Billy Rhodes Porter (June 15, 1931 – July 7, 2010) was an American audio engineer who helped shape the Nashville sound and recorded stars such as Chet Atkins, Louis Armstrong, the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, Gladys Knight, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Skeeter Davis, Ike & Tina Turner, Sammy Davis Jr., and Roy Orbison from the late 1950s through the 1980s.

He grew up loving jazz music and baseball, and for a time considered an athletic career starting with the minor leagues.

[6] At nearby RCA Records in 1959, the chief engineer was transferred after angering Chet Atkins, and Porter applied for the position.

Porter related that the EMT's springs frequently broke under the increased tension, and he would have to replace them, but that the trouble was worth achieving a "brighter and fuller" echo effect.

"[12] Instead of the usual microphones used by RCA, Porter chose to use a Telefunken U-47 on Presley's voice,[8] recording several songs through the night of March 20–21, 1960, including "Stuck On You" and the ballad "Fame and Fortune".

The single "Stuck On You" with "Fame and Fortune" on the B-side was released three days later and immediately returned Presley to the number one chart position.

Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax" and Al Hirt's "Java" are other Monument recordings that Porter engineered at RCA.

Porter argued that Atkins had his own publishing, as did others in the business, but RCA personnel told him to stop, so he decided to leave the company.

[14] Porter left RCA in November 1964 to engineer for Columbia Records in Nashville, where he stayed for six months, bringing some of his custom clients with him.

"[14] Porter felt that only with himself as engineer, Fred Foster as producer and Anita Kerr as arranger was Orbison going to find the right combination.

[19] In 1969, Porter and his maintenance technicians modified the 12-input, 4-output mixing console to give it 8 outputs, and made their own 8-track tape recorder from Ampex parts.

[16] In August, Presley's producer Felton Jarvis brought the master tape for "Suspicious Minds"[20] into United Recording so that Porter could help him with the song's unusual fade out and back in three-quarters of the way through.

Porter solved the dilemma by mixing the horns live in the studio as the original session tape played back, the total blend being recorded onto a stereo master.

[16] In December 1969, Presley called Porter to ask him to fix the sound for him in the main showroom at the International Hotel (renamed the Las Vegas Hilton two years later); he said he could not hear himself the last time he sang there, and a new run was scheduled for January.

[16] The hotel's engineers did not get the other two to work, so Porter had some of his own Shure Vocal Master loudspeakers brought over from the recording studio.

He laid the column loudspeakers on their sides at the front lip of the stage and propped them up to aim at Presley, who was very happy with the result.

[22] Porter recorded several of these shows in the mid-1970s, released as albums,[11] and witnessed firsthand Presley's physical decline from drug abuse.

Porter designed and supervised the installation of a powerful high-fidelity Electro-Voice loudspeaker sound system for the racquetball court and an adjoining lounge.

[23] In August 1977, Porter was changing planes in Boston to fly to Portland, Maine, to mix a Presley concert when he received a phone call informing him that the singer had died.

[3] Between Presley appearances, Porter also handled sound duties for Ann-Margret in Las Vegas and on the road, under the business name Captain Audio Productions.

[26] Better results came soon; in the first year of business, VMI songwriter Ronnie Gaylord wrote "I Will Never Pass This Way Again", a modest success for Glen Campbell, the song covered by others including Brenda Lee, Vikki Carr and Wayne Newton, who closed his show with it at each performance.

Other artists recording with VMI included Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Williams, Sérgio Mendes and Brasil '77, Ike & Tina Turner, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Danny Thomas, Harry Belafonte, Bobby Darin and Louis Prima.

He prepared a booklet for the organization in December, an instructional primer on sound techniques, describing microphones and their usage, loudspeaker types, audio mixers, and giving operating tips.

Porter was their second director of recording services, heading the teaching staff and audio facilities, for the Music Engineering Technology program at the University of Miami beginning in September 1976.

[9] He accepted the marketing director position at a mixing console company called Auditronics,[16] then left that to work with televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, assisting with live sound and recordings.

He achieved this through his creativeness, his ability to hear sound as colors, and his skill in capturing on tape the full bloom or three dimensions of sound—width, height and depth.

[1] Regarding the Nashville Sound, Porter believed that it was in the people who were involved: Hank Garland, Ray Edenton, Buddy Harman, Harold Bradley, Bob Moore, Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer, Velma Smith, Charlie McCoy, the Anita Kerr Singers, and the Jordanaires.

[31] He was survived by his wife Carole, a brother and a sister, his children Nancy, a retired professor, and Gene, a prominent Las Vegas attorney and politician, and his grandchildren Sam, Marcie, Chandelle, and Weston Porter.