85 Years of Tape.

It started in a converted gas station on Telephone Road. In 1941 Bill Quinn opened it as Quinn Recording, and the doors never closed. That single fact is the whole story in miniature. This is the oldest continuously operating recording studio in the United States, and most of what walked through Houston music walked through here first.

The Gold Star label came next. In 1946 Harry Choates cut "Jolie Blon" in this room, the first modern Cajun hit. Lightnin' Hopkins started recording the year after that. The blues and the bayou were on tape before most of the country knew either one had a sound.

By the late 1950s the hits were national. The Big Bopper cut "Chantilly Lace" here in 1958. George Jones was cutting country sides in the same building. Two completely different records, one floor, the tape machines barely cooling between sessions.

Then came the strange and wonderful part. In 1966 the room turned into the launch pad for Texas psych. The 13th Floor Elevators cut "You're Gonna Miss Me" here, and a generation of garage and acid rock followed them in.

In 1972 Huey P. Meaux bought the place and gave it the name it carries now, SugarHill. The seventies ran hot. Freddy Fender cut "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" in 1975. Dr. John, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings all left fingerprints on the room. Through every era it kept its doors open to Black and Mexican-American artists decades before that was an easy thing to do.

The modern roll is the proof it never slowed down. Selena, Destiny's Child, Beyonce and Travis Scott all recorded here. Same brick, same address, eight and a half decades of records pulled out of one room in Houston.