Rare 50-year-old album connects two generations of Stillwater music and business

Aaron Malin was still turning over a question — how could KICKER connect with a new record shop downtown? — when he walked past a Moses album hanging on the wall at company headquarters. His boss, Steve Irby, had played keyboards on that record in 1974. One of those copies, Malin thought, belonged at Velvet Fudge.

Malin had first noticed the shop when it opened in the space that had previously been a bookstore and before that an art studio on South Lewis Street. He stopped in, bought a Dave Brubeck album for a friend, and recognized the 22-year-old behind the counter — Henry Ramsay, whose mother had catered Malin's wedding. He struck up a conversation and liked what he found.

He emailed Irby. Would he be willing to sign one of his Moses records and give it to Ramsay? Irby said yes. He already knew the family.

On March 26, Irby walked into Velvet Fudge. Henry Ramsay, the owner of the record shop and music venue at 916 S. Lewis St., slid a knife under the shrink wrap, lifted the needle onto the groove, and piped the sound of a 1970s Stillwater band through the house speakers. On the other side of a concrete wall, a band was setting up on the small stage. The two sounds — the old record and the new band tuning up — filled the shop at the same time.

KICKER founder Steve Irby toured Velvet Fudge on March 26, 2026, after global training manager Aaron Malin connected him with owner Henry Ramsay. Irby gifted Ramsay a signed copy of Moses Live, a rare 1974 album from his Stillwater band Moses, pressed in a limited run of roughly 2,500 copies. Ramsay put it on the turntable while a band warmed up on the other side of the stage wall. – Photos by Chris Peters

Irby is the founder and president of Stillwater Designs, the company behind KICKER, the Stillwater-based audio brand that has sold car audio products in more than 50 countries since the 1970s. But before he was building speaker enclosures in a single-car garage, he was playing keyboards in a Stillwater band called Moses — a group that formed in the mid-1960s, played together through high school and beyond, and in 1974 recorded a live album at a performance venue outside Enid, Oklahoma.

The band included Irby on keyboards, Steve Ripley on guitar, Robert Hatfield on bass, and Bruce Hueston on drums. The record they made that day, Moses Live, is listed on Discogs, the online catalog of recorded music, where the rare pressing has attracted notice from collectors. Irby estimates no more than about 2,500 copies were ever made, sold primarily to friends and family. He still has four or five sealed copies. The widow of his late Moses bandmate Steve Ripley possibly holds more.

Malin invited The Stillwegian to document the visit, with one clear goal in mind.

"My desire was to boost awareness of Henry and Velvet Fudge so that he's successful," Malin said. "That's really the whole purpose of it."

A barn in Enid and a Stillwater first

Moses recorded its only album the way a lot of things got done in early-1970s Stillwater — with ingenuity and the right people in the right place.

Steve Ripley, who played in Moses alongside Irby, had built Stillwater Sound, what Irby described as the first recording studio in Stillwater. For the live album, the band hauled the studio's equipment to a performance venue outside Enid called the Fillin' Station, a barn where they regularly played shows.

"We backed up his studio in a U-Haul truck," Irby said, "and ran snakes inside and recorded the whole thing."

Moses bandmates Steve Irby and Steve Ripley are both woven into the fabric of Block 34. The KICKER Soundstage — named for the company Irby founded in Stillwater in 1973 — anchors the park's southwest corner, the result of a nearly $8 million contribution from Steve and Becky Irby. The Musicians Walk of Fame honors Ripley, the Moses guitarist who went on to front The Tractors and steward Oklahoma's musical heritage until his death in 2019. The walk was funded in part by Ripley's friends and family — a deliberate act of remembrance beside the stage his former bandmate built. – Photo by Chris Peters

Ripley went on to a career that took him far beyond that barn. He moved to California and worked in Leon Russell's recording studio, later played guitar on Bob Dylan's 1981 Shot of Love tour, and invented a "stereo guitar" favored by Eddie Van Halen. In 1987 he purchased The Church Studio in Tulsa — the same facility Russell had owned in the 1970s — and eventually fronted the country-rock band The Tractors, whose 1994 debut album went double platinum and remains the top-selling record ever recorded in Oklahoma. Ripley died in January 2019.

