Owen Bradley; Country Music and Record Producer

Owen Bradley, musician and record producer credited with making Nashville the country music capital of the world, has died. He was 82.

Bradley, who had suffered from heart problems, died Wednesday in a Nashville hospital, two days after he was hospitalized for respiratory flu symptoms.

He was a key figure in advancing the careers of such country music icons as Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, Conway Twitty and Patsy Cline.

“There wouldn’t be a music business in Nashville, at least the way it developed, without the work of Owen Bradley and the presence of Owen Bradley,” said historian Ronnie Pugh of the Country Music Foundation.

Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974, Bradley maintained his interest in singers until the end.

Commenting on the career of today’s teenage recording stars such as LeAnn Rimes, Bradley last year recalled another young phenomenon, Lee. “Too bad we weren’t around the minute Brenda was born,” he told The Times, “because she must have been squawkin’ and squealin’. That girl was just born singin’--or born to sing, anyway.”

Bradley seemed to have been born to record and promote country singers and to develop Nashville as the hub. He moved there from a Tennessee farm with his family at age 7, was studying guitar by 10, and at 15 began playing piano in roadhouses and lodge halls.

He landed a part-time job at radio station WSM, which broadcasts the Grand Ole Opry, in 1935. Five years later he gained full-time employment there as arranger, pianist, organist and trombonist. In 1947, he became musical director, a position he held until 1958.

Bradley did not limit his activities to the radio station. In 1940 he formed the Owen Bradley Orchestra, which remained Nashville’s premier dance band until it broke up in 1964.

With his brother Harold, Bradley bought an old house, attached a Quonset hut to it and set up an independent recording studio, dubbing it Quonset Hut. Established in 1954, that studio was the start of what is now Nashville’s famous Music Row.

Bradley also began working with Decca Records in 1947, and in 1958 left WSM to open Decca’s Nashville office, becoming vice president. He retired from that position for Decca-MCA in 1976, after producing hit records by such singers as Lynn, Twitty, Cline, Lee, Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb and Webb Pierce.

Bradley’s creativity enabled country music to survive the threat of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s. Along with Chet Atkins at RCA, he added string sections and vocal choruses to the records of what had been known as hillbilly singers. He also excised twangy fiddles and steel guitars traditionally associated with country music.

After his retirement from Decca, Bradley worked as an independent producer.