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INTRODUCTION

Cowboy Jack Clement knew a thing or two about record production. He made the first recordings of Jerry Lee Lewis, while his boss, Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, was away at a music-industry event. Here’s something Clement told me:

I was the guy in there running the board, but I was also in charge of the session, telling the musicians what to do. That made me a producer, but the word “producer” wasn’t even extant at that time, as I recall. Sam would be doing the same things. But they didn’t put producer credits on records at that time. I think RCA is the first one that did that with Chet Atkins. That’s the first I ever heard of putting “produced by” on a record. That wasn’t going on in 1956. I think that started happening in 1957 or ’8, something like that.

We won’t get a better clue for understanding early record production. Clement makes two points: first, there was record production before there were “record producers”; second, the term “record producer” refers to an awareness, a recognition of record production. On the one hand, there are the duties of production (the tasks). They’ve been around for a long time, ever since recordings were first marketed in the 1890s. On the other hand, there is the designation “producer” (the term).

Chet Atkins clarified the designation for me. He said his boss, Steve Sholes, head of RCA Victor’s country-and-western division, was the one who “started listing personnel.” He added, “That was his [Sholes’s] doing. He wanted to put the producer. He wanted to list the engineer, too, on each single, but they wouldn’t do it. The record company claimed there wasn’t enough room on the record [label] to print all that stuff,” but soon enough, most of “that stuff”—the recording credits—appeared on record sleeves and jackets. Who had brokered the 1955 deal that brought Elvis Presley to RCA Victor? Who was performing the tasks of production, even if he didn’t hold the title of “producer”? Why, it was Steve Sholes. Atkins, again:

Steve used me on most everything he did. He’d call me and tell me to record a certain song with a certain artist. I just did it like he did it. I’d already been hiring the musicians for him. I was kind of his assistant for quite a while. So I’d imitate Steve. I owe everything to Steve.

To this comment add a series of events that answers why and, perhaps, how the title “producer”—and not “director”—came into general use. In August 1956, Presley headed out to Hollywood to work on his first movie, Love Me Tender. He’d already released his first album, Elvis Presley (March 1956). Its jacket listed no personnel, though anyone who cared to know would’ve understood Sholes’s role in its making. He was the all-important head of A&R (artists and repertoire). Working with recording engineer Bob Ferris, Chet Atkins might have fulfilled duties that now look like production (e.g., he assembled the band), but Sholes was the executive tasked with making all of the big decisions. For example, at his first session for RCA (January 10, 1956), Presley recorded three songs he had routinely performed: “I Got a Woman,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and “Money Honey.” Sholes allowed Presley to record this familiar material, but he’d already planned a follow-up session for the very next night. At that session Presley sang two songs—“I’m Counting on You” and “I Was the One”—from a list created by Sholes. Significantly, both of these numbers were published by a subsidiary of Hill & Range, the firm that had helped underwrite the deal that brought Presley to RCA. From the five songs recorded during these two sessions, Sholes selected “Heartbreak Hotel” backed with “I Was the One” as the first single. To calculate the revenue the single generated, one has to enter the morass of RIAA certification. Suffice it to say, it vindicated Sholes’s high-stakes wager. Immediately, the $35,000 RCA had paid for Presley’s Sun contract—at that time the most money ever spent on a pop singer—seemed like a bargain. Notice, then, Sholes’s tasks make him resemble a “producer” more than a “director” in the Hollywood sense of those titles.

Getting back to Love Me Tender, I want to speculate. In the movie Presley sings four songs written by Ken Darby, the film’s “musical director.” In Elvis Presley: A Life in Music—The Complete Recording Sessions, Ernst Jorgensen describes the soundtrack recording sessions and lists the following technical credits: Lionel Newman (producer), Ken Darby (arranger), and Bob Mayer/Ken Runyon (engineers). Thus, while movie credits read “music by” Lionel Newman—David Weisbart had produced the actual movie for Twentieth Century-Fox—credits on the soundtrack album designate Newman as “producer.” He composed the soundtrack to Love Me Tender; he produced the original soundtrack album (the OST). If you will, the engineer, who actually compiled the soundtrack album by cobbling together musical selections from the film, directed the OST. Hence, Newman’s designation as “producer” makes complicated but perfect sense.

In 1957, RCA named Sholes pop singles manager and, in 1958, pop singles and albums manager. Perhaps Sholes appropriated the term “producer” from its use on OST recordings. If not, he simply recognized that his role in making records was directly analogous to that of Pandro Berman and Hal Wallis in making movies, and he decided to formalize this arrangement (no doubt for financial reasons). Therefore, when Atkins moved into Sholes’s old position in Nashville, he became a producer and not, perhaps more logically, a “director of recording.”

• • •

That enigma solved, let me describe the organization of this oral history of country music production. The book’s chapters identify four distinct eras—four paradigms, really—that structure the story of recording. Each era is characterized by an emergent technology that redefined production, effectively remaking the role of producer. There is, however, one constant that unifies this history. Musicians make music. Producers make recordings. In a nutshell, that’s their job.

