RCA Studio B, 1611 Roy Acuff Place, Nashville, TN (2026)

01/09/2026

Monument Records founder Fred Foster had fond memories of RCA Studio B, where many of Monument’s hits were recorded.

“I was lucky enough to produce quite a few hits there, including Roy Orbison’s early 1960s hits, some of which became international best-sellers. So, I have a lot of happy memories of RCA Studio B. I think it’s magical.”

That magic wasn’t always easy to make, however. Foster recalled the story of recording Orbison’s “Crying.”

“We rehearsed it for two or three weeks in my office. Then we went in and recorded it, and it was just awful. Not Roy, Roy’s voice was never awful. But the record sounded awkward, stiff. I said, ‘Roy, this isn’t it,’ and he said, ‘No,’ so we recorded it a second time. It didn’t come out again. So, Wesley [Rose] (who published the song) said, ‘Well, it’s probably not a very good song.’ I said, ‘Wes, it’s a great song. And I’m going to keep doing it until we get it right.’ So, Roy and I got together in my office, and I said, ‘Look, I love this song so much, and I know you do too, and I think we’re too close to it. So, I’d like to make a proposition: Let’s hire three different arrangers, let’s not tell them a word, just make me a tape with the guitar. So, we [told them] ‘here, go treat it the way you think it ought to be treated.’”

The three arrangers brought their work to the studio on the day of the session. Foster pulled three straws out of a broom and told them, “The long one goes first, the middle one second, and the short one has to go last.” Arranger Jim Hall pulled the long straw. Upon hearing Hall rehearse his arrangement with the band, Orbison and Foster immediately agreed it was what they’d been looking for. Foster told the other two arrangers their services wouldn’t be needed.

“I can tell you if a record has magic. I’m never wrong, never. I can also tell you when it doesn’t have any. Magic is foolproof.”

“Crying” peaked at #2 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in October 1961 and was ranked #4 on the Hot 100 singles of 1961 chart. It was an international hit and one of Orbison’s signature songs.

01/02/2026

Little Richard is rightly regarded as one of rock & roll’s crucial innovators, a flamboyant character whose pounding piano and frenetic vocal style mixed gospel fervor with the profane in hits such as 1955’s “Tutti Frutti.” That explosive sound has some of its roots in the day Little Richard met another young singer and pianist named Eskew Reeder in Macon, Georgia, in the early 1950s and invited him over. Little Richard was impressed by Reeder’s rumbling piano style and persuaded him to teach the technique.

Both men had dwelled between worlds in the Jim Crow-era South, playing church music and performing for the rowdy chitlin’ circuit crowds. Reeder’s act regularly featured him in an impossibly tall pompadour wig and pancake makeup, not unlike Little Richard’s famous stage presentation.

Little Richard scored first with “Tutti Frutti,” but then left secular music behind for a time in 1957. The void left Capitol Records to pounce on signing Reeder, who took the moniker Esquerita and recorded sides in several different cities. Among those was Nashville’s RCA Studio B, where Esquerita would cut portions of his 1959 self-titled debut album with Capitol A&R head Ken Nelson producing. Cuts from those sessions include the hard-driving, raunchy “Oh Baby,” “I Live the Life I Love,” “Katie Mae,” and “Rockin’ the Joint,” complete with “whoop” vocalizations similar to Little Richard’s.

Esquerita would later record at Nashville’s Bradley Film and Recording Studios (including the wild B-side “Esquerita and the Voola”) as well as Cosimo Matassa’s New Orleans studio by the early 1960s, but he would never attain the same level of fame as Little Richard. He died in New York City in 1986, a casualty of the AIDS epidemic, and is buried in an unmarked grave.

Pictured: Esquerita (center) at RCA Studio B with producer Ken Nelson (right) and an unidentified man.

