In 1955, at the age of 29, Smith opened Royal Audio Music (Ram) Recording Co., located at 2439 Lakeshore Drive in Shreveport, Louisiana.
She crossed genre and racial boundaries and found artists who performed a variety of styles including rockabilly, R&B, swamp pop, and country.
In 1960, the studio moved to Greenwood Drive (in Shreveport), and included a built-in echo unit and separate vocal booths.
Smith discovered that RCA made custom pressings for independent record labels and decided to use their services.
Billboard gave the song a positive review[8][9] Linda Brannon was Ram Records' first big-selling artist.
[13] The Lonesome Drifter (Thomas Johnson) and his single "Eager Boy" / "Tear Drop Valley" (1958) is considered[by whom?]
Her cousin, Alton Warwick, was interviewed in 1994 and commented that he believed being a woman hindered her success, because people did not always take her seriously, especially with issues like financing.
[14] Due to her tight budget, she only promoted a few singles each year and was often forced to leave quality songs in the vault.
After Smith's death the, by now, Margaret Lewis-Warwick, and her husband Alton Warwick, continued to own and operate Ram Records from Shreveport, Louisiana.
[5] In 1994, five years after Smith's death from leukemia in 1989, the London-based Ace Records, a British reissue label, released a six CD box set which included many previously unreleased songs from the Ram catalog.
In September and October 1994, NPR's Alex Chadwick ran a four part story on the Ram studio and record label.