Owen Bradley
Encyclopedia
Owen Bradley was an American record producer
who, along with Chet Atkins
and Bob Ferguson
, was one of the chief architects of the 1950s and 1960s Nashville sound
in country music
and rockabilly.
, Bradley learned piano at an early age, and began playing in local nightclub
s and roadhouse
s when he was a teenager. At 20, he got a job at WSM-AM radio
, where he worked as an arranger and musician. In 1942, he became the station's musical director, and was also the leader of a sought-after dance band that played well-heeled society parties all over the city. That same year he co-wrote Roy Acuff
’s hit “Night Train to Memphis". He kept the band up until 1964, although in the intervening decades, his work as a producer would far overshadow his own performing career.
.
In 1947, Bradley took a position as a music arranger and songwriter
at Decca Records
. He worked for Paul Cohen
on recordings by some of the biggest talents of the day, including Ernest Tubb
, Burl Ives
, Red Foley
and Kitty Wells
. Learning from Cohen, he eventually began to produce records on his own. When his mentor left the label in 1958, Bradley became vice president of Decca's Nashville division, and began pioneering what would become the "Nashville sound."
and Appalachia
. In the late 1950s, Bradley's home base of Nashville was positioning itself to be a vibrant, affluent, urban city with a burgeoning music recording industry, and not just the traditional home of the Grand Ole Opry
. In fact, a Quonset hut
attached to a house Bradley owned with his brother Harold
at 804 16th Avenue South in Nashville.
The Quonset Hut is commonly recognized as the birthplace of a more commercial country music that often crossed over into pop. This distinct genre of American music was developed primarily by Owen Bradley's uniquely creative crew of hand picked musicians, Grady Martin
, Bob Moore
, Hank Garland
and Buddy Harman
—Nashville's revered "A-Team
." The success of Bradley's Quonset Hut studio spurred RCA Victor to build its famous RCA Studio B
. A handful of other labels soon followed setting up shop on what would eventually become known as Music Row
. Bradley and his contemporaries infused hokey melodies with more refined lyrics and blended them with a refined pop music
sensibility to create the Nashville sound, known later as Countrypolitan. Light, easy listening
piano
(as popularized by Floyd Cramer
) replaced the clinky honky-tonk piano (ironically, one of the artists Bradley would record in the 1950s was honky tonk blues singer pianist Moon Mullican
- the Mullican sessions produced by Bradley were experimental in that they merged Moon's original blues style with the emerging Nashville sound stylings). Lush string sections
took the place of the mountain fiddle
sound; steel guitar
s and smooth backing vocals rounded out the mix. As architect of the Nashville sound, Bradley was the most influential country music producer in history.
Regarding the Nashville sound, Bradley stated, "Now we've cut out the fiddle and steel guitar and added choruses to country music. But it can't stop there. It always has to keep developing to keep fresh."
, Brenda Lee
, Loretta Lynn
, and Conway Twitty
became household names nationwide. Pop singers like Buddy Holly
and Gene Vincent
also recorded with Bradley in his Nashville studio. Bradley often tried to reinvent older country hitmakers; as previously mentioned, he tried to update Moon Mullican's sound and produced one of Moon's best performances "Early morning blues" where the blues and the Nashville sound complement each other surprisingly well. Also, he produced Bill Monroe
in both bluegrass and decidedly non-bluegrass settings (Monroe's covers of Jimmie Rodgers' "Caroline sunshine girl" and Moon Mullican's "Mighty pretty waltz", for example, feature a standard country band rather than bluegrass). Many older artists recognized they needed to change as they saw former pure honky tonk singer Jim Reeves blend his own style with the newer styles with great success. However, not everyone was as successful as Reeves or Patsy Cline in these transformations. In addition to his production, Bradley released a handful of instrumentals under his own name, including the minor 1958 hit "Big Guitar." In the late 1950s, Bradley produced a radio and TV series with his brother Harold, Country Style, USA, for distribution to local radio and TV stations as a recruiting tool for the US Army.
