In 1960 I met a guy at church named Charlie Grable and he played a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. I was fascinated with the guitar and said I would like to learn how to play the instrument. Charlie said he would like to start a band and he needed a bass player. I didn’t know what a bass player was so Charlie said the bass player played an electric bass which was similar to an electric guitar but with only four strings, the strings were larger than guitar strings, the notes you played were low notes and finally, you played the bass notes one at a time in rhythm with the music. I said that sounds good, I’ll do it. {{< StoryImage id="showco-1965-the-pitmen-pitmen-1965-41" caption="Charlie Grable playing a Mosrite guitar in Robin Hood Bryant’s recording studio in Tyler Texas 1963. Russell Johnson is playing drums in the background." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} We found a used 1957 Fender Precision Bass and a Fender Bassman amplifier for sale for $400 (equivalent to $4,350 in 2025). I asked my father, who was very frugal with money, to help me finance the equipment and I was surprised (and I have been forever grateful) when he said he would, but I had to pay the money back. Charlie taught me some basic bass lines and I started to practice to learn how to play the bass. The first song I learned was Walk Don’t Run by the Ventures. I also listened countless times to Freddie King’s Let’s Hide Away and Dance Away album that was released in 1961 and learned all of the bass lines on the album.

{{< StoryImage id="showco-fender-precision-bass-1957" caption="Fender 1957 Precision Bass like the instrument that I purchased in 1960." credit="reverb.com" size="responsive" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-fender-bassman-amp" caption="Fender 1959 Bassman Amp Reissue like the amp that I purchased in 1960." credit="guitarcenter.com" size="responsive" >}}

## The DeVilles Charlie found a drummer, Larry Hillin, and a rhythm guitar player, David Beach, and we formed a band and named ourselves The DeVilles. Our first gig was for a dance at Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas on May 19, 1961. I only knew one song, Walk Don’t Run, so on the other songs that we played that night I would just play random notes on the bass. {{< StoryImage id="showco-the-devilles-1962" title="The DeVilles" caption="The DeVilles first gig at Highland Park High School May 19, 1961." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} The DeVilles did not have a separate sound system for the vocal mics. We purchased Shure 545S mics that we would plug into an input on the Fender guitar amplifiers. We played for various school and social club events around Dallas, and I earned enough money to pay my father back for the bass equipment. {{< StoryImage id="showco-shure-545s-microphonejpg" title="Shure 545S" caption="Shure 545S microphone. We used an unbalanced microphone cable with a ¼” phone jack connector to plug the mic into the Fender amplifier." credit="Tone House / reverb.com" size="medium" >}} In 1962 two new band members joined the DeVilles-Russell Johnson on drums and Bill Heald on rhythm guitar to replace Larry Hillin and David Beach who left the band for other opportunities. {{< StoryImage id="showco-the-devilles-3-2" caption="The DeVilles 1962-rear L to R, Charlie Grable-guitar and vocals, Rusty Brutsché-bass, front L to R, Bill Heald rhythm guitar, Russell Johnson-drums." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} ## The Pitmen 1963 In 1963 we became the house band for a large dance venue in Dallas called the Pit Club, and we changed our name to the Pitmen. The Pit Club was located in the Bronco Bowl bowling alley in Dallas and the venue had originally been built for competitive bowling with several bowling lanes located at the bottom of a bowl-shaped hall with stadium seating around the perimeter. A dance floor and proscenium stage had been constructed where the competitive bowling lanes had originally been installed and the facility was operated as a teen dance club and small venue for live performances.

{{< StoryImage id="showco-the-pitmen" caption="The Pitmen 1963 L to R, Charlie Grable, Rusty Brutsché, Russell Johnson, Bill Heald" credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-1965-the-pitmen-pitmen-1965-37" caption="The Pitmen in Robin Hood Bryant’s recording studio in Tyler, Texas in 1963. Charlie and I are playing our new Mosrite guitars." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}}

## SMU and George Cason at Security Engineering I graduated from high school in 1963 and entered Southern Methodist University to study mechanical engineering. I attended SMU primarily so I could stay in Dallas and continue to play bass with the Pitmen. SMU offered a five-year degree plan where you were either in school or working for a company twelve months a year. I was hired by Security Engineering, a division of Dresser Industries that designed and manufactured drilling bits for oil wells. George Cason was the VP of Engineering and I worked directly for him and he became an important mentor to me. George was a brilliant engineer, skilled in both mechanical and electrical engineering as well as the newly emerging field of computers and software. ## Blue Amp Sound System The Pit Club venue was too large to cover with sound by using the guitar amplifiers for the vocal mics, so I built a separate sound system for the vocals. It consisted of two vinyl covered wooden cabinets that I built in my dorm room at SMU-each cabinet with four 12” speakers that I bought at Crabtree Electronics in Dallas, Texas. The cabinets were deployed on each side of the stage powered by a 60 watt PA amplifier that my friend and mentor, George Cason, built for us. It had 6 microphone preamps in the same package as the 60 watt power amplifier. The components were all mounted in a blue steel chassis, and the unit became known as the Blue Amp. {{< StoryImage id="showco-blue-amp-1965" title="The Blue Amp" caption="The Blue Amp sound system used for Caravan of Stars Show 1965." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} ## Caravan of Stars 1965 {{< GalleryComponent id="1965-caravan-of-stars" >}} In 1965 the owner of the Pit Club booked the Caravan of Stars to play the venue. There were several well-known artists in the show lineup including Peter and Gordon. Peter was Peter Asher who would later become a famous record producer and the manager of James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Randy Newman and other top recording and touring musical artists. Other Caravan of Stars artists were Jackie DeShannon, The Drifters, Paul Peterson, Brian Hyland, The Executives, Mel Carter, Fred Hughes, Ronnie Dove, The Crystals, Tommy Quigley, and George McKinnon III (MC). For the Caravan of Stars show, I used the sound system that I had built for the Pitmen. Using the Blue Amp, I mixed the sound from the floor next to the front of the 5’ high stage. This was my first gig as a sound mixer and sound engineer.

{{< StoryImage id="showco-1965-caravan-of-stars-029-caravan-of-stars-65" caption="Mixing my first show as a sound engineer with the Blue Amp sound system for the Executives at The Pit Club 1965." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-1965-caravan-of-stars-036-caravan-of-stars-65" caption="Peter (Asher) and Gordon using the Blue Amp Sound System 1965." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}}

## Soul Society 1966 The Pit Club closed down as a teen dance venue shortly after the Caravan of Stars show and the Pitmen broke up as a group and Charlie Grable and Russell Johnson left the group. We formed a new group and Jack Calmes joined as the lead guitar player to replace Charlie Grable. In addition to being a musician, Calmes also operated a booking and talent agency named Showco, with his business partner, Angus Wynne. We added a new drummer, a Hammond M3 organ player and a 2-piece horn section with David Alley playing trumpet. We began playing soul music and changed our name to the Soul Society. {{< StoryImage id="showco-1-people-003-showco-people" title="Soul Society" caption="The Soul Society 1966, Bottom to Top, Jack Calmes, Bill Heald, Larry Vasseur, Richard Kinney, David Alley, Jerry Boen, Rusty Brutsché." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} ## Soul Society Sound System The Soul Society began playing for larger events, so I continued to expand and improve the sound system. We purchased four Altec Lansing A7 Voice of the Theater speakers. The A7 featured a high frequency horn and compression driver with a passive frequency dividing network and a ported bass enclosure with a front-loaded horn on the woofer. See [Altec Lansing’s Voice of the Theatre Speakers - What You Need to Know](https://audioxpress.com/article/altec-lansing-s-voice-of-the-theatre-speakers-what-you-need-to-know) (audioXpress, September 2020, Scott Dorsey). {{< StoryImage id="showco-altec-a7-speaker" title="Altec A7" caption="Altec A7 Voice Theater speaker 1966." credit="audioXpress.com / Scott Dorsey" size="medium" >}} I mounted the high frequency horn inside the port of the cabinet and I used the cabinets with the horn at the top and the woofer at the bottom of the cabinet and stacked two high on either side of the stage. I used four Dynaco Mark III 60-watt mono tube amplifiers to power the A7 cabinets, one for each cabinet. The Mark III amplifiers came in kit form so you had to assemble each one. See the [Dynaco Mark III amplifier documentation at Curcio Audio](https://curcioaudio.com/mk3des_3.htm). {{< StoryImage id="showco-dynakit-mark-iii-amp" title="Dynakit Mark III" caption="Dynaco Mark III 60 Watt Vacuum Tube Power Amplifier." credit="curcioaudio.com" size="medium" >}} I purchased two Altec Lansing 1567A audio mixers as the front end of the sound system. I mounted the two 1567A mixers, the four Dynakit 60 watt Mark III amps and a connector panel for the speaker cables in a vinyl covered wooden 19” equipment rack manufactured by Wilkins Trunk Company that had covers and wheels. This was the first sound system I built that was designed to be packed into a truck and moved from show to show. I used the Shure 545S microphones that I had originally purchased for the DeVilles. These microphones had an Amphenol connector that used a threaded ring to attach the connector and mic cable to the microphone. The Amphenol connector provided virtually no strain relief to the cable and the threaded ring was easily bent and damaged during use, while the connector offered no means to connect two cables together to add length to a cable. But this microphone and cable connector were the standard of the day in the 1960’s. Photos of the Altec 1567A mixer are in [Roots of Pro Audio: The Altec 1567A Mixer (1958)](https://fohonline.com/featured/roots-of-pro-audio-the-altec-1567a-mixer-1958/) (FOH Magazine, George Petersen, August 9, 2022).

