Danville's Midnite Sound: An Arlie & Arlie Production
The story of the Midnite Sound studio is the story of two musicians named Arlie:
Arlie Neaville
Arlie Miller
Neaville and Miller began performing and recording in the late 1950s and were some of the earliest purveyors of rock'n'roll in all of downstate Illinois. Neaville from Champaign-Urbana was performing with his Rock-N-Roll Devils and later with the Rocking Stars and released a couple singles on various labels in the early 1960s:
Arlie Neaville - "Angel Love"/"River Of Life" Ping #8001, 1961
Arlie Nevil - "Alone On A Star"/"The Skip" Fraternity F-900, 1962
In Danville, Arlie Miller and fellow musicians Jim Foley, Ronny Roach and Johnny Coons released a trio of singles in 1960 on Lucky Records:
Arlie Miller and the Bullets - "Lou Ann"/"You're The Sweetest Girl"
Jim Foley and the Big Beats - "Goodbye Train"/"Blues In The Morning"
Ronny and Johnny - "Massacre"/"Jungle Boogie"
By 1963, Neaville had adopted the stage name Dean Carter. Around that same time he and Miller (along with bass player Dave Marten) joined forces to form the Lucky Ones:
By 1964, tired of driving to Nashville or Chicago to record, the two Arlies purchased a townhouse on the south side of Danville and converted it into a makeshift recording studio, Midnite Sound, where they began recording themselves, their band mates and other local musicians. Soon after the two men started their own record label, Milky Way Records, which released eleven singles between 1964 and 1967:
MW-001 June Kinney - "The Hands You're Holding"/"I'll Be A Long-Time Gone" 1964
MW-002 Dorothy Barnes - "Baby, We're Really In Love"/"This Little World" 1964
MW-003 Dean Carter - "Number One Girl"/"Fever" 1965
MW-004 Dean Carter - "The Rockin Bandit"/"Care" 1965
(MW-005) Kookie - "Ooby Dooby"/"You Took Her Love" 1965
MW-006 The Cobras - "Try"/"Good Bye" 1965
MW-007 Willie and the Travelaires - "The Fiery Stomp"/"I Had A Girl" 1966
MW-008 June Kinney - "Look Out Heart"/"Good Luck and Goodbye" 1966
MW-009 Ed Mason - "You Don't Know Me"/"Oh Lonesome Me" 1966
MW-010 Dean Carter - "Run Rabbit Run"/"Soul Feelin" 1967
MW-011 Dean Carter - "Jailhouse Rock"/"Rebel Woman" 1967
In 1967, Miller's divorce as well as a cease and desist from the makers of Milky Way candy bars put an end to the label. The Midnite Sound however carried on and despite just a handful of official releases, the studio had made dozens if not hundreds of recordings during the period of 1964-1968. Most of them went unreleased and would have been lost and completely forgotten if not for two great compilation CDs released in the early 2000s by Big Beat Records in the UK:
By 1969, Miller had started a new record label, Redd Hedd Records, producing a handful of singles into the 1970s of mostly local Danville musicians:
#001 Danny Macklin - "Take A Stool"/"Home Of The Blues", 1969
#002 The Fronge - "Love Is Fine"/ "It's Gone", 1970
#003 Gene Cooper - "One Of A Kind"/"Forever", 1970
#004 The Corps - "New York City"/"Window Room", 1970
#005 Freddie and the Freeloaders - "Last Night"/"Freddie's Blues", 1971
#007 Spice - "Broken Down In Tiny Pieces"/"Save It For A Rainy Day"
Around that same time, Arlie Neaville dropped the Dean Carter moniker and turned away from rock'n'roll to focus strictly on gospel music.
