After brothers Harold and Owen Bradley sold their Quonset Hut Studio to Columbia Records in 1962, Owen bought a farm at 722 Benders Ferry Road in Mount Juliet, a suburb 17 miles east of Nashville. Investing less than $2000 in equipment, Owen and his son Jerry converted a barn on the property into a studio for recording demos.[1][2] By 1964, the barn had evolved into a fully-fledged recording studio, which Bradley appropriately named "Bradley's Barn."[3]
Within a few years, Bradley's Barn became a popular recording venue in country music circles, hosting 488 sessions in 1967 alone.[4] The following year, the Beau Brummels paid tribute to the studio, naming their 1968 album Bradley's Barn after the studio where it was recorded.[3] The studio hosted recording projects by such future Country Music Hall of Fame inductees as Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Webb Pierce, and Conway Twitty. Other artists who recorded at the studio in the 1960s included Jack Greene, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, Warner Mack, and Dinah Shore,[5]
In 1970, Jerry Bradley left the studio to work with Chet Atkins at RCA Nashville, but Bradley's Barn recording studio's string of commercially-successful projects continued throughout the decade, including several hit albums featuring the duo of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty. In 1977, when RCA closed its Nashville studios, Owen Bradley purchased the studio equipment and sub-let the studio space. RCA Studio A was remodeled and operated as Music City Music Hall,[6] and RCA Studio B was re-named Master Sound Studios and operated as a subsidiary of Bradley's Barn.[7]
