After the usual introductions, the group quickly got down to going through the material they were going to record at the session. Charlie soon learned that Holly had a dry sense of humor, after he hummed the opening guitar notes that he wanted to be used on the introduction of “SUGARTIME” to Holly. Instead of playing the notes that Phillips had sang to him on his lead guitar, Holly grinned to everyone and proudly said “ I can do that”, at which time he vocally mimicked young Charlie’s notes. Everyone had a big laugh with Holly’s attempt at comic relief . It was decided that the “A” side of the record , would be a country weeper called ”ONE FADED ROSE”., upon which Buddy Holly played both lead guitar and sang vocal harmony with Charlie. “SUGARTIME” was considered to be the “B” side of the record !!!

At the commencement of the session, Petty had to tell the loud voiced lad to quit singing so loudly, as he did not have to try to sing over the sound of a farm tractor’s motor. Norman assured young Phillips that he could control the volume and level of his powerful voice with his mixing console. Charlie now recalls no one but Norman Petty liked his lengthy vocal intro on the word “Well” at the start of “SUGARTIME” . After some discussion, Norman and Charlie prevailed with their wishes on the opening musical bars of “SUGARTIME”. Petty soon placed Charlie Phillips ‘s master recording with Coral Records. It quickly charted on the national C&W record charts , establishing young Charlie as a new country music star.

Due to the acceptance of “SUGARTIME” in the country music genre, Norman Petty convinced the powers in control of Coral Records to cover the record for the “Pop” music market. Bob Thiele quickly had his highly successful record act , the McGuire sisters, record a cover version of “SUGARTIME, which used the same intro notes that Charlie had asked Buddy Holly to play on Phillip’s original version of the song. The McGuire Sisters also utilized Phillip’s extended “Well” on the on the opening vocal intro.

The McGuire’s recording of “SUGARTIME” skyrocketed to the number one position on the Billboard national popular music charts throughout the world, and quickly became a multi-million record seller. This recorded success immediately established young Phillips as the writer of a song that he would be forever identified with for the rest of his musical career. “SUGARTIME” is now recognized as a popular music standard of contemporary music from the 20^th century. It has been used on countless radio and TV national commercials that have hawked everything from breakfast cereals to vitamin supplements.

In an effort to cash in on Charlie’s new found success , Coral quickly scheduled his next recording sessions in New York City to be conducted by Milton Delugg, the head of the “Tonight Show” orchestra at that time. The first release was successful with the release of Charlie’s rerecording of his composition “BE MY BRIDE” racing up the country music charts. Subsequent New York sessions failed to garnish any major chart actions, which quickly soured young Charlie on the “Big Apple” style of recording country music.

As soon as his recording commitment to New York’s Coral label were fulfilled, the “Sugartimer” headed back to Norman Petty’s Clovis, New Mexico studio where he got serious about recording country music.

The new Petty sessions resulted in Charlie being signed to Columbia records where he enjoyed chart action on “WELCOME TO MY WEDDING” and a sequel to his monster song “SUGARTIME“, which was called “NO MORE SUGARTIME”. While working on these sessions with Norman Petty, they came up with the idea for “SUGARTIME TWIST”, which Petty immediately pitched to the McGuire Sisters, who scored a top twenty popular music hit on Phillip’s former label, Coral Records.

Columbia records charted during his five year tenure in Nashville. Phillips felt they were giving him mediocre songs to record, which resulted in lower positions on the national country music charts. This lack of quality material led to dissatisfaction by Charlie, which made him become discouraged with his prospects in Nashville.

To add to his concerns about the material that was being assigned to him by the A&R people in Nashville, he was highly upset that they turned down his manager’s composition of ‘WELCOME TO MY WORLD”, on which he had recorded the very first “demo” session of for presentation to Columbia records. After the song was rejected for recording consideration by the Columbia big wigs, the legendary Jim Reeves heard Charlie’s original demo session of the song. As they say the rest is history, as Jim Reeves recording of the song became a country music classic in the ensuing years. Charlie's original acetate demo of "Welcome To My World" is included in the new CD compilation "Full Circle".

During the time he was under contract to Columbia, Charley was highly active in the radio broadcasting business due to his involvement with Buddy Holly’s former manager, “Pappy” Dave Stone, in his new home town of Amarillo, Texas. His other interest were very lucrative for Phillips, which made his annual trek to Nashville to record less important in the overall grand scheme of his life’s endeavors. It was at this time that he decided to

become more pro-active in the production of his records. He decided that he would self produce his own future recordings upon the completion of his Columbia contract.

There were only two country artist signed to Reprise, via Jimmy Bowen, who has was responsible for Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra’s moribund recording careers to be resurrected on Sinatra’s Reprise Record label.

For reasons seemingly known only to Mr. Sinatra, he ordered Jimmy Bowen to cancel the recording contracts of Charlie Phillips and Hank Thompson who were contracted to Reprise Records. It was his mandate that he did not record or release hillbilly records on his prized record label. Despite having a record that was unquestionably a country music smash record, as it was charting in all major markets, Sinatra ordered it pulled from distribution and sent Charlie his release from his Reprise contract.

