ArtistInfo

Bill Taylor

Producer of Rock
A.k.a. Bill Taylor Sparks

Producer and co-founder/owner of Suemi Records Bill Taylor Sparks musical career began in a group in the early 1960s called the Sherwoods on the Exeter label. After the group disbanded, Sparks and fellow band mate Kenny Smith got heavily into recording and production side of things and decided to start their own label in El Paso, Texas.They called it "Sueme," after the popular mid-1960s putdown, "So, if you don't like it, sue me." They recorded many local bands and released one various artists compilation called I Love You Gorgo. Sparks eventually went into the military service and went to Vietnam, after which he came back to El Paso for a time. It wasn't long before Sparks moved on to Memphis, where his uncle owned a record distributorship called Hot Line Records. Hot Line, of course, had put out Al Green's first hit, "Back Up Train" in 1967, and had a working relationship with Hi Records in Memphis. After a time Sparks made a call to his old friend Kenny Smith, who made his way down to Memphis. The two began recording a number of bands in a various studios, but finally ended up recording at Royal Studios, an eight-track studio owned by Hi Records. It was here they recorded Leviathan, a psychedelic/ progressive rock group from Memphis. Hi Records liked what they heard from Smith and Sparks and promptly signed them to a deal to put out the Leviathan material, on there new label Mach Records. The label was a vehicle purely for the recordings of producers Kenny Smith and Bill Taylor Sparks. Whilst the Leviathan music went down well Hi was less impressed with the other bands, and the label proved short-lived. More recently, Smith and Sparks put out a compilation by another of their artists, Lou Pride, called Lou Pride: The Memphis/El Paso Sessions 1970-1973.

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