Bill in his teen years in Houston, Texas

Sonobeat Recording Company co-founder Bill Josey Sr. passed away on September 28, 2006. Born in Houston, Texas, on December 14, 1921, Bill was the only child of James and Grace Josey. He attended public schools in Houston and the University of Texas in Austin, where he earned a masters degree in psychology. It also was at the University of Texas that Bill met his future bride, Marie Joyce.

During the Second World War, Bill served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, commanding a Patrol Torpedo boat in the Pacific theater. Returning from active duty in 1946, he married Marie in Miami, and on completion of his military service, the couple relocated to Houston. Their first child, Bill Jr., was born in 1947, and in 1948, the young family moved to Galveston, where Bill attended the University of Texas Medical School. His medical education was permanently interrupted when he was bedridden by mumps, which he contracted from Bill Jr., so the family moved back to Houston. There, Bill opened a solo psychology practice catering to the booming post-war industrial complex -- chemical and oil companies, in particular -- along the Texas Gulf Coast, who were caught up in the 1950s Red Scare and who, out of fear of widespread infiltration of communists into U.S. businesses, engaged Bill to screen potential employees with a battery of personality and occupational tests. By 1958, the Red Scare was over and the previous high demand for the services of industrial psychologists had waned.

Bill Sr. and children Jack, Jan (standing in back), Bill Jr., and Deb (circa 1969-'70)

So the Josey family, which by then had grown to four children, moved to Austin in 1959, where Bill began a series of career changes that led to work in radio ad sales and, eventually, to the position of station manager of KAZZ-FM in Austin, where Bill Jr. was a DJ. In '66, Bill encouraged son Jack, then 13, to become the youngest working DJ in Texas radio, beginning Jack's long career as a prominent Central Texas radio personality and entrepreneur.

As described in Sonobeat's history, Bill Sr. enjoyed producing and hosting live remote broadcasts of jazz, pop, and rock groups on KAZZ-FM, and from those connections, he and Bill Jr. formed Sonobeat in early 1967.

An amateur musician, Bill developed theories about the primal function and importance of the "beat" and rhythm in music, which were reflected in his preference for jazz, rock, and R&B. He loved meeting, encouraging, and producing aspiring artists and actively fostered the growth of the Austin music scene from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, during which he produced hundreds of recordings with dozens of Central Texas' most promising and talented songwriters, singers, and musicians. A staunch advocate of freedom of artistic expression, Bill stood as a character witness at the drug bust trial of 13th Floor Elevators' front man Roky Erickson.

As a producer and recording engineer, Bill pushed Sonobeat's modest equipment beyond reasonable expectations, always finding unique ways to record in challenging conditions. Always resourceful, during Sonobeat's early years, when it had no recording studio of its own, Bill arranged for Sonobeat to use a variety of Austin nighclubs (from the Swingers Club in North Austin to the iconic Vulcan Gas Company in downtown Austin) and even a church auditorium as recording venues. One of Bill's notable wild experiments was recording progressive rock group Mariani in an open field on a ranch outside Austin, providing the musicians a rare opportunity to perform uninhibited. With Bill Jr., he built Sonobeat's two custom recording and mixing consoles and steel plate reverb. Bill also was an early adopter of quadraphonic recording techniques, outfitting the Sonobeat studios with a CBS/Sony SQ encoding system.

Bill relaxing at "Blue Hole Sounds" near Libery Hill, home base for Sonobeat from '73 through '76

In mid-'73, Bill moved the Sonobeat studios from Austin to the outskirts of Liberty Hill in the beautiful Central Texas hill country, converting an old, rural AME stone church into a comfortable and inviting recording environment, "Blue Hole Sounds", that served as Sonobeat's home base until Bill's death.

Under the huge liveoak trees surrounding the old church, Bill threw a Texas-size barbecue party in May 1976 for his oldest daughter, Deb, on her graduation from the University of Texas. Two months later he walked his youngest daughter, Jan, down the aisle for her wedding only days before he checked himself into the Veterans' Administration Hospital in nearby Temple. Bill succumbed to lymphocarcinoma at the Veterans' Hospital on September 28, 1976.

Songwriter Herman M. Nelson recalls, "Bill was not only a good friend, he was a bright light with a lot of good ideas. His head swam with them. He was a man truly ahead of his time."