Dolores Ulmer remembers visiting the Grits and Gravy recording studio for the first time as a teenager in the 1960s.
“This is very vivid,” she says. “I walked in and thought ‘what kind of studio is this? It goes downhill.’”
Ulmer, who was Dolores Thomas back then, was there to see her brothers, Cliff and Ed Thomas, who operated the studio along with engineer Bob McRee, working with producer Huey Meaux in the old Hilltop Theatre at 304 Capitol Street in Clinton. The building’s past life as a place to watch movies was the reason she had to walk “downhill” to get to the end of the aisle, where Thomas recalls seeing a baby grand piano…