After the Reprise debacle, Charlie was even more disillusioned with the record business, so he concentrated his energies on his real estate investments and radio station work where he was recognized as one of the top country music disc jockeys in the nation . Charlie had been named in a national survey as “MR D.J. USA”, which was the ultimate accolade for his broadcasting endeavors. At this point in the middle 1970’s all recording activities by Charlie were put on hold due to his lack of interest in the required politics.

During these recording locust years for Charlie, Norman Petty had also been concentrating on his radio stations that he had invested heavily in the early 1970’s. In fact he was doing little recording in his world famous studios, as the day to day operation of his radio business was practically consuming all of his energies, which left little time for his creative side to make new hit recordings in Clovis, New Mexico.It was during this hectic time that Norman approached Charlie about taking over the management of his AM/FM radio stations and convert it to a country music format in Clovis.

After seriously considering Petty’s offer for him to move to Clovis and take over the operation of the radio stations, Charley decided to stay where he was due to his real estate and radio interest. Their paths would not cross again until both of them had divested themselves of their radio commitments in the late 1970’s. At this point in time, Norman Petty had sold all of his interest in his radio station operation, which enabled him to invest in the latest state of the art twenty four track recording equipment which he had installed at his opulent Mesa Theater concert hall and recording complex.

With a newly found passion for recording again, both Charlie and Norman’s spirits were soaring as they anticipated their return to the highly competitive recording scene. It was also decided that Jon Sisco would be the producer of all the sessions, with the valuable assistance of Billy Stull, who also owned a small studio in Amarillo at the time. Stull was the session leader and had a major hand in arranging all the songs, as well as assisting Norman Petty with the final mixes on the record sessions. No one knew it at the time, that Billy Stull would soon be the heir apparent to the legendary Petty recording studios.

The songs recorded on this compilation were recorded between 1980 and early 1983, until the time that Norman was stricken with leukemia . Due to his diminished health situation, no further recording sessions were conducted at Petty’s recording studios. The Clovis sessions resulted in four songs , “GOING AWAY”, “LOVE QUEEN “,“SHAMBLES OF MY HOME”, and a new version of “SOUVENIERS OF SORROW” being released worldwide on Mike Curb's and Ray Ruff’s OAK RECORDS out of Hollywood.

The recollections of these sessions for this writer are many, as I recall Norman’s constant amazement at the power and range of Phillip’s four full octave vocal range, which enabled Charlie to sing all of his own background harmony parts, from high tenor to the bass parts of a vocal quartet. Norman would always grin when he referred to Charlie as “One Take Charlie” due to his uncanny ability to capture his vocal part on the first recording take. Because of his perfect pitch, and his ability to imprint what he had just sung, Charlie could quickly lay down his accompanying harmony vocal parts.

On some of these sessions he was singing anywhere from two to four different vocal parts, at which Norman would shake his head and say “It sounds like the CHARLIE PHILLIPS SINGERS are in very fine voice tonight”. Several times while recording Charlie’s vocals, Norman would impart to those in attendance that Phillips had the most powerful voice of any one he had ever recorded , due to his immense vocal range.

Prior to Norman Petty untimely death, at age 57, in August of 1984, six completed masters had been recorded and mixed by the Charlie Phillips team, while some dozen more had the production on them completed, but they had never been finalized with a mix down of the finished product. Some of the titles that were recorded at the last sessions were, “BROTHER JUKEBOX”, “LONELY WOMEN”, “MORE AND MORE”, which years later became hit records for Mark Chestnut, Steve Wariner and Charlie Pride, while Charlie Phillips’ unmixed versions languished in Petty's tape vaults.

In recent years several international reissue record companies have mined the Norman Petty vaults for anything that was recorded at Petty’s world famous Clovis studio. There has been literally scores of CD’s re-released all over the world. Several different reissue labels have inquired to Charlie as to whether or not he had a copy of his landmark recording of “SUGARTIME” and “ONE FADED ROSE” which featured Buddy Holly. When told that he had a copy of the original master that Norman had given to him in the early 1980’s they were ecstatic. Upon learning that there was enough material in Petty’s vaults to complete a full CD if it was mixed down, they insisted that it be finished so they could release it worldwide.

Phillips completed the full circle of his recording career with his return to Clovis, where he started out as a teenager filled with dreams of his finding fame and fortune as a country music recording artist. It has been written that you can’t go home again. Charlie Phillips did ! His recording odyssey of some twenty five years took him to the finest recording studios in the world located in New York City, Nashville, and Hollywood, which resulted in over eighteen (18) recordings that charted on the national `country music charts, but his last recordings were done at Norman Petty’s legendary Clovis studio.

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All Rights Reserved: Sugartime Music Group © 2009

All Rights Reserved: Sugartime Music Group © 2009