FEATURED RECORD COLLECTOR OF THE MONTH

People like Harold Ott are indispensable to a community's culture—to a community's legacy. What's a community? That's us! Through his music work, Harold Ott provides reminders of who "we" were and thus, of course, who we are—not an irrelevant consideration. Harold's weapon of choice is Arkansas garage & psychedelic rock circa the 1960s/early 1970s. There are clues to our current identity in this music. Also: this music reminds us that anything is possible; "art" is not a genre; it's a door. You might think the study of Arkansas garage & psych rock is constraining but the fun-filled truth is that it's not. Arkansas garage & psych rock is a worthy puzzle: how can something so "small" be so big? Harold Ott grew up in Jacksonville, Arkansas, becoming a garage music fan around the age of sixteen. After a stint in the band Lollygadget and finishing school at the University of Arkansas in 1998, Ott began collecting records. His Psych of the South website project was founded in 2007 (visit: www.psychofthesouth.com). Since then, Ott has been an avid collector and historian of Arkansas garage rock, duly transforming into a dedicated crate-digger and audiophile. He is roundly considered the state's resident expert concerning the garage scene of the 1960s.

"Don't Send Me No Flowers" by The Blue and the Grey

THE OA: You've now released two LOST SOULS compilations, both of which present garage and psychedelic rock music from Arkansas from the mid-'60s to early '70s. Why should other people care about this music?

HAROLD OTT: For me, the '60s and early '70s were the greatest time for rock. I'm just casting a light on the happenings in my own backyard, forty years ago. In spite of the obscurity of most of the recordings presented here, Arkansas produced garage and psychedelic rock on par with any other part of the country. This is the recorded legacy of Arkansas and I care about preserving it for the future. Many of the stories, pictures, and music I present are on the utter edge of extinction. Once the guys who have the material are gone, that's pretty much it. I'm making it my mission to discover local music and present the very best of what I find. I hope people can relate to the quest and the thrill of discovering something forty years old that can be appreciated by people around the world now.

THE OA: Was there a specific moment that caused you to think there needed to be a compilation of 1960s Arkansas garage rock?

HO: Well, I've been a fan of garage rock for close to twenty years and I've always wondered how I could contribute to finding and discovering music. In the Garage community, the commonly held thought is that everything worth discovering had been compiled already and if you want something unknown and great, get ready to fork over some serious cash for the original 45s. After picking up a comp titled NO NO NO on Arf Arf records, I saw a label by the band The Lost Souls that had an address in Jacksonville, Arkansas, on it. At that moment a light turned on and I had a new mission. It was simple, instead of collecting these impossible to find "rarest garage 45s" I would just use the asset of my location to find unknown records and tapes from around my home state of Arkansas. After digging a little, I knew that there were many unknown and surprisingly great 45s still hidden in the vault.

THE OA: How do the two LOST SOULS volumes differ?

HO: One distinction is that with VOL. 1, I covered the entire state, from Ashdown to Jonesboro, and featured many records with ties to Wayne Raney's record pressing plant in Concord, Arkansas. With VOL. 2, the focus is mostly in Northeast Arkansas and the groups that recorded in Joe Lee's Variety Recording Studio in Jonesboro. Also the presentation is way more elaborate with VOL. 2, including a full-color twenty-page book with info on each of the fifteen bands featured, as opposed to a six-page book with very small print on VOL. 1. There are still a few mysteries on VOL. 1, but I made it my express mission to find out details on every band for VOL. 2. Also VOL. 1 was sourced mostly from 45 rpm records, but every track on VOL. 2 is sourced from reel-to-reel tapes.

THE OA: I know of two other compilations of Arkansas garage music THE LITTLE ROCK SOUND, 1965–69, and PSYCHEDELIC STATES: ARKANSAS. How do yours differ from those two?

HO: On THE LITTLE ROCK SOUND released by the Butler Center in 1999, the focus is mostly on MY records, a cult garage label out of Little Rock, owned by Earl Fox. With PSYCHEDELIC STATES: ARKANSAS on Gear Fab, there is still a decided MY records focus that branches out to more obscure titles from around the state. The Gear Fab release was actually inspired by my research online. I put out a lot of feelers in garage forums and they decided that it sounded like a good idea. After that, I really had to buckle down and dig deeper than ever to find tracks that had really fallen off the radar. I think that LOST SOULS builds on these releases and follows through more with the original band members to get the stories behind the records.

