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Download the Paul Dougherty cd Grace Under Water 320 KB Quality, 126 MB,
for free here.

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Paul Dougherty - In My Living Room

Chilhowie

The Uninsurables

Tommy Dougherty

The cd Sail Away

Thomas Dougherty played soul music in Houston during the 1960s before moving to Nashville, Tennessee where he sang and recorded in the clubs and studios around Music City, USA. Tommy Dougherty sang numerous commercials and sound-alikes, but his soulful and funky recordings of his own music stand out the most.

Tommy Dougherty packed up the family and moved from Houston to Nashville in 1972 after playing the top nightclubs in blues and soul bands during the 1960s. He started playing music in the 1950s as many other teenagers did then, buying a guitar after hearing Elvis Presley. He started out playing at strip clubs and other colorful dives in Houston. By the 1960s, Tommy was singing and playing Hammond B3 organ 5 or 6 nights a week at packed ballrooms and clubs in Houston with some of the best musicians in Texas.

At the age of 31, Tommy Dougherty was playing in Nashville at the Backstage with Clarence Perry and the Mercy Blues, at that time the only rock n' roll bar in country town. Playing packed houses of around 600 people a night 5 nights a week for a couple of years during the roaring early 70s - what would shortly afterwards become the inspiration for the song Waydown Club, he worked on his craft and started getting attention from the music industry side.

After turning down various offers and doing some writing for the House of Cash (Johnny's place), he signed an artist contract at Audio Media Studios because he could record the music he played - blues and soul.

Now for those of you who haven't heard of Audio Media, those who were never involved in the Nashville music business or never lived in Nashville, there's something of a story there. Audio Media was a new studio in 1974 on Music Row, a partnership consisting of Jack Jackson, Pat Patrick, Paul Whitehead and Lou Lafredo. The studio band consisted of Eddie Bayers on drums, Dennis Bernside on piano, Jack Jackson on bass and Paul Wurley on guitar. You may not know any of these names if you haven't been involved in the Nashville recording scene, but for multitudes of artists that have gone through the doors of Nashville, these musicians and makers have provided the backing sound for many of the records recorded in Nashville, led record companies as top executives and so forth.

Which leads to the reason for spilling out this story - in 1975-76, Tommy Dougherty and this cast of musicians, along with The Cherry Sisters on background vocals and a great horn section, recorded a rocking gospel blues record called Touch My Soul. Tommy wrote most of these songs and sang a few classics such as Amazing Grace. Gospel may not be most people's interest, but if you want that James Brown out of your seat conversion music, this is it. Think of that scene with JB in the Blues Brothers.

But the highlight of those years consist of a pair of pop blues songs. One I mentioned already, Waydown Club, a funky song in the vein of Sly Stone and Billy Preston. But the true gem of these recordings is the song Sail Away. This song belongs in the pantheon of classics, in my humble opinion.

Listen to it for yourself. What you will hear is a group of young inspired musicians on fire. It's not just a story of Tommy Dougherty, it's a story of all of these incredible musicians that were together in the same place at the same time with a fire to create driving them on.

And that's pretty much what you get with this group of songs, a group of players exploding but playing as tight as you can get. Of course these recordings were way too out of sync with what was going on in Nashvegas at the time. Touch My Soul was sold in Europe while Sail Away and the other tunes gathered dust in the vaults. All of the musicians involved went on to become successful after playing for years as the Audio Media houseband for an amazing amount of Nashville acts, but they probably never had as much fun as they did recording these songs.

Same for Tommy Dougherty, he went on to make a living as a session singer, singing those jingles and commercials. He's been compared to Ray Charles and Joe Cocker on a lot of occasions. I've heard him called the best singer in Nashville by a number of top-rated recording cats around the town. But that's beyond the point, I don't need to reaffirm to anyone what I already know. Go ahead and listen to this collection of songs by a group of young men in their 20s and early 30s who had yet reached their prime but were on top of the game. It's all about art, despite what the car salesman is trying to put off on you. Give it a listen and hear a side of Nashville history important to some and unknown to most. The story deserves to be told.

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