![]() ![]() The family also owned Houston's Tower Records franchise (which they registered as Tower of Texas), including a flagship store that was once the city's largest record store - as well as the Record Factory chain. The original Cactus store at West Alabama and Shepherd was an old A&P grocery store." "We had gone out to Tower Records and Peaches Records in Atlanta to get some ideas. "Since we were distributors for major independent record labels back in the day, they all were pressuring dad and Don to open a superstore," says Wes. The elder Daily, who died in 1987, sold his wholesale business to sons Don and brother Bud (Wes' father) in 1959 and kept running Starday Records, which had a string of hits including George Jones' "White Lightnin'" and the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace." Don and Bud opened Cactus Records next to the old Alabama Theatre on Shepherd in 1975. He built an empire that eventually touched on nearly every aspect of the music business in Southeast Texas: retail, management, record labels, publishing, distribution and even performance Wes' cousin Mike Daily is an original member of Strait's Ace In the Hole Band. Twenty years later, the singles were re-released on the 1996 set Strait Out of the Box after Strait had sold several million more records.īorn in 1902, Pappy Daily worked as an accountant for the Southern Pacific railroad for 14 years before leaving to before leaving in 1931 to become a distributor of coin-operated phonographs. In the mid-'70s, Don was credited as producer on three singles by George Strait, a fledgling Western Swing singer from San Marcos, for D Records, the label owned by Don's father, H.W. I don't know how he didn't break into laughter." ![]() "He would pick some of the absolutely worst of the submissions to play for me and not crack a smile while he waited for me to comment on them," Bishop recalls. Bishop says sometimes Daily would ask him to help him evaluate songs that had been sent to Glad, which still controls the rights to many of George Jones' and the Big Bopper's better-known songs. "Don was a tremendously sweet and caring person with a truly wonderful sense of humor that was very dry in a manner not unlike Bob Newhart," says current Cactus Music partner and general manager Quinn Bishop, who worked for the Dailys from 1987 through "tying up loose ends" after the old store at Shepherd and Alabama closed in early 2006.ĭaily's nephew Wes of Glad Music Company remembers Don as "very creative," with a keen ear for music. He was 81, according to his Houston Chronicle obituary, which indicated a long struggle with Parkinson's disease but said Daily had died "peacefully." Don Daily, a founding partner of Cactus Records and member of Houston's legendary Daily family, passed away July 31.
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