{"id":1303069,"date":"2019-01-31T09:06:33","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T16:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1802582"},"modified":"2019-01-31T09:06:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T16:06:33","slug":"music-row-founder-and-fabled-guitarist-harold-bradley-dead-at-93","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/music-row-founder-and-fabled-guitarist-harold-bradley-dead-at-93\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Row Founder and Fabled Guitarist Harold Bradley Dead at 93"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

by Edward Morris<\/a><\/span> 21m ago<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Harold Bradley<\/a>, a founder of the Nashville recording industry and a much-recorded guitar player, died Thursday (Jan. 31) in Nashville at the age of 93.<\/p>\n

In his more than 70 years as a session musician, Bradley played on a galaxy of hits, among them Alan Jackson\u2019s \u201cHere in the Real World,\u201d Patsy Cline\u2019s \u201cCrazy,\u201d \u201cI Fall to Pieces\u201d and \u201cSweet Dreams,\u201d Lefty Frizzell\u2019s \u201cLong Black Veil,\u201d Eddy Arnold\u2019s \u201cMake the World Go Away,\u201d John Anderson\u2019s \u201cSwingin\u2019,\u201d Loretta Lynn\u2019s \u201cCoal Miner\u2019s Daughter\u201d and Roy Orbison\u2019s \u201cCrying,\u201d Burl Ives\u2019 \u201cHolly Jolly Christmas,\u201d Hank Williams\u2019 \u201cRambling Man,\u201d Elvis Presley\u2019s \u201cDevil in Disguise,\u201d Roger Miller\u2019s \u201cKing of the Road,\u201d Jim Ed Brown\u2019s \u201cPop a Top,\u201d Tammy Wynette\u2019s \u201cStand by Your Man\u201d and Conway Twitty\u2019s \u201cHello Darlin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

From 1991 through 2008, Bradley served as the president of the Nashville chapter of the American Federation of Musicians.<\/p>\n

Born Harold Ray Bradley in Nashville on Jan. 2, 1926, he learned to play guitar on his own but got into the professional side of picking through his brother, producer and label chief Owen Bradley, who was 11 years his senior.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Guitarist] Billy Byrd starting dating a girl who lived down the street from me when I was about 12,\u201d Bradley recalls. \u201cHe was copying [the style of] Charlie Christian, who was the first electric guitar player of note. \u2026 Billy would come to date this girl, and he would bring rhythm guitar, an electric guitar and an amplifier. I\u2019d play rhythm for him, and he\u2019d let me play the electric.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1943, just after he\u2019d finished his junior year at Nashville\u2019s Isaac Litton High School, Bradley joined Ernest Tubb\u2019s band. \u201cOwen called me and said, \u2018Listen, Tubb\u2019s guitar player just left. So why don\u2019t you go on the road with him this summer?\u2019 I said, \u2018What! And play that old corny country music?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s exactly what he did. In the process, he became only the second electric guitarist to play on the Grand Ole Opry, which had banned the instrument until Tubb refused to play without it.<\/p>\n

\u201cErnest and I became the greatest of friends until he died,\u201d Bradley said. \u201c[In the early days] he\u2019d come by in the morning and get me, and we\u2019d go play the early morning radio show. And then we\u2019d go to the Pie Wagon, which was just a half a block down Seventh [Avenue] away from [radio station] WSM. We\u2019d be eating breakfast, and this guy, Eddy Arnold, would come in by himself. I had seen Eddy Arnold on the Opry occasionally [when he was with] Pee Wee King & the Golden West Cowboys.\u201d<\/p>\n

