Artist	Song
Johnny Burnette & the Rock and Roll Trio	Rockabilly Boogie [1956]
Buddy Holly	Blue Days, Black Nights [1956]
Bobby Helms	Fraulein [1957]
The Owen Bradley Quintet	Big Guitar [1958]
George Jones	White Lightning [1959]
Webb Pierce	I Ain't Never [1959]
Br*nda Lee	Sweet Nothin's [1960]
Marty Robbins	Don't Worry [1961]
Patsy Cline	Crazy [1961]
Roger Miller	Dang Me [1964]
The Beach Boys	Dance Dance Dance (alt. take) [1964]
The Remains	Diddy Wah Diddy [1966]
Simon & Garfunkel	Homeward Bound [1966]
Bob Dylan	Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again [1966]
Jack Greene	There Goes My Everything [1966]
Tammy Wynette	Stand By Your Man [1968]
Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash	Big River (studio outtake) [1969]
Conway Twitty	Hello Darlin' [1970]
Tanya Tucker	Delta Dawn [1972]
Ch*rlie Rich	Behind Closed Doors [1973]
Merle Haggard	If We Make It Through December [1973]
David Allan Coe	You Never Even Called Me By My Name [1975]
Johnny Paycheck	Take This Job and Shove It [1977]
George Jones	He Stopped Loving Her Today [1980]
Elvis Costello & the Attractions	How Much I've Lied [1981]
John Anderson	Swingin' [1982]
-	-
Br*nda Lee	Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree [1958]

Comment:

In 1954, Nashville, Tennessee was already well on its way to becoming Music City, USA. It was that year that Owen Bradley and his brother, Harold, ope_ned the first proper recording studio on 16th Avenue - right in the midst of what would later become Music Row. The studio was originally inte_nded to be a film studio, but the Bradley brothers soon began devoting themselves wholly to recording music. Studio A, the original studio, was located in the building itself, and the brothers also built Studio B, the famed Quonset Hut, just behind the building a short time later. For the remainder of the 1950's, Decca Records recorded numerous artists there, including Buddy Holly and Bobby Helms. In 1962, Owen Bradley sold the studio to Columbia and it remained in steady use until 1982. Since that time, much of the floor space has been converted into offices.Owen Bradley (and later, Billy Sherrill) produced many of the sessions in both studios. Bradley, along with Chet Atkins at RCA, helped to usher in a more polished and sleek "countrypolitan" sound, where string sections and backup singers replaced the banjos and fiddles of traditional "hillbilly" music.As hits began pouring out of Nashville, non-country artists began to take notice and many came to the Bradleys' studio to record. The Beach Boys stopped in for a quick session in the midst of a tour. Dylan and Cash met there to record a handful of still-unreleased demos. Dylan also recorded three albums of his own there. Likewise, Elvis Costello recorded Almost Blue there in its entirety. John Anderson's "Swingin'" has the distinction of being the last number one record recorded there. And Owen Bradley himself even recorded a minor instrumental hit in his own studio.Several of the country songs above have admittedly been overplayed ad nauseum, especially if you've found yourself in a bar at any time in the past thirty years. Still, even those songs remain as iconic work in the country genre. This mix is a cross-section of the truly staggering amount of famous and well-loved music that has come out the studio at 804 16th Ave. South during its twenty-eight years of use.Bonus track: Br*nda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," recorded in the Quonset Hut in mid-summer. Bradley allegedly draped Christmas lights around the studio and cranked up the air conditioning to get Br*nda and the musicians in the right mood.Further reading: How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A.: 50 Years of Music Row by Michael Kosser.

Feedback: