From: "Dik de Heer" Date: Mon Oct 21, 2002 1:05 am Subject: Born To Be With You : Owen Bradley OWEN BRADLEY (By Alain Dormoy) Born William Owen Bradley, 21 October 1915, Westmoreland, Tennessee Died 7 January 1998, Nashville, Tennessee. As a young man, Bradley had learned to play piano, guitar, harmonica and vibraphone and had worked as a musician and arranger. Between 1940 and 1958 he was the leader of the studio orchestra at the famous WSM Nashville radio station. In 1947 he started doing record production for Decca. As a performer he had one top 20 US country and pop hit: "Blues Stay Away From Me" with the Delmore Brothers. He also became a leading Nashville session musician. But over the years, Bradley proved to be a pioneer in many respects regarding country music and rock'n'roll: With his brother Harold, he was among the very first, in 1952, to set up an independent recording studio in what would later be known as Music Row in Nashville. They initially recorded artists like Ernest Tubb and Kitty Wells. In 1956 they built their Quonset hut studio on 16th Avenue. It was rented to various labels and Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent had some of their early sessions in it: that is where Gene recorded "Be Bop A Lula"(1956). It was also used by Conway Twitty for "It's Only Make Believe" (1958) and Johnny Horton for "Battle Of New Orleans" (1959). Owen Bradley led the session that revolutionised female county music in 1952: Kitty Wells' "It Was Not God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels". In 1958 he was named head of Decca's Nashville division. From there he played an essential role (as did Chet Atkins at RCA) in shaping what was becoming the "Nashville sound". Carrying on with what he had started with Kitty Wells in '52, he had his major producing successes with female vocalists: several more hits with Kitty Wells, twelve top 10 pop hits with Brenda Lee in the early 60's and he produced most of the songs that made Loretta Lynn a country legend. To this day his collaboration with Patsy Cline remains a standard against which some of the more genuine modern country vocalists measure their achievements. Bradley was the only country music producer to be nominated for an Academy award (for the soundtrack he had produced for the film "Coal Miner's Daughter" in which actress Sissy Spacek portrayed Loretta Lynn). He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974.