12/23/2025

Born in Prattville, Alabama, in 1941, singer Wilson Pickett cut the bulk of his hit records—including "Land of 1000 Dances," "Mustang Sally," and his cover of "Hey Jude"—at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. However, in June of 1973, the man some called "Wicked Pickett" visited Nashville's RCA Studio B to record his thirteenth studio album, "Miz Lena's Boy."

Though Pickett appeared in the 2013 documentary "Muscle Shoals" and had a biography written about him (2017's "In the Midnight Hour" by Tony Fletcher), there hasn't been much documentation on the vocalist who was once the biggest act on Atlantic Records.

When Pickett released the single "Hey Jude" in 1969, it was clear Atlantic's priorities were shifting—signaled by the release of Led Zeppelin's debut. However, the track, which is sometimes referred to as "the origins of Southern rock," would become a great success. It's also a representation of Pickett's artistic alliance with then-session guitarist Duane Allman, who encouraged the unorthodox cover (the Beatles' hit was still all over the radio).

After "Hey Jude," Pickett recorded three more albums for Atlantic before moving to RCA. Perhaps inspired by the success of that single, he included two covers on "Miz Lena's Boy." The Studio B sessions produced a jaunty rendition of Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and a distinctive version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee."

While "Miz Lena's Boy" didn't achieve the commercial success of Pickett's earlier records, it did produce two charting songs—"Take a Closer Look at the Woman You’re With" and "Soft Soul Boogie Woogie"— and is considered by some a hidden gem in his catalog.

12/19/2025

Nashville A-Team drummer Murrey Mizell “Buddy” Harman Jr. played many recording sessions at RCA Studio B. He was born to a musical family in Nashville in 1928. Both of his parents played in a band and his mother played drums, but Buddy first gravitated toward the piano.

“I started on piano when I was eight years old, but it didn’t last very long. The teacher thought I was good because I was musically inclined, but once I heard Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, that changed my whole life. I was about ten or eleven years old when I heard those records. I thought, ‘That’s for me.’ That’s all I wanted to do—play the drums like that.”

A teenage Harman bought his first drums, a $75 white pearl Slingerland Radio King kit, which he paid for in weekly installments of $3 from the money he earned working as an usher at the Paramount Theater.

“I set them up in the usher’s room and started beating on them and driving everybody crazy and did whatever I could do to play drums. At the age of eighteen, I joined the navy so I could go to drum school on the G.I. Bill when I got out.”

After his service and two years of college in Nashville, Harman enrolled in the Roy Knapp School of Percussion in Chicago and spent three years in the Windy City developing his skills. Returning to Nashville in 1952, he became a first-call drummer who played on an estimated 18,000 recording sessions, including the one that produced Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” a three-week No. 1 pop single on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1964.

“Every time we did a session with Roy, he’d always bring his guitar over to the drum booth. And he’d play whatever he was going to play, and he’d say, ‘What would go with this?’ So, I’d try to come up with something that would go with it. But on ‘Pretty Woman’ he played that straight four beat, and I thought ‘Well, it’s obvious what’s going to go with that,’ and he said, ‘That’s it. That’s what I want right there.’”

Harman became the first house drummer at the Grand Ole Opry in 1959, playing behind a curtain because drums were still not allowed on the stage at that time. He was awarded the Super Picker award from NARAS Nashville for playing drums on the most No. 1 recordings in 1975 and 1976. He died in 2008.

12/12/2025

In 1963, RCA released Jim Reeves’s first and only holiday album, “12 Songs of Christmas,” a mix of hymns and standards fit for the season. But in its original incarnation, the album only had eleven tracks and was released somewhere other than the United States.

Sessions for the songs took place at RCA Studio B in 1962, with Chet Atkins serving as producer. The eleven tracks included “Jingle Bells,” “White Christmas,” and “Silent Night,” among a few lesser-known offerings like Willie Phelps’s “The Merry Christmas Polka” and Lawton Williams’s “Señor Santa Claus.”

