I continued to seek advice from Ben as long as he was in Big Spring - but - when he moved to Nashville I lost track of him. I continued the studio in Abilene. I'm happy that I was a friend of the guy that recorded almost every country western star in Nashville in 1968 and later Years. I re-established contact with Ben in the eighties and we corresponded via tape (before the internet.)
Control Data’s financial arm, Commercial Credit thought I would be more help to them in opening a new office in Clovis, New Mexico. So - packed up all the recording stuff - household stuff - Kids and my great and understanding Wife and headed for the high desert! It took some doing climbing up and over the caprock 1. to get there - the station wagon made it fine. However, it did resemble the "Grapes Of Wrath” with a tall rubber plant sticking out the back (too tall to get in the wagon) and a rubber hose sticking out the window with a large funnel in the end of it feeding the wind down into a fish tank aerating it keeping our only pets at that time alive during the trip.
My uncle Silas Clark was a avid singer - sang country/gospel on local radio station back in the 30's. He was a part of a quartet named the "Stamps Quartet"®2. until the originator of the group, Virgil O. Stamps, died of a heart attack. Stamps had moved to Abilene, Texas to open a branch office for his songbooks.
 
     There was another person of interest here. Odis (Pop) Echols who now owned a radio station in Clovis. He was also active in the stamps quartet at the same time as my Uncle. They sang together at many touring events of the Stamps group. As my cousin relates Pop started his own quartette and was quite successful with that. When my Uncle Silas heard I was moving to Clovis he asked me to go see him.
The Stamps Quartette® with Virgil at its helm made the popular "foot stompin" religious music popular around the country. Various groups sprang up across the country. Virgil made it popular on all radio stations of the south and southwest.
I have a cousin, Marie (Clark) Kinard who at the time was a sixteen year old (perhaps prodigy) piano player. At one time she lived in Dallas and played for some of the thirty or more quartette's that were active at that time. She tells me of knowing Pop, his son and wife. At one point she and Pop worked together, he teaching singing and she piano.
 
     After moving to Clovis and meeting Pop, I would visit him, sit for long periods of time listening to him relate stories out of his past. He was interesting to talk with and I learned many things about his past. He and Charlie Phillips from a neighboring town wrote the hit song "Sugartime." It was a hit for a number of weeks in the "Top Forty"® when the McGuire Sisters recorded it.
In one of my visits I told him of my studio in Abilene and that I had brought the equipment with me with the intentions of continuing in the recording field. Little did I know that I had just moved into and area that would be off limits to other recording endeavors. An area that was already destined to enter the world of fame (see below 3). I still had not connected the dots. Having no place of my own to use my recording equipment, and, during a conversation it was mutually agreed that I could use a room at the radio station that was actually designed for recording equipment.
I had heard about Norman Petty from Ben Hall, as I have said. I had heard not more about him other than what Ben or others had told me before I moved to Clovis, just in passing conversations. However, that still didn't ring any bells. I knew of Buddy Holly but I still did not connect the two. I continued in a happy state of ignorance.