Owen Bradley
Musician · 1915–1998 · Westmoreland, Tennessee
Best known for
Songwriter
Owen Bradley was a Nashville bandleader, producer, and studio owner who, alongside RCA’s Chet Atkins, built the Nashville Sound and the city’s recording-industry infrastructure. As head of Decca’s Nashville division from 1958, he produced Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn (more than fifty hits), Brenda Lee, and Conway Twitty; his 1954 purchase of 804 16th Avenue South and its Quonset-hut sound stage made him the founder of Music Row.
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- Born William Owen Bradley on October 21, 1915, in Westmoreland, Tennessee; raised in Nashville.
- Mastered harmonica, steel guitar, trombone, piano, vibraphone, and organ as a young man.
- Was working professionally by fifteen and joined WSM radio in 1935 at twenty.
- Became WSM’s musical director in 1942 and led a long-running Nashville society-dance band on the side.
- Hired by Decca’s Paul Cohen in 1947 to staff and develop the label’s Nashville operation; named head of Decca Nashville in 1958.
- Bought 804 16th Avenue South for $7,500 in 1954 and converted it into Music City Recording — the first studio on what would become Music Row — with an Army-surplus Quonset hut attached for filming and tracking.
- Produced the postwar catalogs of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, Conway Twitty, Bill Anderson, and Webb Pierce.
- Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974.
- Produced the soundtrack to the 1985 Patsy Cline biopic Sweet Dreams and k.d. lang’s 1988 Shadowland: The Owen Bradley Sessions, which sold a million copies.
- Died January 7, 1998, in Nashville at age 82.