RCA recognized a growing overseas demand for country music and initially put the album out in South Africa as “Merry Christmas from Jim Reeves.” The next year, Reeves returned to the studio and cut his version of “Silver Bells,” which was added to the track list for an even twelve songs. It was released under its new title in time for the 1963 holiday shopping season.

“12 Songs of Christmas” ended up being successful on both sides of the Atlantic, charting for multiple weeks on one of Billboard’s album tallies and becoming a beloved classic in both the United Kingdom and South Africa.

Pictured: Chet Atkins listens in the control room as Jim Reeves records in RCA Studio B.

12/05/2025

In June of 1970, ELVIS PRESLEY arrived at RCA Studio B to begin work on what would eventually be called “the marathon sessions,” recording more than thirty songs in just over six days. The sessions yielded most of the “Elvis Country” album, as well as now-famous cuts of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water," both included on his 1970 album “That’s the Way It Is.”

A few months later, in May of 1971, Presley returned to RCA Studio B. These sessions, lasting into June, would yield his second and final official Christmas album, "Elvis Sings The Wonderful World of Christmas,” a priority for RCA and Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker. By this time, 1957’s “Elvis’ Christmas Album,” was close to sales of 2 million and would eventually become his best-selling album, with more than 10 million copies certified by the RIAA.

Producer Felton Jarvis set out to recreate the magic of that first record—RCA Studio B was decorated for an early Christmas. In the middle of the studio stood a tree complete with empty boxes wrapped to resemble presents. Lights were brought in to provide the studio a festive glow. Presley even brought real gifts for the musicians present—gold bracelets engraved "Elvis '71."

During those spring sessions, Presley was ultimately more interested in cutting contemporary material, insisting on covers of Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, and even an impromptu version of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna." However, from his Christmas assignment came a standout, the bluesy "Merry Christmas Baby," now considered a classic. In the early '70s, Christmas albums weren't listed on Billboard's pop charts, but in the year of its release, "Elvis Sings The Wonderful World of Christmas,” reached No. 2 on the special Christmas chart.

11/28/2025

Country Music Hall of Fame member Hank Snow recorded his sixth No. 1 single, “I’ve Been Everywhere,” at RCA Studio B on June 27, 1962. It reached the top of the country charts on November 10 that year, staying two weeks.

Written by Australian singer-songwriter Geoff Mack, “I’ve Been Everywhere” was first recorded and popularized by another Australian, rock, pop, and country singer Lucky Starr earlier that year.

With rapid-fire lyrics listing over sixty places visited, the tune featured the names of various Australian towns such as Wallangarra and Billabong. For Snow’s version, Mack changed the lyrics to reflect locations in North and South America, including Houston, Little Rock, Texarkana, and Argentina. Mack followed suit for subsequent recordings of the song made in other countries, such as New Zealand, including towns like Whangaroa and Motuhora, and the United Kingdom, including Oxford, Hereford, and Broadstairs. In 1996, Johnny Cash recorded a popular version, produced by Rick Rubin and with backing by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers along with Marty Stuart.

Canadian-born Snow made his first recordings for the RCA Victor imprint Canadian Bluebird between 1936 and 1949, but only a few of them were released in the United States, which made it difficult for him to crack the American market. However, due to Country Music Hall of Fame member Ernest Tubb’s insistence, WSM executives invited Snow to join the Grand Ole Opry in January 1950, mere months before his self-penned, massive hit “I’m Moving On” became No. 1 for twenty-one weeks. An accomplished songwriter, guitarist, businessman, and prolific recording artist, Snow made some 840 commercial recordings during his career and recorded 104 albums for RCA. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1979. He died in 1999.

11/21/2025

Grandpa Jones (born Lewis Marshall Jones) was a fixture on “Hee Haw” and the Grand Ole Opry, often punctuating skits with a witty remark or showing off his clawhammer banjo skills. Although he wasn't an RCA artist, he has a connection with RCA Studio B that involves his biggest hit record.