{{< StoryImage id="showco-altec-1567a-mixer" caption="Altec 1567A Mixer 1966." credit="George Petersen / FOH Magazine" size="responsive" >}} {{< StoryImage id="showco-altec-1567a-mixer-rear" caption="Altec 1567A Mixer Rear View 1966." credit="George Petersen / FOH Magazine" size="responsive" >}}

{{< StoryImage id="showco-1-people-001-showco-people" caption="Rusty Brutsche playing a 1959 Gibson EB2 bass 1968." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} ## Nightclub Sound System Installations The Soul Society sound system worked very well and sounded great. In 1967 Jack Calmes and his partner, Angus Wynne, opened a club in Dallas named Soul City. I installed the sound system into the club using the same design as the sound system for the Soul Society- with four Altec A7’s, four Dynakit Mark III power amplifiers and two Altec 1567A mixers and Shure 545S microphones. This system was permanently installed into the club and was not portable. I operated the system on most nights and this was my first hands on experience working directly with many different artists as their soundman. Many famous artists played Soul City including Ike and Tina Turner, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, the jazz organist Jimmy Smith, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jackie Wilson and many others. Merle Kimmerly, who owned the Whisky-A-Go-Go club in Bossier City, Louisiana, came into Soul City and, after hearing the sound system, asked me to install one in his club. Employing the same design and equipment, I drove to Bossier City with my friend and mentor, George Cason, and installed the system into Merle’s club. By this time, I could build a Dynakit Mark III amplifier kit in my sleep. ## Beach Boys JBL Sound System 1967 In 1966 Jack Calmes and Angus Wynne had begun promoting a big party at Market Hall in Dallas for college kids attending the annual Texas OU football game at the Cotton Bowl. They would book a well-known artist like Chuck Berry or Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts to be the headliner and main attraction for the show. I provided the sound system for the event each year using the Soul Society sound system as the base system and then I would add to the system by renting more Altec A7 speakers from Carver Sound, the local Altec dealer, borrowing power amplifiers wherever I could find them. These events occurred annually for several years after 1965, and one year the Beach Boys were booked as the headliner. The Beach Boys brought their own sound system that had been designed and built for them by a sound engineer in California named John Judnich who later founded Tychobrae Sound. The system consisted of two cabinets on each side of the stage. Each cabinet had two JBL D130 15” woofers, a JBL mid-range horn with a JBL 375 compression driver and two JBL 075 ring radiator tweeters. The cabinets were powered by McIntosh vacuum tube power amplifiers. The mixing board was designed like a studio mixing console and was placed out in the audience with a multi-channel snake for the mic cable lines between the console and the stage. This was the best sounding and most advanced sound system that I had ever seen or heard. I was using a system of about 10-12 Altec A7 speakers for the other artists on the show, but the Beach Boys system was so much better than my system that there was no comparison. I made a mental note that someday I would use JBL components in a sound system. ## Jack Maxson Sometime around 1966 or 1967, the Soul Society went to a recording studio in Ft. Worth named Spot Productions to record an album. The studio was owned and operated by Jack Maxson who produced jingles for radio advertising and recorded some episodes of the radio superhero spoof series, “Chickenman.” Jack and I immediately found a connection because of our joint love of audio systems. We became friends and I worked for a short time in Jack’s studio because I had never been exposed to the recording side of the audio world. Jack also began working with me on developing improvements to the Soul Society sound system. ## Texas Instruments 1968-1970 I graduated from SMU in 1968 and was hired by Texas Instruments as a mechanical engineer and assigned to a group that was developing a laser range finder for a tank. The laser for the range finder used a YAG solid state laser that was pumped by a high-power Krypton arc lamp in an elliptical laser cavity. My job was to work on the design of the laser cavity and the water-cooling system for the Krypton arc lamp, cavity and YAG laser rod. I continued to play bass in the Soul Society and work on sound systems at night and on the weekends. ## Terry Bassett and Concerts West 1968 In about 1968, Terry Bassett with Concerts West contacted us about renting the Soul Society sound system for some shows at McFarlin Auditorium in Dallas with the group Spirit and also a show with the Grateful Dead. Concerts West originated in Seattle and the company was founded by the actor Danny Kaye. Concerts West was one of, if not the first, promoter to begin promoting shows in large arenas that could hold 10-15,000 people. Their first big act was Credence Clearwater Revival. Terry Bassett had moved from Seattle to Dallas to open a Dallas