Bradley sold The Quonset Hut
to Columbia
(which today is a division of Sony BMG) and bought a farm outside of Nashville in 1961, converting a barn into a demo studio. Within a few years, the new "Bradley's Barn" became a legendary recording venue in country music circles. It burned to the ground in 1980, but Bradley rebuilt it within a few years in the same location.
In 1974, Owen Bradley was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. One additional claim to fame is that he produced records (six) for more fellow Hall of Fame members than anyone else except Paul Cohen
who produced nine Red Foley
, Ernest Tubb
, Webb Pierce
, Kitty Wells
, Maybelle Carter
, Mel Tillis
, Brenda Lee
, Patsy Cline
and Bob Wills
. He retired from production in the early 1980s, but continued to work on the selected projects. Canadian
artist k.d. lang
chose Bradley to produce her acclaimed 1988 album, Shadowland. At the time of his death, he and Harold were producing the album I've Got A Right To Cry for Mandy Barnett
, who is best known for her portrayal of Patsy Cline in the original Nashville production of the stage play Always...Patsy Cline.
His production of Cline's legendary hits like "Crazy
," "I Fall to Pieces
" and "Walkin' After Midnight
" remain, more than forty years on, the standard against which great female country records are measured today. It is his work with Cline and Loretta Lynn for which he is best known, and when the biopics Coal Miner's Daughter
and Sweet Dreams were filmed, he was chosen to direct their soundtracks.
In the 1980s Nashville's Hillsboro High School established the annual Owen Bradley Achievement Award for the student that most excels in the school's unique recording arts vocational curriculum. Many of the awards recipients have gone on to success in the Nashville recording industry and beyond. Past winners include prominent sound engineer Kurt Storey, and writer/musician Walton Robinson.
In 1997, the Metro Parks Authority in Nashville dedicated a small public park between 16th Avenue South and Division Street to Owen Bradley, where his bronze likeness sits at a bronze piano. Owen Bradley Park is at the northern end of Music Row
.
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
who, along with Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
and Bob Ferguson
Bob Ferguson (music)
Robert Bruce "Bob" Ferguson Sr was an American songwriter, record producer who was instrumental in establishing Nashville, Tennessee as a center of country music; movie producer, and Choctaw Indian historian. Ferguson wrote the bestselling songs "On the Wings of a Dove" and "The Carroll County...
, was one of the chief architects of the 1950s and 1960s Nashville sound
Nashville sound
The Nashville sound originated during the late 1950s as a sub-genre of American country music, replacing the chart dominance of honky tonk music which was most popular in the 1940s and 1950s...
in country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
and rockabilly.
Before the fame
A native of Westmoreland, TennesseeWestmoreland, Tennessee
Westmoreland is a town in Sumner County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 2,093 at the 2000 census. The town name originates from the historic English county Westmorland, now part of Cumbria.-Geography:...
, Bradley learned piano at an early age, and began playing in local nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
s and roadhouse
Roadhouse (facility)
A roadhouse is a commercial establishment typically built on a major road or highway, to service passing travellers. Its meaning varies slightly by country.-USA:...
s when he was a teenager. At 20, he got a job at WSM-AM radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, where he worked as an arranger and musician. In 1942, he became the station's musical director, and was also the leader of a sought-after dance band that played well-heeled society parties all over the city. That same year he co-wrote Roy Acuff
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.Acuff...
’s hit “Night Train to Memphis". He kept the band up until 1964, although in the intervening decades, his work as a producer would far overshadow his own performing career.
.
In 1947, Bradley took a position as a music arranger and songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
at Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
. He worked for Paul Cohen
Paul Cohen (producer)
Paul Cohen was an American country music producer.One of the men chiefly responsible for Nashville’s emergence as the country music recording capital and the Nashville Sound was Chicago-born Paul Cohen, long-time Decca Records executive...
on recordings by some of the biggest talents of the day, including Ernest Tubb
Ernest Tubb
Ernest Dale Tubb , nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, "Walking the Floor Over You" , marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music...
