Grits & Gravy - Clinton

Grits & Gravy was a historic recording studio housed in the building that once was the Hilltop Theatre. Before it was demolished in 2013, the structure also served as Mississippi College’s Choctaw Band Hall. The MC president’s home was subsequently built on the site. Bob McRee, Cliff Thomas and Ed Thomas operated the studio, working with producer Huey Meaux and others. Among the artists who recorded here were Dorothy Moore, Junior Parker, Barbara Lynn, Freddy Fender and the GRAMMY-nominated duo Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson.

Grits & Gravy is a tasty down-home dish prepared in many Southern kitchens, but for several years it was also the name of a recording studio where Bob McRee, Cliff Thomas and Ed Thomas concocted a musical menu for a wide array of singers and bands. The tapes they recorded were delivered to record labels and pressing plants across the country to be served on different kinds of platters—45 rpm vinyl records, along with some that appeared on 33 rpm LP albums. The music trade magazine Billboard reported on October 21, 1967, that Texas producer Huey P. Meaux had opened Grits & Gravy. McRee, the engineer, and the Thomas brothers were the primary songwriters and arrangers and ran the local operation. The trio had formed the Mississippi Artist Corporation (MAC) in 1964 after working with Johnny Vincent’s Ace Records in Jackson. They converted the vacant Hilltop Theatre here into a spacious studio where they would work late into the night even though they sensed the space was haunted by the sounds of footsteps. McRee, a Mississippi College alum, also built studios at his home and at other locations.

Working as MAC or as Grits & Gravy Productions, the team recorded Dorothy Moore, Tommy Tate, Tim Whitsett & the Imperial Show Band and other Jackson acts, along with sessions by singers imported by Meaux, Bill Lowery and other producers, released on various labels including Atlantic, ABC, MGM and Mercury. Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson scored two Top Ten R&B hits, “Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries” (which garnered two GRAMMY nominations) and “Lover’s Holiday,” and 45s by Barbara Lynn and Joe Odom also made the charts. Many songs bore the composer credit Thomas-McRee-Thomas and some were recorded in other studios. Ed Thomas played piano, and other session musicians (many of whom also worked in Jackson’s Malaco studios at times) included Jerry Puckett, Jimmy Jones, Jimmy Brinson, Jay Stricker, Tim and Carson Whitsett, various members of the Imperial Show Band, and a horn section from Jackson State (Charles Fairley and Hense Powell, sometimes with Eddie Joe Robinson and Willie Polk). Dorothy Moore, Rosemary Taylor, Petsye McCune and Fern Kinney often added background vocals.

In 1969 Whitsett disbanded his group and joined MAC as general manager before moving on to Stax Records, and later to Malaco. Meaux’s input was musically productive, but he was in and out of trouble with the law and with his musical associates, including the Grits & Gravy staff, who parted ways with him. Cliff and Ed Thomas started a soul radio station, WKXI, in 1971, and continued to work in their family’s business, Norman Shirtmakers, as they had been all along. They remained active in music, as did McRee, who did further studio construction and worked for Mississippi ETV and his own business enterprises. Mississippi College began using the building for its marching band hall and later for its singing group, the MC Naturals.

Text by Jim O’Neal. Research Assistance: Johnny Sumrall, Dolores Thomas Ulmer, Michael McRee, Marsha Barham, Dorothy Moore, Rosemary Taylor Woullard, Hense Powell, Wolf Stephenson, Bob McGrath, Mississippi College, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Larry Morrissey.

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