General

By Steven Kahn Phoenix, Arizona was host to an exciting musical climate in the 1950’s and 1960’s, which included a mix of rock n’ roll, R&B, and country music, along with a small number of recording studios and record labels.  Floyd Ramsey owned Ramsey’s Recording Studio at 3703 N. 7th Street, which he renamed Audio Recorders in late 1957.  He also owned several record labels including Liberty Bell and Ramco, and was a co-owner of Rev.  Local Arizona-area artists who recorded at Ramsey’s studio included Sanford Clark, Duane Eddy, Skip and Flip, Roosevelt Nettles, Wayne Newton, Donnie Owens, the Tads, the La Chords, the Vice-Roys, Brother Zee and the Decades, Donna [...]

Every day is vinyl-record day for advocates of this form of pop culture who collect the pressed memories of the past. However, at least in the county of San Luis Obispo, Calif., Vinyl Record Day is officially August 12—the date most often identified as the day Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and the date the non-profit Vinyl Record Day organization set aside to “preserve the cultural influence, the recordings and the cover art of the vinyl record.” For those of us who grooved to the recorded sounds augmented by the platter chatter of disc jockeys who spun virgin vinyl, those years represented a golden era that Cds and iPods just can’t [...]

I know from this overdeveloped vantage point, it's hard for you to imagine a time when most of Phoenix looked like a stretch of unexplored highway. Equally inconceivable is that Phoenix could be an epicenter for much-sought-after doo-wop, R&B, soul and funk. That's where this new compilation culled by local music historian and archivist John P. Dixon comes in. "Sha-Boom Bang: Vintage Arizona Doo Wop, R&B, Soul, & Funk: 1956-71" brings together 30 largely unavailable sides on the Liberty Bell, Rev and Ramco labels , recorded at Phoenix's famed Audio Recorders on Seventh Street. At 6 p.m. Saturday, May 31, Dixon will put on his "Johnny D" DJ hat and join [...]

"Sha-Boom Bang: Vintage Arizona Doo Wop, R&B, Soul, & Funk: 1956-71" celebrates Phoenix, Arizona's golden age of soul. On Saturday, May 31, John "Johnny D" Dixon, producer of the compilation, will join DJ Smite at Zia Records (1850 W. Camelback) for a special all-vinyl DJ set featuring classic 45s featured on the new collection. Music starts at 6 PM. Visit www.ziarecords.com and www.azmusicdude.com for more information.

Sun Studios in Memphis. Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama. Sound City in Van Nuys. Audio Recorders of Arizona. One look at the client ledger and it’s impossible to deny the impact Floyd Ramsey’s compact downtown Phoenix studio had on the music of the Southwest in the 50s and 60s: Lee Hazlewood, Duane Eddy, Al Casey, Skip & Flip, Dyke and the Blazers, Goose Creek Symphony…and Waylon Jennings and Sanford Clark. Zia Records, Arizona’s oldest and largest independent record store chain, has teamed with Arizona historian and archivist John P. Dixon to launch the Audio Recorders Archive project, a series of exclusive limited-edition 45 RPM singles. On April 19th, Record Store [...]

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You know him as Johnny D., as in Mostly Vinyl with Johnny D., the radio program on KWSS that celebrates rare and obscure soul and funk. But John Dixon is also an obsessive collector of recorded music — mostly on vinyl — as well as a record producer, a former A&R man, and a musician. Besides infusing the often bland local airwaves with a lot of soul, Dixon has made a career of archiving, documenting, and reissuing Arizona music by local artists like Floyd Ramsey, Loy Clingman, Eddie and Ernie, and Dyke and the Blazers — artists lucky enough to own their recorded tape masters. The longtime Tempe resident took some [...]

I’m embarrassed that I didn’t get to this story sooner, but Arizona music historian John “Johnny D” Dixon is back on the FM dial. Mostly Vinyl with Johnny D aired it seventh show Sunday night, on indie station KWSS 106.7. The show runs for three hours, and during this previous Sunday night’s broadcast, Dixon was all over the map, dropping some jams by AZ country-rockers Goose Creek Symphony, a reggae ’45 set, golden vocals from Russ Arno, stunning soul from the likes of Donnie Elbert, Eddie Bo, and Bettye Swan and rounding things out with indie-rock from David Bazan and Those Darlins’. […]

I saw an anomaly at a Phoenix hip-hop show recently — a 58-year-old guy onstage playing classic funk 45s — no scratching, no mixing, just one song after another. Two twentysomething DJs, ChaseOne and Smite, stood by John Dixon, better known as Johnny D, nodding to the beat and looking enviously through Dixon’s box of vinyl seven-inches before playing their own sets, opening for Z-Man at the Brickhouse on a Saturday night in late March. Johnny D is renowned locally as Arizona’s unofficial music historian. But lately, the guy who until recently hadn’t spun records since his days at Tempe High and lives at home with his mom has become a [...]