, Burl Ives
Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American actor, writer and folk music singer. As an actor, Ives's work included comedies, dramas, and voice work in theater, television, and motion pictures. Music critic John Rockwell said, "Ives's voice .....
, Red Foley
Red Foley
Clyde Julian Foley , better known as Red Foley, was an American singer, musician, and radio and TV personality who made a major contribution to the growth of country music after World War II....
and Kitty Wells
Kitty Wells
Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, is an American country music singer. Her 1952 hit recording, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts, and turned her into the first female country star...
. Learning from Cohen, he eventually began to produce records on his own. When his mentor left the label in 1958, Bradley became vice president of Decca's Nashville division, and began pioneering what would become the "Nashville sound."
The Nashville sound
Country music had long been looked on as unsophisticated and folksy, and was largely confined to listeners in the less affluent small towns of the American SouthSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
and Appalachia
Appalachia
Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...
. In the late 1950s, Bradley's home base of Nashville was positioning itself to be a vibrant, affluent, urban city with a burgeoning music recording industry, and not just the traditional home of the Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, that has presented the biggest stars of that genre since 1925. It is also among the longest-running broadcasts in history since its beginnings as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM-AM...
. In fact, a Quonset hut
Quonset hut
A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel having a semicircular cross section. The design was based on the Nissen hut developed by the British during World War I...
attached to a house Bradley owned with his brother Harold
Harold Bradley
Harold Bradley is a pop guitarist and an American country guitarist.Harold played banjo as a child but switched to guitar on the advice of his elder brother, Owen Bradley. Owen arranged for Harold to tour with Ernest Tubb while Harold was still in high school. After graduation, Harold joined the...
at 804 16th Avenue South in Nashville.
The Quonset Hut is commonly recognized as the birthplace of a more commercial country music that often crossed over into pop. This distinct genre of American music was developed primarily by Owen Bradley's uniquely creative crew of hand picked musicians, Grady Martin
Grady Martin
Thomas Grady Martin was one of the most renowned, inventive and historically significant American session musicians in country music and rockabilly....
, Bob Moore
Bob Moore
Bob Loyce Moore is an American session musician, orchestra leader, and bassist who was a member of the legendary Nashville A-Team during the 1950s and 60s.-Biography:...
, Hank Garland
Hank Garland
Walter Louis Garland , better known as Hank Garland, was a Nashville studio musician who performed with Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison and many others.-Biography:...
and Buddy Harman
Buddy Harman
Buddy Harman was an American session musician.-Career:Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he played drums on over 18,000 sessions for artists such as Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Brenda Lee, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Roy Orbison, Connie Francis, Chet Atkins, Marty Robbins, Roger Miller,...
—Nashville's revered "A-Team
The Nashville A-Team
The Nashville A-Team was a nickname given to a group of session musicians in Nashville, Tennessee, who earned wide acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s. They backed dozens of popular singers, including Elvis Presley, Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Bob Dylan and others.The Nashville A-Team's...
." The success of Bradley's Quonset Hut studio spurred RCA Victor to build its famous RCA Studio B
RCA Studio B
RCA Studio B is a noted recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee. Situated at 30 Music Square W and originally known simply as RCA Studios, it became famous in the 1960s for being a part of what many refer to as the Nashville Sound...
. A handful of other labels soon followed setting up shop on what would eventually become known as Music Row
Music Row
Music Row is an area just to the southwest of Downtown Nashville, Tennessee that is home to hundreds of businesses related to the country music, gospel music, and Contemporary Christian music industries...
. Bradley and his contemporaries infused hokey melodies with more refined lyrics and blended them with a refined pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
sensibility to create the Nashville sound, known later as Countrypolitan. Light, easy listening
Easy listening
Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...
piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
(as popularized by Floyd Cramer
Floyd Cramer
Floyd Cramer was an American Hall of Fame pianist who was one of the architects of the "Nashville sound." He popularized the "slip note" piano style where an out-of-tune note slides effortlessly into the correct note...
