The Hazards are among the bands featured on a new compilation of local groups called “Days of a Quiet Sun,” along with other soul, blues and folk tracks. (Photo courtesy Feel It Records)
"Days of a Quiet Sun,” a compilation on Feel It Records, gives pioneering Richmond music producer Martin Gary his proper due. “This isn’t just great music from the ‘60s,” says Sam Richardson, the owner of Feel It, which regularly issues new music by regional punk and psych groups such as Slump and The Cowboys. “It also documents a little-known and very cool piece of Richmond history.”
Martin Gary wasn’t like other kids growing up in the 1960s. His family owned the Richmond-area record store chain Gary’s, and he became involved in music early, managing a local folk singer while he was still in junior high school.
“I worked at my father’s store and kept up with what was going on all over town, and I was always interested in recording,” says Gary, 71, who lives in Hanover County today, semiretired and working in real estate. In 1966, when local recording studios were scarce, he started taking bands into Washington, D.C., and Baltimore studios, recording and releasing independent records that were distributed through his father’s store.
Image courtesy Feel It Records
“We would usually press 500 to 1,000 copies, and I would plug them at the different radio stations around town, and in D.C.,” he recalls.
In the process, Gary documented the local rock, soul, blues and folk scenes, says archivist Brent Hosier of the Arcania International label. Arcania previously released some of that music on other compilations.
“Marty operated in two worlds, business and bohemia,” Hosier says, “and he ended up recording important area musicians, like Larry McCullough of the Bosom Blues Band, who would otherwise have gone undocumented. He had his ear on the frat house as well as the coffeehouse, and those worlds usually didn’t meet.”
Bosom Blues, King Edward and His B.D.’s, the Barracudas, and the Hazards — a band made up of Thomas Jefferson, Douglas Freeman and J.R. Tucker high school students — were among the popular locals Gary recorded. While the output failed to chart nationally, a few 45s won airplay on Richmond station WLEE. One was “Gotta Be a Reason” by an interracial Richmond soul band called Bernard Smith & Jokers Wild, issued on Gary’s Groove label.
Today, these records command high three-figure prices, and musicologists have celebrated the Hazards’ growling “Hey Joe” as perhaps the best rendition of that oft-recorded garage-rock chestnut.
Also highly valued is the brooding psychedelic ballad “Nights for Laughing” by Group Nine, a Virginia Beach band. “I traveled to the beach [in 1967] and saw them and loved their sound,” Gary says.
Gary later cut a striking version of the Nine’s “Days of a Quiet Sun” with the Barracudas — a Highland Springs group that won a Virginia Jaycees “Battle of the Bands” competition in 1968. The track is psychedelic ear candy that, as they say, sounds good on headphones.
The anthology includes an unreleased 1973 acoustic cut from fingerpicking legend Duck Baker, along with alternate takes and instrumental mixes. The Feel It release is the first time Gary’s work has been collected in one place.
“Marty still had all of his original master tapes and held all of the song publishing, making this easy to put together as far as these kinds of projects go,” Richardson says.
For the producer, who continued to dabble in music into the ’90s, this look back has been humbling and gratifying.
“I don’t know why I held on to everything,” he says. “It was important to me. I’m glad I did.”
