William Owen Bradley

Bradley's gift was matching the arrangement to the voice. For Loretta Lynn he kept the traditional country sound, while for Patsy Cline he added piano and soft strings, a choice that carried records like I Fall To Pieces toward pop audiences. He and his brother Harold ran Bradley's Film Studio before buying a house on Sixteenth Avenue South in 1954 and opening a recording studio in an attached Quonset hut. After selling it to Columbia in 1962 they built Bradley's Barn in Wilson County. In 1988 he produced k. d. lang's album Shadowland.

What the plaque says

William Owen Bradley 1915-1998 Born in Westmoreland, Tennessee, Owen Bradley moved to Nashville at age seven with his parents, Vernon and Letha Male Owen Bradley. A self-taught musician, his career began at age 15 playing piano in local roadhouses and clubs. Bradley was musical director at WSM Radio and leader of the Owen Bradley Orchestra. He and his brother Harold established the first recording studio on 16th Avenue, South, now known as Music Row. As a Decca/MCA Records executive, he produced records for more than a dozen members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, including Kitty Wells, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Ernest Tubb and Bill Monroe among others. An architect of the Nashville Sound, Bradley was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 12 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Red Boiling Springs — 22 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 31 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.

More markers nearby

• Jonathan Browning — 6.1 mi
• Durham's Chapel Rosenwald School — 7.7 mi
• A. I. Thornburg Heath — 9.1 mi
• Hugh Rogan — 9.3 mi