THE OA: Are there any differences between the 1960s garage and psychedelic music of Arkansas and the same kind of music from other regions or states in the U.S.?

HO: Since many of the groups are getting their inspiration from the same sources (Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Beatles, The Who, The Hollies, etc.) it's kind of shocking just how different many of the regional scenes are. For instance, the Northeast US is known for its minor key cryptic sounds and the Northwest is known for its hard driving sounds like The Sonics. The garage of Arkansas is very much influenced by the sound of Stax in Memphis. You can hear a lot of soul in Arkansas garage. Also due to the primitive nature of most of the recording studios in Arkansas, the sound is much rawer on the whole than many regional scenes. There was very little sweetening and over-production here. That really contributes to the garage style since the unadulterated punk sound is the most sought-after among garage collectors.

 THE OA: What sources did you use to familiarize yourself with 1960s Arkansas garage and psychedelic rock—I'm guessing there wasn't much online information when you started?

HO: I pretty much had to start at square one since there is no guide to figure this out. I started by calling Steve Evans of Jacksonville Guitar for help in tracking down the Lost Souls and eventually found three members of the group, which led to more quests after I talked to each of them. I also contacted a garage punk forum online and posted a request for record titles and labels from Arkansas. I went to Bill Eginton at Arkansas Record & CD Exchange in North Little Rock for help and he connected me with several collectors who had been stashing away some Arkansas records for decades. I went to the Arkansas History Commission and dug through the microfilm for local newspapers of the '60s. I would just pick a city based on the information on a record label and take a guess on the year. I would look through hundreds of pages of newspapers trying to dig out a band photo or a listing for a live performance. I also just started cold-calling people after looking up their names on Whitepages.com and was successful with many of the groups. You have to be a detective and trust your gut many times. If there's a resource out there, I've probably mined it once or twice.

THE OA: I've noticed that a lot of famous bands that started out more or less in the garage rock scene of the 1960s—The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Love, etc.—eventually evolved from that genre. Why didn't more of the garage acts that you celebrate become more famous?

HO: Fame is a very tricky thing and really it's the most normal thing for no fame to happen at all. I can't tell you how many bands I've been in or been friends with that got close, but somehow just didn't make it. The dream of making it is the motivation for many of the groups and many times leads to their demise when it doesn't happen. In my view there was so much great music being produced at the time that there simply wasn't room for all of it on the charts. Also it's important to remember that the Vietnam War draft affected many of these groups and caused many to split after a short time. Arkansas was pretty isolated at the time too. There were a few minor success stories, but probably the biggest band was Black Oak Arkansas who started out as the Knowbody Else in the Jonesboro area in the mid-'60s. The reality is that many of these bands never made it beyond the town from which they came. They played at school dances and at the teen clubs and made a record to give away to girls, but once high school ended so did the band. Their dreams were big, but it became clear to all of them that it's no easy ride to the top of the charts.

THE OA: I'm guessing that a whole lot of the source material for the two CDs are rare 45 records that you yourself tracked down. But I also know that you've tracked down some original masters. So as far as source material, what is the ratio between 45 records and masters?

HO: On LOST SOULS VOL. 1 only two tracks are from master tape and the rest are 45s or acetate records (studio demos etched to a one off vinyl record). LOST SOULS VOL. 2 is exclusively sourced from reel-to-reel tapes.

THE OA: Where do you find these rare 45s? As someone who looks for Arkansas vinyl throughout the state, I'm guessing you've already checked everywhere a mere mortal like myself will ever have access to....

HO: Well, the first place I went was to Arkansas CD & Record Exchange. They have a couple of boxes of local 45s that helped get the project off the ground. From there I went to local flea markets and dug through every 45 rpm record I could find. I also contacted several record collectors on eBay who were from Arkansas and asked them about any local records they have come across. Then I set up about a hundred saved searches on eBay with all of the record titles I had put together in my research. Probably the best way is contacting the original band members and asking them if they still have copies of their records. Plus, after the word was out that I was on the hunt, I had several people contact me about a record that they had found or knew about.

THE OA: What is the oddest story that you have about finding a rare recording?