office for Concerts West. For the Dallas shows, I again rented additional A7 speaker cabinets from Carver Sound and borrowed power amplifiers wherever I could. Jack Maxson worked with me on the shows. The Grateful Dead had their own sound man traveling with them, “Bear” Owsley Stanley III. Bear was a unique individual; he told me that he could hear the electrons moving around in the power amp vacuum tubes and that our system sounded OK but his goal for the show was to have a “dimensional happening”. I have since learned that Bear was also known as “The Acid King” because he manufactured and distributed over 1.2 million doses of very high grade LSD in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the sixties. He later would serve two years in prison for making and distributing LSD. I am not sure if we achieved the dimensional happening goal, but the show went well and sounded good so I considered my first, and I think my only, experience with the Grateful Dead a success. The Grateful Dead built their own sound system in 1973, designed by Bear Owsley, that became famous as “The Wall of Sound”. See Chapter 9 for a detailed description of the Wall of Sound. {{< StoryImage id="showco-d2_terry_bassett0551_nx_bw_" caption="L to R, Burt Jacobs, Domenic Triano, Terry Bassett of Concerts West." credit="© Rusty Brutsche Archive" size="medium" >}} ## Woodstock and Pop Festivals 1969 The year 1969 was the year of the outdoor pop festival. The Atlanta Pop Festival was held July 4-5,1969, followed by Woodstock on August 15, 1969, then New Orleans Pop Festival, The Isle of Wight Pop Festival in the UK and the Lewisville Pop Festival, all on August 30-Sept 1, 1969. These pop festivals were huge shows held in open fields with audiences of 100,000 to 500,000 people and the requirements for the sound system to cover such vast audiences was way beyond anything I had ever contemplated. Bill Hanley of Hanley Sound provided the sound systems for all of the pop festivals held in the US in the summer of 1969. Hanley is widely considered to be the father of concert sound- and rightly so. His company was located in Boston, and he started doing concert sound in the 1950’s. He used large Altec speaker systems that he purchased second hand from movie theaters that were being refurbished. He was the first to use scaffolding to elevate the speaker cabinets and he did some of the first outdoor music festivals like the Newport Jazz Festival. He used large 350 watt McIntosh tube power amplifiers to power the Altec speaker systems and Altec 1567 mixers located out in the audience in front of the speakers to mix and control the system. He was one of the first to develop separate stage monitor systems so the artists could hear themselves sing and play their instruments. When the pop festivals of 1969 arrived, Hanley Sound was the only audio company that had the equipment and the experience to do the shows. {{< StoryImage id="showco-bill-hanley-woodstock-1969" title="Hanley at Woodstock" caption="Bill Hanley’s sound system at Woodstock August 15, 1969 providing sound for 500,000 people." credit="From online source" size="large" >}} When Jack Calmes and his partner Angus Wynne saw what was happening with the pop festivals, they decided to promote one in Dallas. They chose a site at a speedway in Lewisville, Texas for the show, and they hired Hanley Sound to provide the sound system and Hanley charged a whopping fee of $25,000 for the job (equivalent to about $222,000 in 2025)! The show was not a financial success for Jack and Angus because of many unexpected expenses that were common to festival producers in that era. But Jack Calmes took a mental note that Hanley was paid $25,000 and probably made more money than any other participant in the event. I attended the Lewisville Pop Festival and actually played bass during a set onstage with the Soul Society. Jack Calmes managed Freddie King. Jack brought Freddie to the Lewisville show, and we played with him as his backup band. I was really impressed with Hanley’s sound system, as I had never seen or heard anything on that scale. He had many large Altec bass speaker cabinets and large Altec multicell high frequency horns placed on scaffolding 20 or 30 feet up off the ground. He was using 14 McIntosh 350 watt tube power amplifiers to power the speakers. The McIntosh amplifiers were located under the scaffolding towers in makeshift rooms constructed of plastic sheeting wrapped around the towers- with multiple window air conditioning units mounted to cool the amps baking in the Texas heat. Long runs of speaker cable connected the power amplifiers to the bass speakers and horns, and everything appeared to be hard wired in place. Occasionally the sound would cut off completely. Technicians would scamper up the scaffolding with soldering irons, and the sound would eventually come back on. Jack Maxson also attended the show and saw Hanley’s sound system. Neither Maxson nor myself had ever heard of Bill Hanley before he started doing the pop festivals in the summer of 1969, and we were not aware of what he had been doing prior to the pop festivals and we did not see another Hanley show after the Lewisville show. The pop festival era ended as abruptly as it began because