Moses, meanwhile, had one album. Irby named the band's record label Red Dirt Records — a name that would later attach itself to an entire Oklahoma music movement, though Moses itself was not playing what anyone would call Red Dirt music at the time.

"We played a lot of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, The Beatles," Irby said, sitting in Velvet Fudge as the record turned. "We played a whole bunch of that stuff. We went through all these different phases."

The full experience — music + art

Ramsay started collecting records in junior high school — not because his friends were into it, but because he found an album at Goodwill for 50 cents and wanted another one. For the first year, he owned records he had no way to play. He used them as room decor.

"That's how I got started in collecting," Ramsay said. "I had just records all over my wall. I didn't even have a record player for, like, the first year."

The signed Moses Live album at Velvet Fudge on March 26, 2026. The cover features black-and-white photos of each band member — KICKER founder Steve Irby is third from left — and a digital display below scrolls "NOW PLAYING." – Photo by Chris Peters

That instinct — to have the object, to look at it, to hold it — is part of what Velvet Fudge is built around. The shop carries new and used vinyl records and CDs, with a strong selection from local bands across genres. A stage in the back hosts live music, its concrete walls shared with the retail floor.

When Irby unsealed the Moses record at the counter, Ramsay pulled out the album sleeve, examined the record label — a boot over red Oklahoma dirt — and immediately put the record on. Then the conversation turned to what a record actually does that a file cannot.

"The whole experience — it's not just the song," Irby said. "You buy the album, you've got the cool album cover, maybe you mount it on your wall. You've got the liner notes. The whole experience."

He described listening to albums in college as a social act — a group of people gathered around a turntable, passing the cover around, reading along, hearing the record sequenced the way the artist intended. There were fewer distractions then, he said.

"I know for most of the people that I knew, when we got together, what we would do is probably smoke pot and sit around and listen to an album," Irby said.

Ramsay laughed. "Man, the times really don't change."

"You don't just listen to one song," Irby said. "You listen to the whole album. It's like you're going to a concert."

Ramsay noted that even among pressings of the same album, the differences matter. He described a first pressing of Led Zeppelin II, engineered by producer Robert Ludwig, that was quickly recalled because the bass was cut so high a needle could skip — and explained why that version is now considered the definitive one. Irby listened, nodded, and said he thought about the same thing when he looks at a new remastered album.

"I'd have to say they sound a tad bit better," Irby said of newer pressings on his home turntable. "Maybe just a little more natural sounding. Not brittle."

Before he left, Irby signed the Moses album sleeve — Ramsay had asked, and Irby obliged, pulling the record from its jacket and writing his name across the cover.

KICKER founder Steve Irby signs the Moses Live album cover for Velvet Fudge owner Henry Ramsay on March 26, 2026. Pressed in a limited run of roughly 2,500 copies in 1974, the record is listed on Discogs with a current value of $75 to $115. – Photos by Chris Peters

The Stillwater music scene, then and now

Irby said the current Stillwater music scene reminded him of something.

"I think this time period is similar to kind of what we had going on back in the late '60s or early '70s," he said, "when all the new rock music was coming out. There was a lot of bands in Stillwater."

Ramsay is already building his own archive of that current scene. In a back room at Velvet Fudge he keeps a growing collection of local band memorabilia — guitar picks, drumsticks, a Dreamsickle banner from one of the venue's early shows. He said he wants to find a way to display it publicly, somewhere people can actually see it.

"I don't want to keep it in the green room," Ramsay said. "I don't want, like, 10 people to see it every month."

He is the son of Chris Ramsay, a longtime Oklahoma State University art professor who died in January after years battling cancer, and Sarah Ramsay, who operated Good Little Eater, a downtown Stillwater restaurant, from 2013 until its closure in October 2025. Growing up around a small business and an arts-minded household shaped what he wanted to build at Velvet Fudge — a shop that is also, as he put it, a third place.

Irby offered some business advice before he left, the kind that applied equally to building a speaker company in 1973 and running a record shop today.

"People a lot of times buy stuff from you because they like you," Irby said. "So they're going to come into the shop and they enjoy hanging out."

Ramsay's best customers, he said, are already his friends. As for the Moses record, he intends to keep it — a signed copy of a pressing that, according to Discogs, currently sells for between $75 and $115 when one surfaces at all.

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