nothing to do with IA, therefore perfectly appropriate for inclusion on Epitaph.

Lost And Found - 25 M.P.H.
Basic demo of a dull, unissued song from this underachieving Houston group. Their IA album Everybody’s Here captures a third-rate Elevators copy band that never really outgrew their roots as surf instrumentalists; however they rallied to create a fabulous single-only release, 'When Will You Come Through' in ’68. That would have been the logical choice for Epitaph, but any listener still expecting logic at this point in the programme is an exceptionally slow learner.

CD 1 thus concludes with just 14 tracks, at least six of which are redundant and/or mediocre, and less than 40 minutes of music.


Disc 2

Big Walter - Breakfast In Bed
Besides Lightnin’ Hopkins, pianist Big Walter Price was the only African-American artist to record for otherwise lily-white IA. Walter had recorded some R&B for Peacock in the fifties, and 'Breakfast in Bed' is basically ossified early fifties R&B dusted off and given a contemporary rock gloss. Like the 'The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions' LP, it’s 'blues rock' not likely to please either blues or rock audiences. Certainly not bad, though for curiosity value only.

Dave Allen - C. C. Rider / Saturday A.M. Blues
Dave Allen was a white bluesman who had some singles for Jin and a worthwhile 1969 album for IA, Color Blind. It's apparent from listening to these two that they are from the same session that produced Big Walter's 'Breakfast in Bed.' Neither are as good as anything on Color Blind. 'C.C. Rider' is a generic version of the done-to-death standard, and 'Saturday A.M. Blues' is a forgettable Lightnin' Hopkins imitation.

Lightnin' Hopkins - Conversation With Lightnin' Hopkins
This could have been entitled, 'Conversation With Two Incoherent Drunkards' and no one would have known the difference. This is apparently Lelan attempting to 'interview' Hopkins, an excerpt of a three-hour tete-a-tete recorded during the Free Form Patterns sessions.

Lightnin' Hopkins - Black Ghost Blues
A good outtake from the otherwise forgettable Free Form Patterns LP. Typical Hopkins.

Roky Erickson - Interview with Roky (KSAN 4/1/78)
A complete waste of space. 'Roky, what do you think of the Sex Pistols?'

The Spades - You're Gonna Miss Me / We Sell Soul
The first LP appearance of Roky’s pre-Elevators garage band, originally released on the Zero label in Austin. That might raise some eyebrows: 'What are they doing on an IA comp, then?,' you might ask. Dunno, though it must have been exciting to obtain these two rare, practically unknown tracks at the time. Though far superior vinyl rips could be (and have been) made from the 45 using today’s technology, that would be expecting too much, and Charly has opted instead to use the dreadful needle-drops done in the ‘70s for the original LP.

Roky Erickson & Clementine Hall - Splash 1 / Right Track Now
Two 'unplugged' Elevators songs, exposing their folk music roots and sympathies. Mysteries when they appeared on Epitaph, years of archaeological research has established that these are Easter Everywhere outtakes.

The 13th Floor Elevators - Wait For My Love
By far the most significant track on Epitaph when it appeared was this previously-unknown Bull of the Woods-era pop-rocker from Stacy Sutherland. Recorded after Lelan left IA, it is the most commercial song in the Elevators’ entire canon (after 'You’re Gonna Miss Me') -- and yet, astonishingly, was rejected both as a single and an LP track. The band achieves a tightness largely absent from the ’68 sessions, and 'Wait For My Love' compares favourably to Moby Grape’s first LP – not a sound one would readily expect from the Elevators. An inferior rewrite, entitled "Til Then," did finally make it on Bull of the Woods.

Aurally, this sounds like a second-generation tape dub, and since the exact same version appears on the 2009 box set, we must assume that it’s all that survived. A newly-remixed version was released as a new IA single this month (April, 2011).

The 13th Floor Elevators - 60-Second Radio Spot for 'Bull Of The Woods'
Interesting radio commercial from 1969, aimed at a San Francisco audience, where it was presumed they still had a following (though we now know that they hadn't appeared there since '66).

The 13th Floor Elevators - Fire Engine
Mono single mix. Mildly different from the stereo version, but something like the mono single version of 'Levitation' would have been a far better choice. But that would have actually required some thought and deliberation.

CD 2 finishes the programme at a mere 13 tracks: four pedestrian blues numbers, two 'spoken-word' pieces, two Spades tracks unrelated to IA, two acoustic Elevators demos, and one great track, 'Wait For My Love.' An exceptionally poor showing.

And there you have it. Twenty-seven tracks on two CDs, well over half of which would have been rejected for Pebbles Volume 89; nothing at all by two of IA's greatest bands, Bubble Puppy and the Golden Dawn (and no explanation for their exclusion); four tracks that have nil to do with IA; a clutch of unremarkable demos; a couple of rambling spoken-word pieces; and – almost by accident! – a few great tracks that almost justify the hype. All in all, Epitaph was/is a textbook example of why label owners should leave this sort of thing to the fans. It could have been great. But the same could be said of IA as a whole, couldn't it?