Bill Sheppard having a release party for new album

Local musician Bill Sheppard is enjoying some late-breaking acclaim for work he did more than 50 years ago. Back in the day, his band Stack was prominent in the Southern California area.

Stack’s lone 1968 LP “Above All,” re-issued on CD, has been available internationally for 20 years. “They reissue it every time they run out of stock,” he said. “Last December, they reissued 1,000 copies and 100 collector copies in white vinyl. All that is sold out.”

Now the work of Sheppard’s next group, Ruby Wheeler, is reaching ears for the first time, with a “new” album called “No One In Your Way.” Middle Ridge Winery will be hosting a release party for the album.

Sheppard recalls that Stack was riding high, with a major label record deal and an equipment sponsor in Sunn amplifiers. “When The Who was not touring, we used their equipment.” He notes that “even though Stack didn’t hit it big on the open market, we opened for Jimi Hendrix, Three Dog Night, Alice Cooper, Iron Butterfly, the Byrds, and the New Yardbirds, just a month before they changed their name to Led Zeppelin.”

The original vinyl of “Above All,” is quite the collectors’ item: “The last one that I’m aware of sold on the open market for $9,000.”

Sheppard said that the European interest in his music started with Italian rock historian Bruno Ceriotti, who has relied on Sheppard’s still-reliable memory for pieces he wrote about the Southern California rock scene. Guerssen Records, in Spain, re-issued “Above All.” With the Stack album doing so well, the owner of Gear Fab Records, Roger Maglio, asked Sheppard if he had any other material from the era.

“Ruby Wheeler was formed following Stack a year and a half later. The intrigue was that me and the guitar player from Stack, Rick Gould, were also principals in Ruby Wheeler.”

The bass player in this new band, John Durzo, kept all the recordings; studio cuts and rehearsals. “He kept them for over 50 years. He got in contact with me, I got in contact with Maglio. He said he needed them mastered. I ran into an old friend, Jon St. James, who was the producer of ‘You Take My Breath Away’ for ‘Top Gun,’ and Stacey Q’s ‘Two of Hearts’… He re-mastered the Stack album, and now he’s mastered the Ruby Wheeler album.”

Sheppard points out that Ruby Wheeler has a different sound from Stack, both a long way from the way records are made today: “In listening to this record, don’t try to compare it to modern music; the market was completely different. There are four studio cuts and six rehearsal cuts. The studio cuts were engineered by Bob Stone, who was Frank Zappa’s engineer. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between studio and rehearsal. There’s a hit record in there. It would have been a single, called ‘Good Time Sally.’ It’s a lot of fun. I did the vocal arrangement. I’m really proud of it.”

Ruby Wheeler’s “No One In Your Way” is available through Gear Fab Records. Sheppard will have copies of it and “Above All” available at the “unveiling,” at Middle Ridge Winery from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday Jan. 29.