The warehouse outside of Salem was blisteringly hot on that July day in 2017.

Looking around the space, Chuck Stenberg could tell it was a long way from a pristine storage facility for old recordings.

But when he found the tapes he was looking for, buried in moldering cardboard boxes, he believed they might be “salvageable.” He carried them out to his car, convinced he was holding singular Northwest music history in his arms.

It turned out the reel-to-reel master tapes -- an abandoned archive belonging to his friend, drummer and former Oregon music producer Gary Nieland -- could indeed be saved, after Stenberg tracked down some replacement parts for an old Ampex 4-track tape machine he’d also pulled from the tin-walled warehouse in Dallas.

The question was: would anybody care?

It’s not like these were rare Elvis or Beatles recordings. None of the bands on the tapes ever became a household name.

Some of the tapes Chuck Stenberg rescued from a Salem-area warehouse. (Courtesy of Chuck Stenberg)

“I really had completely forgotten about them,” admits Nieland, who operated a recording studio -- Garland Records -- from his Salem home before he retired to Las Vegas. “I wrote them off.”

But his friend Chuck, listening to the tapes more than 40 years after most of them were recorded, found himself tapping his foot and marveling at the quality of the little-known bands. Stenberg believed there was an audience for the recordings -- and he wasn’t alone. After rehabbing and digitizing the music, he contacted the Nashville label Sundazed Music, which specializes in unusual recordings. A deal was quickly struck.

“They were all excited about it,” Nieland says of Sundazed’s reaction to the music. “I was as surprised as anybody could be.”

Sundazed Music

Last month, Sundazed released “Pacific Northwest Fuzz Box” and “Pacific Northwest Stash Box,” featuring 1960s and ’70s groups such as The Other Side, Tyme, The Zero End, Grant’s Blue Boys and Smack. The albums are available online, as well as at Music Millennium in Portland. (Two more compilations, “Pacific Northwest Juke Box” and “Pacific Northwest Snuff Box,” soon will join them on the market.)

• Listen to snippets from “Northwest Fuzz Box.”

• Listen to snippets from “Northwest Stash Box.”

Sundazed considers the appeal of the compilations obvious enough: they’re lost gems from arguably the most iconic period in pop-music history, when musicians were experimenting with new forms and everyone under 30 thought rock ’n’ roll could change the world. The label heralds the songs as a “peculiar mix of coveted rarities and unissued hallucinations.”

AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine reviewed the first two releases, writing that the collection “alternates between heavy psych, tight-fisted soul and trippy pop.” The critic says some of the music “is charmingly amateur,” and some is just bizarre. He points to a Grant’s Blue Boys cover of "If I Were a Carpenter," a hit for Bobby Darin in 1966 and Johnny and June Cash in 1970, but here played in the epic, hard-rock “vein of Vanilla Fudge.”

Nieland says much of the music holds up better than he ever would have guessed.

“There were some very good bands in the Northwest [in the 1960s and ’70s] but they didn’t get the promotion that those out of Los Angeles or Nashville got,” Nieland says. “So there’s this music that no one has ever heard.”

Now music fans in L.A. and Nashville, and everywhere in between, will be able to hear it -- all because Gary Nieland happened to have been a patient at the Salem dental office where Chuck Stenberg worked as a hygienist.

“He would come in and tell me all these stories about touring with a band called The Champs, of ‘Tequila’ fame,” Stenberg recalls. (The Champs’ signature hit was a 1958 instrumental number called “Tequila” -- whatever your age, you’ve almost certainly heard the composition in movies, TV shows or even on the radio.)

The Champs were a high-energy, raucous party band -- and Neiland, even years later, still gave off a Champs vibe.

“He was so much fun to listen to and just be around,” Stenberg says of the drummer.

After listening to various stories about Garland Records’ heyday, Stenberg expressed an interest in hearing the late recording studio’s master tapes. Nieland, surprised, told him where he could find the warehouse.

The Wild Side is one of the groups that recorded at Salem's Garland Records. (Courtesy of Chuck Stenberg)

"Take them and do whatever you want to with the tapes," he said.

Stenberg did just that, driving out there on a rescue mission and loading up his car. “My Honda CR-V was crammed full,” he says of recovering the dusty, stained tapes. “Only room for myself sitting in the driver’s seat.”

The rest -- for Stenberg, Nieland and the long-disbanded Oregon bands receiving their belated day in the spotlight -- is history.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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