the logistics of providing food, security and bathroom facilities as well as parking and traffic management in an open field proved to be overwhelming and not practical. Promoters moved to using outdoor football stadiums as venues for shows because the aforementioned facilities were already present in a football stadium. ## Founding of Showsound, aka Showco Sound, March 3, 1970 Shortly after the Lewisville show, Jack Calmes proposed an idea to me and Jack Maxson that we go into business developing and renting sound systems for the rock concert touring industry. Calmes had formed a booking agency, Showco, a few years earlier with Angus Wynne. They had been booking bands including a band that Calmes managed named Bloodrock that had a hit record. Calmes had toured with Bloodrock around the US to promote the record and had made many contacts in the process. He also had seen the burgeoning interest and following for rock artists and rock shows, and he saw the potential for rock artists touring from city to city. The rock touring industry that we know today started in the late 1960’s and was given momentum by the pop festivals in 1969. Terry Bassett was also continuing to call and rent our sound system. He was wanting to start booking shows into larger venues like the 10,000-seat Memorial Auditorium in Dallas. Maxson and I knew that we would need a to build a new sound system for shows of that scale. On March 3, 1970, Rusty Brutsché, Jack Maxson and Jack Calmes incorporated a company, Showsound, Inc., for the purpose of entering the concert sound touring rental business. Calmes would be CEO and responsible for Sales and Marketing. Maxson and Brutsché would be responsible for designing, building and operating the sound systems. Since we had no money and no revenues, we had to start out as low cost as possible. Calmes and Angus had an office in The Quadrangle in Dallas that they used to operate Showco, the booking agency. Angus decided about this time to leave Showco, so he and Calmes parted ways. Calmes remained in the Showco office and continued to book bands and manage Bloodrock and Freddie King. He also began to book the rentals for the new company, Showsound, out of the Showco offices. Because the phone was answered as Showco and Calmes used Showco contract forms for the early Showsound rentals, the sound company was always known as Showco; the Showsound name was never used. We later purchased the Showco name and trademark from Angus Wynne for $100,000 which was enough to pay back the loss of his family’s investment in the Louisville pop festival. Maxson offered his garage and an extra room in his house on West Beverly Drive in Dallas to be used as a workshop to build the first sound system. ## Decision to Use JBL Components in Showco Sound Systems As much as Maxson and I appreciated the work that Bill Hanley had done to create his large sound systems, we knew that we would never use the large Altec speaker systems in our company. The Altec bass cabinets and multicell horns had been designed in the 1930’s and 1940’s for reproducing sound in movie theaters and they were designed to be permanently mounted behind the screen in the theater. The cabinets and horns were enormous and not practical for touring except for the smaller A7 cabinets that I had used in the Soul Society sound system. See [Altec Lansing’s Voice of the Theatre Speakers - What You Need to Know](https://audioxpress.com/article/altec-lansing-s-voice-of-the-theatre-speakers-what-you-need-to-know) (audioXpress, September 2020, Scott Dorsey) for the 1970 Altec Voice of the Theater speaker systems spec sheet. {{< StoryImage id="showco-altec-speaker-systems-1970" title="Altec Spec Sheet" caption="Altec Voice of the Theater Speaker Systems 1970." credit="audioXpress.com / Scott Dorsey" size="medium" >}} I knew from seeing the Beach Boys sound system a few years earlier that I wanted to use JBL equipment exclusively in the sound systems of our new company. Maxson and I also knew we wanted the most efficient speaker components available. JBL used Alnico magnets and 4 inch edge wound voice coils in their speakers and compression drivers that provided a 3db increase in efficiency over components with regular iron magnets. A 3db efficiency increase provides double the acoustic output. During this time before the advent of high-power amplifiers and transducers, 3db was a big deal. In 1970, JBL had just created a professional products division and had released a catalog of professional bass cabinets, speakers, high frequency horns and high frequency compression drivers that were available to be purchased individually as components - so you could build your own custom sound systems. In early February, 1970, after Terry Bassett had called and booked our sound system for the Leslie West show on February 23, 1970, Maxson and I decided we needed a new sound system for our new sound company to replace the Soul Society system that I had been using for the shows for Terry Bassett at McFarlin auditorium. I called JBL and I was referred to an applications engineer named Walter Dick and asked Walter for his recommendation for JBL equipment to build a sound system suitable for live rock music performances……….(see Chapter 1)

Showco History