Thus, I’ve organized chapters around recordings—songs and albums—arranged chronologically by original release dates. In most cases, producers provide commentary on their own recordings or on their own working methods. Occasionally, people intimately acquainted with the productions of others provide commentary. For example, Don Law Jr. remembers his father’s story. Don Pierce points to A&R pioneer Ralph Peer’s understanding of publishing as production. Harold Bradley, who has played sessions with pretty near everybody, speaks especially of his brother, Owen. Another guitar great, Reggie Young, focuses on sessions with producers Chips Moman and Jimmy Bowen. Bobby Braddock describes writing songs—“He Stopped Loving Her Today” and “Golden Ring”—for Billy Sherrill. Several producers, especially of the earliest recordings referenced, speak from their experiences preparing classic material for reissue.

All quotations in this oral history derive from interviews that I conducted, recorded, and transcribed (over a period of twenty years). I begin the story of country production with an overture. In it a panel of experts defines the role of record producer. (The experts are real; the panel is simulated.) This topic is expanded in the interludes that preface chapters 2 and 3. Introducing chapter 4 is a conversation with producer and Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter Bobby Braddock.

This book’s focus on country records ought to prompt any number of observations in readers, but for now, I’ll anticipate two. First, you’ll see that producers have their hot streaks, as does country music as a whole. For example, speaking of Nashville in 1962, Jerry Kennedy declared, “This whole town exploded.” His claim is substantiated in the text. Moments, cycles, and trends—all manner of patterns—should materialize in the reading of this history. Second, you’ll see that every paradigm of production contains within it all past paradigms. New ways of working never completely supplant old ways: methods accrue; they don’t replace previous methods. Thus, during an era when digital editing enables producers to comp (composite) vocals, some producers use the newest technology, for all intents and purposes, as if the tools for cutting vocals direct to discs made of wax had finally been perfected. Then again, any given technology can always do more than a culture will allow; as a corollary to this rule, new technology is always employed to realize fully the potential of—to prop up the ideology that supported—the old technology.

Chapter 1 (1927–1949) opens with a recollection of Ralph Peer, the famed A&R man who superintended country music’s big bang—the 1927 recordings of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and other musicians at the Bristol Sessions. Thus, it refers back to a time that also witnessed the adoption of electrical recording. This chapter ends as magnetic tape replaces acetate discs as the recording medium of choice. Chapter 2 (1950–1966) sees the A&R man become the producer. His overarching ideal is to create conditions that evoke perfect performances. Chapter 3 (1967–1991) marks the era of multitrack recording, a full realization of what tape can do. Chapter 4 (1992–present) could be labeled “the digital era.” My late start date calls attention to the near-ubiquitous use of multitrack digital recording that followed the release of ADAT recorders in 1992.

• • •

Several recording artists discussed in these pages do not readily fit prevailing notions of country music. The Dinning Sisters, Robert Johnson, Otis Redding, Joe Tex, and Al Green will never be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. That’s fine. To admit them would weaken or efface a border crossing that country music, as an institution, actively guards. It would prompt us to ask, not the commonplace question, “What counts as country?” but rather, “What doesn’t?”

Nevertheless, I’ve included a few nonconventional artists and recordings in this history. I’ve done so for four reasons. First, I want readers to notice that producers often don’t see (or that they simply ignore) borderlines, or that—as was the case of Don Law and Robert Johnson—the genre distinctions listeners now regard as commonsense hadn’t been created, or that, at the very least, when Willie Mitchell had Al Green interpret a country song, there was some wisdom (money to be made) in blurring accepted boundaries. Second, country producers take no oaths of genre fidelity. Readers ought to notice that the same guy who produced Robert Johnson also gave us classic recordings from Lefty Frizzell and Johnny Cash. Or that to Buddy Killen and Joe Tex, countrified funk wasn’t an oxymoron. Third, there are lessons to be learned about country production when, for example, Ken Nelson narrates a story about recording the Dinning Sisters, a pop group. Fourth, I want readers to push definitions—if only a little bit. I’m aware that Dusty in Memphis flies under the banner of “blue-eyed soul,” but give it half a chance, and it will play like one of the greatest country records ever made.

• • •

I really enjoy reading Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles, by David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren. Unlike almost every other book devoted to country, it lists producers and frequently acknowledges their importance to the process of creating records. The list of recordings it compiles is subjective, but it’s rarely quirky. Though one might argue that it emphasizes older recordings, the book supplies a handy canon of country. Count the producers who worked on those 500 recordings, and the length of that list is astonishing. It’s so short. Of the songs listed, 36 credit no producer. For their work on the remaining 464 songs, a little more than 170 people earned production credit. That number is, however, slightly inflated because it includes co-productions. Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, and Arif Mardin produced Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” That’s three producers, one recording. Drop names that appear only once, and the list shrinks from 170 producers to 58; drop names that appear only twice, and the list goes to 37; drop names that appear only three times, and we’re left with 24 producers. But here’s the kicker: these 24 producers worked on 313 of the 464 credited recordings! That’s close to 70 percent.

As you might expect, the 51 people I recorded for this oral history represent a big chunk of history and a whole lot of great music. As many of the names won’t be familiar even to avid country fans, I’ve provided brief biographical sketches of the producers and others I interviewed for easy reference.