Grandpa Jones earned his paternal nickname decades earlier. As a young man in his twenties, Marshall Jones was a devotee of old-time music who often performed on country radio shows. At WBZ-Boston in 1935, singer Bradley Kincaid called him "Grandpa" because of his crotchety demeanor on their morning program. The name and the persona stuck.

Jones’s recording career began in the 1940s in Cincinnati when he and guitar ace Merle Travis recorded together as the Shepherd Brothers on what would be the first release by Syd Nathan’s influential King Records. By the 1950s, Jones and his talented wife Ramona were living in Nashville and making regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. He signed with Fred Foster’s startup Monument label in 1960 and scored one of his biggest singles with a version of Jimmie Rodgers’s classic “T for Texas.”

Sometimes known as “Blue Yodel No. 1,” the song was the breakthrough hit for Rodgers in 1928 and the first in his series of Blue Yodels. Jones’s version, recorded at RCA Studio B, gives it an update that makes use of 1960s Nashville studio finesse while retaining some of its raw edge. Despite its lyrical grimness, Jones sings it with a wink, adding an extra flourish to his yodels and then cracking up in laughter as he hits the final chorus. It reached No. 5 on the country chart in February 1963—six years before he joined the “Hee Haw” cast—and demonstrated his devotion to old-time music, a trait he continued to exhibit long after he’d finally grown into his nickname.

11/17/2025

By the mid-1950s, country music had a new challenge. With rock & roll siphoning off country's youth market and radio clout, Nashville began using pop-oriented country productions to attract the adult audience. The Nashville Sound was born.

In the studios, fiddles and steel guitars gave way to string sections and backing vocalists. The top producers, including RCA Studio B's Chet Atkins, relied on a small group of studio musicians, whose quick adaptability and creative input made them vital to the hit-making process.

In November of 1960, "Time" magazine reported that Nashville had "nosed out Hollywood as the nation's second biggest (after New York) record-producing center." The piece, a profile of country music focusing on the career of RCA recording artist Jim Reeves, was one of the earliest to use the term "Nashville Sound." (It first appeared in "Music Reporter" in 1958.)

Through the 1960s, the Nashville Sound referred to the special atmosphere that could be found in Nashville studios. "Even Bob Dylan and Buffy Sainte-Marie occasionally come to town in search of what is vaguely called 'the Nashville Sound,'" said journalist Paul Hemphill. By the mid-1970s scholars and journalists began to employ the term in a different fashion, using it to define a specific substyle of country music.

With his mellow baritone and polished stage presence, "Gentleman Jim" Reeves was the quintessential Nashville Sound singer. Reeves and Atkins helped steer country music in this new direction with lush, pop-influenced hits such as "Four Walls" and "He'll Have to Go," the latter recorded at RCA Studio B.

The 1960 “Time” account was accurate. The informal approach to arranging executed by a crack team of studio aces, combined with the artistic vision of a handful of producers, proved instrumental in helping establish Nashville’s reputation as Music City worldwide.

11/10/2025

Country Music Hall of Fame member Roger Miller had his first Top Ten hit with “When Two Worlds Collide.” He wrote it with his friend Bill Anderson (also now a Country Music Hall of Famer) on a road trip from Nashville to San Antonio and recorded it at RCA Studio B in February 1961 with producer Chet Atkins and engineer Bill Porter.

Anderson recalled, “There was a very famous science fiction movie in the 1950s called “When Worlds Collide.” Roger was enamored with that movie, and he kept wanting to write a song called ‘When Worlds Collide.’ He’d come to me, and I’d say, ‘Roger, we can’t steal the title of the movie, we can’t write a song called ‘Gone with the Wind,’ and we can’t write one called ‘When Worlds Collide.’

“So one night we’re going to Texas in his station wagon, and he said, ‘What if we called it “When Two Worlds Collide,”’ and I said, ‘Great!’ We were with a young singer named Johnny Seay, and Roger said, ‘Johnny, get up here and drive.’ Roger and I got his guitar out, got in the backseat, and we wrote that song somewhere between Nashville and San Antonio. Roger and I stayed awake all night long singing it to each other so we wouldn’t forget it. That’s the only way we had to remember it. We got to San Antonio about eight o’clock the next morning.”

