California Dreaming

Cate Brothers’ long-lost recording recalls a much different time

FILE PHOTO Twin brothers Earl and Ernie Cate of Springdale formed the Cate Brothers Band in the mid-1960s and went on to a career of some notoriety. A recently restored and remastered four-song set of theirs originally recorded in 1982 was just released on a local music label.
FILE PHOTO Twin brothers Earl and Ernie Cate of Springdale formed the Cate Brothers Band in the mid-1960s and went on to a career of some notoriety. A recently restored and remastered four-song set of theirs originally recorded in 1982 was just released on a local music label.

The sprawl of the music industry continues unabated.

The digital age's ongoing revolution has sped up the distribution of music, and bands can now provide songs directly to fans. That's put monolithic record labels on notice, and traditional record sales have fallen precipitously.

The advent of professional- or almost-professional quality editing software for home settings has altered the musical landscape, too. A laptop computer, and little else, will get you further in the music world than ever before.

In other words, music projects don't sit around; in the time it will take you to read this column, hundreds of songs will be loaded to the web.

But I was reminded of a much different musical world when I put in "The Malibu Sessions," a recently released EP from the Cate Brothers Band. Recorded in 1982 as a demo, the four songs by Springdale's most famous twin music makers were cut at the famous Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, Calif.

The story behind the release equals the music contained on it, and both are good.

First, a little back story might help. The Cate Brothers latched on early to the growing music scene in Northwest Arkansas, and they eventually followed a longtime friend and fellow Arkansan named Levon Helm to national exposure. Helm served as drummer and frequent vocalist for The Band, which had ties to Northwest Arkansas courtesy of Ronnie Hawkins, a Huntsville native. For a while, Hawkins operated The Rockwood Club in south Fayetteville with business partner Dayton Stratton. Soon-to-be rock and rockabilly stars such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison all played the Rockwood Club. So too did The Del-Rays, an early band including the Cate twins. As the Cate Brothers Band, they would later ink a deal with Electra/Asylum Records, land a Top 25 national hit in 1974, "Union Man," and serve as opening act during a tour by British glam rockers Queen.

By the early 1980s, the ever-changing music industry had changed again. The Hawks had separated from Hawkins to become The Band. They had served as the backing act for Bob Dylan, then forged ahead alone. But they'd already called it quits, saying farewell via a 1976 concert and a 1978 documentary, "The Last Waltz." Stratton, who brought many important acts to Northwest Arkansas, was gone, too. He died in a plane crash in 1974, and his son Randy Stratton took over the family's entertainment business.

Two of The Cate Brothers' record deals -- a multi-album one for Asylum and a one-off deal for Atlantic -- had already expired, too.

Which brings us to 1982.

The Cate Brothers booked some time at Shangri-La, which was designed by producer Rob Fraboni to suit the exacting standards of Bob Dylan and The Band. Ernie Cate, vocalist and keyboard player for the Cate Brothers, recalls his time in Los Angeles fondly. Bonnie Raitt played slide guitar on the album, and that was by proximity as much as it was anything else. She was dating Fraboni at the time, and they'd teamed up for work on several albums, including her Grammy-nominated 1982 release "Green Light." Garth Hudson, organ mastermind and resident musican genius/madman of The Band, joined in on keyboards. Randy Stratton, who watched the recording sessions, called the experience one of the greatest of his life.

And then nothing happened.

Nothing is a strong word, perhaps. The four-song demo got shopped around, and several labels took a hard look but eventually passed.

"They were really close to signing them. But they were all nervous, and it was post-disco. They didn't know what would sell. Bonnie (Raitt) lost her deal then, too," Stratton recalls.

The Cates would shortly thereafter team up with a reformatted Band, one without Robbie Robertson, and tour Japan. They returned home and spent years filling regional ballrooms with blues-laden Americana and dance-happy fans.

Which takes us to the present day.

Shangri-La Studios continues to operate, and wildly famous producer Rick Rubin now owns it. British vocalist Adele used Shangri-La to record her modern masterpiece "21," for instance.

The Cates retired from full-time playing in 2006, but they get together on stage about twice a year. Two gigs are on the schedule in the next few months -- Aug. 9 at Basin Spring Park in Eureka Springs and one at the end of September as part of the Bikes, Blues & BBQ motorcycle rally.

And they'll have a new record to offer when they do play. The original master tapes from the Shangri-La sessions were destroyed in a fire. Stratton kept one of the few copies. He loved it, even 30 years later. He decided it needed a release and turned it over to Darren Novotny for digital restoration. Recent technological advancements made the tape-to-digital transformation strong enough to support a release, Stratton says.

Local real estate man Mark Risk got involved too. He had released several records of local interest in recent years, including a pair from Earl Cate's current touring band, Earl & Them. The newly released "The Malibu Sessions" EP carries the banner of Risk's Swingin' Door Records. That entity is steeped in nostalgia, too: It's named after a long-gone music venue and club.

The only thing certain is that things keep changing, as they say. But music can take us back, even if for a few moments. The Cate Brothers provide a passage to 1982.

Kevin Kinder is assistant Features editor and writes regularly about music. Read his blog at nwatunedin.com.

NAN What's Up on 07/25/2014

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