) replaced the clinky honky-tonk piano (ironically, one of the artists Bradley would record in the 1950s was honky tonk blues singer pianist Moon Mullican
Moon Mullican
Aubrey Wilson Mullican , known as Moon Mullican, was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and pianist. However, he also sang and played jazz, rock 'n' roll and the blues...
- the Mullican sessions produced by Bradley were experimental in that they merged Moon's original blues style with the emerging Nashville sound stylings). Lush string sections
String orchestra
A string orchestra is an orchestra composed solely or primarily of instruments from the string family. These instruments are the violin, the viola, the cello, the double bass , the piano, the harp, and sometimes percussion...
took the place of the mountain fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
sound; steel guitar
Steel guitar
Steel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use...
s and smooth backing vocals rounded out the mix. As architect of the Nashville sound, Bradley was the most influential country music producer in history.
Regarding the Nashville sound, Bradley stated, "Now we've cut out the fiddle and steel guitar and added choruses to country music. But it can't stop there. It always has to keep developing to keep fresh."
Starmaker
The singers Bradley produced made unprecedented headway into radio, and artists such as Patsy ClinePatsy Cline
Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...
, Brenda Lee
Brenda Lee
Brenda Mae Tarpley , known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis...
, Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...
, and Conway Twitty
Conway Twitty
Conway Twitty , born Harold Lloyd Jenkins, was an American country music artist. He also had success in early rock and roll, R&B, and pop music. He held the record for the most number one singles of any act with 55 No. 1 Billboard country hits until George Strait broke the record in 2006...
became household names nationwide. Pop singers like Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley , known professionally as Buddy Holly, was an American singer-songwriter and a pioneer of rock and roll...
and Gene Vincent
Gene Vincent
Vincent Eugene Craddock , known as Gene Vincent, was an American musician who pioneered the styles of rock and roll and rockabilly. His 1956 top ten hit with his Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-A-Lula", is considered a significant early example of rockabilly...
also recorded with Bradley in his Nashville studio. Bradley often tried to reinvent older country hitmakers; as previously mentioned, he tried to update Moon Mullican's sound and produced one of Moon's best performances "Early morning blues" where the blues and the Nashville sound complement each other surprisingly well. Also, he produced Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...
in both bluegrass and decidedly non-bluegrass settings (Monroe's covers of Jimmie Rodgers' "Caroline sunshine girl" and Moon Mullican's "Mighty pretty waltz", for example, feature a standard country band rather than bluegrass). Many older artists recognized they needed to change as they saw former pure honky tonk singer Jim Reeves blend his own style with the newer styles with great success. However, not everyone was as successful as Reeves or Patsy Cline in these transformations. In addition to his production, Bradley released a handful of instrumentals under his own name, including the minor 1958 hit "Big Guitar." In the late 1950s, Bradley produced a radio and TV series with his brother Harold, Country Style, USA, for distribution to local radio and TV stations as a recruiting tool for the US Army.
Bradley sold The Quonset Hut
Quonset hut
A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel having a semicircular cross section. The design was based on the Nissen hut developed by the British during World War I...
to Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
(which today is a division of Sony BMG) and bought a farm outside of Nashville in 1961, converting a barn into a demo studio. Within a few years, the new "Bradley's Barn" became a legendary recording venue in country music circles. It burned to the ground in 1980, but Bradley rebuilt it within a few years in the same location.
Later years and honors
Paul Cohen
Paul Cohen is the name of:*Paul Cohen , Australian industrial designer*Paul Cohen , renowned historian of China*Paul Cohen , Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender...
who produced nine Red Foley
Red Foley
Clyde Julian Foley , better known as Red Foley, was an American singer, musician, and radio and TV personality who made a major contribution to the growth of country music after World War II....