Miller and Anderson had a friend in San Antonio named Neal Merritt, who worked at the country radio station. Miller called him to ask if he’d bring a tape recorder to the hotel. “He came over to the hotel, brought the tape recorder, we recorded it, and fell across the bed and probably slept for twelve hours,” Anderson said.

Roger Miller won a total of eleven Grammys during his career, five in 1964 and six in 1965. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995, three years after his death at age fifty-six.

10/30/2025

In the era immediately following World War II, Steve Sholes led the push for Nashville’s growing importance as a music industry town. As head of RCA Victor’s Nashville division, Sholes had a hand in signing record deals with future Country Music Hall of Fame members Eddy Arnold, P*e Wee King, Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, and, in the mid-1950s, Elvis Presley. Sholes also recruited Chet Atkins to serve as his assistant before turning the reins over to him.

Several labels recorded their artists in Nashville starting in the late 1940s, though none of them had a permanent presence in the city until Sholes was at RCA Victor. He set up an office and studio where artists could record, eventually landing in a space on McGavock Street that was rented from the Television, Radio, and Film Commission (TRAFCO) of the Methodist Church. Hits recorded in that room include Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Jim Reeves’s “Four Walls.”

Sholes would later be instrumental in the construction of RCA Studio B on Music Row and therefore in the development of the Nashville Sound. “We see a bigger and better future for recording in Nashville, not only with a Nashville artist but with visiting artists who come in,” Sholes told the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in a February 1968 oral history interview. “It’s the one distinctive type of recording sound that I think’s been developed in this country.”

Though Sholes’s work ultimately carried him to executive posts in Los Angeles and New York, Nashville was always important to him. He served on the boards of the Country Music Association and the Country Music Foundation when the Country Music Hall of Fame honor was being created and the museum was being built on Music Row. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1967, mere months before his untimely death on April 22, 1968, at fifty-seven years old.

Pictured: singer Libby Horne with Steve Sholes (foreground) and an unidentified engineer at RCA’s TRAFCO studio.

10/24/2025

Country music singer and songwriter Dottie West enjoyed one of the longest hitmaking careers of any woman of her generation. Her self-penned song “Here Comes My Baby,” recorded in RCA Studio B in 1964, earned her the first Grammy ever awarded for Best Country Vocal Performance, Female.

West was also a modern country pioneer in writing advertising jingles (including Coca-Cola’s famous “Country Sunshine” campaign of the 1970s) and a wide-ranging duet singer who recorded with Don Gibson, Jimmy Dean, Kenny Rogers, and Jim Reeves.

Reeves had a No. 3 country hit with her composition “Is This Me?” in 1963. He brought her to the attention of RCA’s Chet Atkins, who signed her and produced “Here Comes My Baby.” West scored additional Top Ten singles with “Would You Hold It Against Me” (1966) and “Paper Mansions” (1967), as well as hit duets with Reeves (“Love Is No Excuse,” 1964) and Gibson (“Rings of Gold,” 1969).

She moved to United Artists Records in 1976 and later scored a pair of No. 1 country hits with “A Lesson in Leavin’” (1980) and “Are You Happy Baby?” (1980). A string of hit duets with Kenny Rogers included the No. 1 country hits “Every Time Two Fools Collide” (1978) and “What Are We Doin’ in Love” (1981), which also became a Top Twenty pop recording.

In the early 1960s, Patsy Cline was a mentor to Dottie West, and West, in turn, befriended other performers and songwriters, boosting the careers of Larry Gatlin, Jeannie Seely, and Steve Wariner. West died from injuries sustained in a car crash in 1991 at age fifty-eight.

Pictured: Dottie West and Jerry Bradly at RCA Studios, 1973

RCA Studio B

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