Owen Bradley
William Owen Bradley (October 21, 1915[1] – January 7, 1998)[2] was an American musician, bandleader and record producer who, along with Chet Atkins, Bob Ferguson, Bill Porter, and Don Law, was a chief architect of the 1950s and 60s Nashville sound in country music and rockabilly.
This period marked the beginning of the Nashville sound, a movement that aimed to broaden country music's appeal by incorporating pop elements.
Bradley's work extended to producing records for artists like Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, playing a key role in their career successes.
[6] In 1935 at the age of 20, Bradley got a job at radio station WSM, home of the Grand Ole Opry, where he worked as a musician and arranger.
Bradley worked as a music arranger and songwriter during the Castle Studio recording sessions of some of the biggest talents of the day, including Ernest Tubb, Burl Ives, Red Foley and Kitty Wells.
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 South and Appalachia.
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).
[citation needed] Lush string sections took the place of the mountain fiddle sound; steel guitars and smooth backing vocals rounded out the mix.
[1] Regarding the Nashville sound, Bradley stated, "Now we've cut out the fiddle and steel guitar and added choruses to country music.
"[16] The singers Bradley produced made unprecedented headway into radio,[1] and artists such as Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Lenny Dee, and Conway Twitty became household names.
[1] 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...
[19] His production of Cline's hits such as "Crazy", "I Fall to Pieces" and "Walkin' After Midnight" remain standards of the country music genre.
[20] 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, Bradley was chosen to direct their soundtracks.
"[21][22] His younger brother and business partner Harold Bradley became one of the world's most recorded session guitarists, and served as longtime president of the Nashville chapter of the American Federation of Musicians.
[21] Jerry's wife, Connie Bradley, worked with ASCAP's Nashville office for more than 30 years beginning in the mid-1970s, eventually as Senior Vice President.