HO: Well, it is probably the story of how I found the rarest recording on my CDs. It was The Modds' "LEAVE MY HOUSE" original reel-to-reel tape. Although The Modds were from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, they played in NE Arkansas and somehow their reel-to-reel tape ended up in Jonesboro at Joe Lee's house. Lee has kept many of his original master tapes from his studio in Jonesboro and most of the LOST SOULS VOL. 2 tapes come from this cache. Over the past few years, I have made the pilgrimage many times to Jonesboro to hang out with Joe Lee and look through his tapes. Somehow I always turn up something that I've never seen before. I was looking through the tapes one last time before heading home when Joe handed me The Modds tape and said, "You might like this one." I was stunned! This is one of the rarest garage 45s on earth. Copies of the 45 have sold for over fifteen hundred dollars and it is known as one of the rawest '60s punk songs in garage. The 45 has been a mystery since it was first rediscovered in the early '80s and only a few copies of it still exist. The other odd thing about the 45 is the mix of the guitar and vocal, which is so up-front that it drowns out everything else. After discovering the tape, I was able to track down the bass player with some fancy Googling and got his side of their story. Also it turns out that the weird mix is corrected on the reel-to-reel tape and for the first time you can hear the rest of the band. It's wild that after over forty years this artifact was just under my nose and finally found me.

THE OA: Did you know of most of what you were looking for before you tracked down recordings or did you discover bands you never heard of while scouring the state for rare vinyl?

HO: At first I was working from a list and tracked many records down just on the title alone, usually online. It's always amazing to discover a total unknown. This was the case of one of my faves on the LOST SOULS CDs: The Blue and the Gray "DON'T SEND ME NO FLOWERS" on Zay-Dee records. I was digging through a collector buddy's garage records, when I came upon the Zay-Dee label, which I knew was an Arkansas label based out of Batesville in the mid-'60s. After putting on the 45 we were all stunned at the raw sound and I immediately fell in love with the record. There were several more that were just a chance discovery, especially when digging through reel-to-reel tapes, many of which never made it to vinyl.

THE OA: Pretend that you had to name the all-time best ever Arkansas garage rock band. Who would you name?

HO: The Blue and the Gray who recorded for Zay-Dee Records in 1966. They were out of Batesville and featured a young George Biard, who later sang on the Dust tracks on LOST SOULS VOL. 2. For me, The Blue and the Gray are the perfect expression of teen angst captured on vinyl. Snotty, raw, short, and loud.

THE OA: Conversely, Harold, let's have a little fun here. Which band is the absolute worst to make it onto your compilations?

HO: That's tough since I know many of the people who made the records! Well, if you have to put me on the spot, I guess I'll say Michael-Troy & The Pharoahs "EVEN THOUGH IT'S WRONG." It's pretty bad and out of tune, but I kind of like it because of that.

THE OA: Are there garage 45s that you have found that were so bad those bands still haven't made it onto one of your LOST SOULS comps?

HO: Oh sure, but just by being garage they are better than most things! The classic situation with garage 45s is that one side has it and the other side does not. There a few "two-siders" which are worthwhile on both sides, but that is the exception. This rule applies to Arkansas garage 45s, too. I have CDs full of what I call LOST SOULS contenders, or tracks that might have it, but either haven't fit on a CD yet or just aren't quite what I'm looking for. I know that there is no bottomless pit when it comes to Arkansas garage, but I still discover recordings all the time, so I hope to have many volumes to come and several of the contenders may make the light of day yet.

THE OA: Are there any Arkansas garage recordings that you've heard about but that you have failed to track down so far? Are there some Arkansas garage bands that you've only heard rumors of?

HO: I have narrowed my list considerably since I first started, but yes there are still some elusive records out there. One is by a band called Federal Union. I know they recorded at Jaggars Studio in Little Rock and released a 45 on Jaguar Records, but I have only seen a scan of one of the labels. As a tease, there was a book recently published called the GARAGE 45 PRICE GUIDE that includes a listing for the Federal Union including an acetate record. There's also an acetate by The Kards who also recorded at Jaggars that was written about in a garage guide but is otherwise unheard by me. There are several bands I have photos of, but no music so there's no telling what else is lurking out there, but I intend to find out.

 THE OA: What is the absolute most valuable Arkansas garage rock 45 (and how much $$$)?

HO: Probably the most valuable is The Purple Canteen "BRAINS IN MY FEET"/"IF YOU LIKE IT THAT WAY" on Alley Records. "BRAINS" is a searing psychedelic song with great fuzz and an intense organ part. In the book it's listed at two hundred dollars, but I've seen it go for a little more than that on eBay. There are a few more two-hundred-dollar records, which rarely show up for sale, on LOST SOULS VOL. 1, including The Sunset Society and the Marc IV both on the Continental label and Dead on Arrival on EMC.

THE OA: Wasn't there a Conway, Arkansas, garage rock band named The Music Shoppe? Why didn't they make the cut?

HO: Yes, the group was fronted by Roy Cost. I spoke with him last year about his early group The Shadows and The Music Shoppe, which was the last band to record at Bill Black's studio before Black died. That's a good question, why haven't I used that! There are a lot of groups that I talk to who may not have made the cut for various reasons. I make and remake each of the volumes several times until I achieve the overall feel I'm going for. It just hasn't made the cut yet....

THE OA: You know Harold, I love your work, but I couldn't quite get into RAYBURN, the hard rock band from Little Rock, Arkansas, whose demos from 1972 to 1977 you also released as a CD. Please tell me what I'm missing....

HO: I knew I was going out on a limb with garage and psych fans by venturing into progressive territory from the '70s, but I heard a talented group with complex songs that I felt deserved their moment. Also when I listen to the material with the story of Jimmy Roberts in mind, I hear it with a new appreciation. Roberts was obsessed with death and wrote morose songs that dealt with his inner conflict. In many songs like "GOT TO GET READY TO DIE" and "SONGBIRD" he addresses his mortality directly. Just a few years later, when he was twenty-one years old, he died of cancer. Roberts also has more home recordings and earlier garage recordings that put it all into context that are not presented on the CD. So in a way, by just listening to RAYBURN, you're only told the last chapter, which might also contribute to the disconnect. For me, the first six songs on the CD are the best and represent their earliest extant recordings. In those 1972 tapes, I hear a band straddling the line between psychedelic and progressive rock and I became fascinated with that. When the band recently reunited, it provided an opportunity to release the CD.

THE OA: In addition to the three CDs, you also shot a documentary of an Arkansas garage rock band, The Lost Souls, from your hometown of Jacksonville. I take it this was your first film. How hard was it to shoot a documentary?

HO: I have been a part of a few films before, but this was my first as director. It was really tough. It was a learning experience from start to finish and I relied on friends and family to help with the shoots and editing. I wasn't prepared for all of the editing decisions and I could just continue tweaking it forever. It was also my first experience playing the film in front of a crowd at the Little Rock Film Festival this past year. After the Q&A session, I had a whole new view of what I had just presented to the public. For one, it's a music documentary, and there are only two recorded songs by The Lost Souls, but in an hour-long documentary, you never hear the whole songs. It's easy to get caught up in it and miss things that might be obvious to the casual viewer.

THE OA: Who is the most interesting person you've met through all this work and why?

HO: I've got to say Joe Lee. He turned eighty this year and he's still a firecracker. Here's someone who came from the Mississippi Delta and worked at Fernwood studio in Memphis in the 1950s, then goes on to form his own studio in Jonesboro and records a local hit with "ARKANSAS TWIST" by Bobby Lee Trammell and goes on to produce nearly every regional garage band in the area. Joe Lee is proof that you're only as old as you act. He still plays piano and is active in getting his recorded legacy out to the world. He has been an inspiration to countless musicians in the area and is just a fun guy to hang around. We met by phone after I looked his name up in the phone directory and cold-called him about finding out more info on his label, Alley Records, and have been good friends since.

THE OA: Do you have a day job or do you concentrate on Arkansas music full time?

HO: Oh yes, I have a day job. I work as a photo lab tech correcting people's digital files before they print out. What can I say, it's a job and allows me time to pursue my obsessions. That being said, there is plenty to concentrate on when it comes to Arkansas music and I could easily make it a full-time gig. Paying the bills might be a little tough though.

THE OA: Well, Harold, you know you've completely got our attention. I know I must listen or watch anything that you put out. What is next on your to-do list?

HO: Next on the agenda is LOST SOULS VOL. 3! I already have a CD mix and two CDs of contenders. I'm also thinking about branching out into some vinyl pressing and I have more documentary projects in the works. Plus there are still a few rocks to look under—you never know what might be there.

THE OA: What are you most excited to share in LOST SOULS VOL. 3?

HO: I'm really excited about a group called The Wet Dream for LOST SOULS VOL. 3. They recorded at E&M studio in the summer of '68 in Little Rock. The bass player, Brady Plummer, called me about the reel-to-reel tape just weeks before he passed away. It is full of raw, fuzzed-out, blistering sounds—in other words, just what I'm looking for.

"Two New Girls" by The Coachmen