After breakfast, Bradley continued, \u201cEddy and I would get on the streetcar, and we\u2019d go to the end of the line, which was the end of North First Street, where it became Dickerson Road. I\u2019d walk two and a half blocks out to where I lived, and he walked almost all the way out to Trinity Lane to the trailer park where he lived. So we just became the greatest of friends. When I came out of the Navy, he used me on the Opry, which I\u2019m really very grateful for. And I was grateful to him for letting me work on his last three albums. It was a great thrill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following Bradley\u2019s two-year stint in the Navy, he enrolled at Nashville\u2019s George Peabody College. \u201cI couldn\u2019t read music,\u201d he said. \u201cI tried to learn to read, but I had to major on bass because they didn\u2019t have a guitar teacher. When I was 35 years old, Chet [Atkins] introduced me to a classical guitar player who was teaching at Blair [Academy] named Bunyan Webb. So I took three classical guitar lessons from Bunyan. But I never had any real formal training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradley played on his first recording session in 1946, backing Pee Wee King. The session took place in Chicago. \u201cThere were no recording studios in Nashville then,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t realize it, but you can date the recording industry in Nashville back to 1947 [when Castle Recording Studio opened]. Everybody thinks this industry has been here forever, and it really hasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1947, Owen Bradley hired his younger brother to play on a jingle for a Nashville jeweler. \u201cI think I got $17 for that, and they must have played it for 17 years. I was so happy. I\u2019d drive home in the car in the afternoon, and I\u2019d hear that jingle. And I\u2019d think, \u2018Boy, I\u2019ve really made it.\u2019 It really is a great reward to hear something on the air like that that you\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n

After dabbling in film production together in the early 1950s, the Bradley brothers opened their first recording studio in 1955 in a reconverted dwelling on 16th Avenue South. Later, they attached an Army surplus Quonset hut to the building, and this complex became the heart of what is now called Music Row.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, Owen and I were doing all this for the music,\u201d Bradley recalled. \u201cWe weren\u2019t doing it for the money, idiots that we were. The money happened to come along. When we sold the studio \u2014 the Quonset hut \u2014 we owed money. \u2026 We had three studios over a period of 10 years, and we didn\u2019t take any salary or make any money. We just put whatever we had back in, and we\u2019d support ourselves by playing whatever we were doing \u2014 television shows, dance bands, record sessions and anything else that would come along.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with for CMT.com just before he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006, Bradley said that he had earned more than $2 million in session wages since 1959. He had by this time lost count of the number of sessions he\u2019d worked in but knew it was \u201cin the thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the first hits to emerge from the Quonset hut was Sonny James\u2019 \u201cYoung Love\u201d in 1956. It went No. 1 on both the country and pop charts.
Owen Bradley became the head of Decca Records (later MCA) in 1958 and henceforth concentrated on producing the stars on that roster \u2014 such eminences as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Webb Pierce, Red Foley and Brenda Lee. Harold Bradley, however, played on sessions for all the labels.<\/p>\n

He became a recording artist in his own right during the 1960s when he recorded the Columbia Records albums Misty Guitar, Bossa Nova Goes Nashville and Guitar for Lovers Only. Lushly arranged and featuring the Anita Kerr Singers, these were essentially pop albums with country seasoning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that Columbia probably signed me to be the answer to Chet Atkins,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cBut nothing is an answer to Chet Atkins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much in demand, Bradley commonly did four three-hour sessions a day. Occasionally, he would do five \u2014 and nap in the drum booth in the off hours. He went on the road to play only rarely. When he was in college, he took off a couple of weeks to tour Texas with Pee Wee King. He didn\u2019t return to the road again until 1984, when he accompanied his old friend, Slim Whitman, to England. He also toured England with Floyd Cramer and Ireland with Sandy Kelly. But, for the most part, he\u2019s worked his musical wonders in Nashville.<\/p>\n

Bradley recorded with Elvis Presley from 1962 to 1967. \u201cHe was such a nice guy to work with,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was a quick study. He\u2019d go over and play the demo acetate and listen to a bunch of them. When he finally found one he liked, by the time he walked from there back over to the mic, it seemed like he knew the song.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was always Bradley\u2019s wish that all the members of what was called the \u201cA team\u201d of studio musicians would be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame en masse.<\/p>\n

Until recently, Bradley led a band that entertained guests following the BMI country awards banquet.<\/p>\n

Funeral arrangements have yet to be announced.<\/p>\n

\n
Edward Morris is a veteran of country music journalism. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a frequent contributor to CMT.com.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

via:: CMT News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Edward Morris 21m ago Harold Bradley, a founder of the Nashville recording industry and a much-recorded guitar player, died Thursday (Jan. 31) in Nashville at the age of 93. In his more than 70 years as a session musician, Bradley played on a galaxy of hits, among them Alan Jackson\u2019s \u201cHere in the Real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1303069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 09:57:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}