Best Archival Project No One Has Heard About

Producer Huey Meaux was a perfect fit for Houston. Something of a wildcatter of Texas music, Meaux never showed any interest in history. His focus was always on the new thing: the next single, the latest thrill, the youngest girl. The past was only a tool to acquire something in the present, or the future. It wasn't surprising, then, that in 1996 when Meaux was sentenced to 15 years for, among other things, sexual assault of a child, he had allowed his massive catalog to gather a thick layer of dust at Sugar Hill Recording Studios. Decades' worth of recordings, historical works covering important Texan artists ranging from Freddy Fender to Johnny Copeland, were this close to being lost to history. Enter David Thompson, a former general manager at Sugar Hill. He made a pitch to Meaux's ex-wife, who owned the recordings, and proceeded to catalog and preserve those delicate tapes. It was a painstaking process; some tapes had suffered from poor storage, absorbing tiny but nearly fatal amounts of humidity. Thompson had to cook them in an oven to dry them out enough so he could get one good DAT recording. Once finished, Thompson began marketing the catalog to labels, eventually finding suitable homes at Edsel and Westside, imprints of the UK-based Demon Records. Back in the States, you can find them on the shelves at Cactus Music & Records.