, Ernest Tubb
Ernest Tubb
Ernest Dale Tubb , nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, "Walking the Floor Over You" , marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music...
, Webb Pierce
Webb Pierce
Webb Michael Pierce was one of the most popular American honky tonk vocalists of the 1950s, charting more number one hits than any other country artist during the decade. His biggest hit was "In The Jailhouse Now," which charted for 37 weeks in 1955, 21 of them at number one...
, Kitty Wells
Kitty Wells
Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, is an American country music singer. Her 1952 hit recording, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts, and turned her into the first female country star...
, Maybelle Carter
Maybelle Carter
"Mother" Maybelle Carter was an American country musician. She is best known as a member of the historic Carter Family act in the 1920s and 1930s and also as a member of Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.-Biography:...
, Mel Tillis
Mel Tillis
Lonnie Melvin Tillis , known professionally as Mel Tillis, is an American country music singer. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s, with a long list of Top 10 hits....
, Brenda Lee
Brenda Lee
Brenda Mae Tarpley , known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis...
, Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...
and Bob Wills
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western Swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western Swing and universally known as the pioneering King of Western Swing.Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with...
. He retired from production in the early 1980s, but continued to work on the selected projects. Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
artist k.d. lang
K.D. Lang
Kathryn Dawn Lang, OC , known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress...
chose Bradley to produce her acclaimed 1988 album, Shadowland. At the time of his death, he and Harold were producing the album I've Got A Right To Cry for Mandy Barnett
Mandy Barnett
Amanda Carol "Mandy" Barnett is a country music singer and stage actress. In her musical career, she has released three albums and charted three singles on the Billboard country charts. Her highest-charting country single is "Now That's All Right With Me", which reached #43 in 1996...
, who is best known for her portrayal of Patsy Cline in the original Nashville production of the stage play Always...Patsy Cline.
His production of Cline's legendary hits like "Crazy
Crazy (Willie Nelson song)
"Crazy" is a ballad composed by Willie Nelson. It has been recorded by several artists, most notably by Patsy Cline, whose version was a #2 country hit in 1962....
," "I Fall to Pieces
I Fall to Pieces
"I Fall to Pieces" is a single released by Patsy Cline in 1961, and was featured on her 1961 studio album, Patsy Cline Showcase. "I Fall to Pieces" was Cline's first #1 hit on the Country charts, and her second hit single to cross over onto the Pop charts...
" and "Walkin' After Midnight
Walkin' After Midnight
"Walkin' After Midnight" is a song by written by Alan Block and Donn Hecht and originally recorded by American country music artist Patsy Cline. The song was originally given to pop singer Kay Starr; however, it was rejected by her record label. The song was left unused until Hecht rediscovered the...
" remain, more than forty years on, the standard against which great female country records are measured today. It is his work with Cline and Loretta Lynn for which he is best known, and when the biopics Coal Miner's Daughter
Coal Miner's Daughter
Coal Miner's Daughter is a 1980 American biographical film which tells the story of country music icon Loretta Lynn. It stars Sissy Spacek in her Academy Award for Best Actress winning role, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D'Angelo and Levon Helm, and was directed by Michael Apted.-Background:The film was...
and Sweet Dreams were filmed, he was chosen to direct their soundtracks.
In the 1980s Nashville's Hillsboro High School established the annual Owen Bradley Achievement Award for the student that most excels in the school's unique recording arts vocational curriculum. Many of the awards recipients have gone on to success in the Nashville recording industry and beyond. Past winners include prominent sound engineer Kurt Storey, and writer/musician Walton Robinson.
In 1997, the Metro Parks Authority in Nashville dedicated a small public park between 16th Avenue South and Division Street to Owen Bradley, where his bronze likeness sits at a bronze piano. Owen Bradley Park is at the northern end of Music Row
Music Row
Music Row is an area just to the southwest of Downtown Nashville, Tennessee that is home to hundreds of businesses related to the country music, gospel music, and Contemporary Christian music industries...
.