Castle Recording Laboratory (also referred to as Castle Studio, or The Castle) was a recording studio established in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

, in 1946 by WSM broadcast engineers Carl Jenkins, George Reynolds and Aaron Shelton. The Castle was Nashville's first commercial recording studio, producing close to half of the songs on the country music charts between 1947 and 1955. Castle Studio was where

Hank Williams Hiram "Hank" Williams (September 17, 1923 – January 1, 1953) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. An early pioneer of country music, he is regarded as one of the most significant and influential musicians of the 20th century. W ...

recorded almost exclusively for his entire career, and

Paul Cohen Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician, best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was awarded a F ...

and

Owen Bradley William Owen Bradley (October 21, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American musician, bandleader and record producer who, along with Chet Atkins, Bob Ferguson, Bill Porter, and Don Law, was a chief architect of the 1950s and 60s Nashville sou ...

recorded artists like

Ernest Tubb Ernest Dale Tubb (February 9, 1914 – September 6, 1984), nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, "Walking the Floor Over You" (1941), marked ...

Red Foley Clyde Julian "Red" Foley (June 17, 1910 – September 19, 1968) was an American musician who made a major contribution to the growth of country music after World War II. For more than two decades, Foley was one of the biggest stars of the gen ...

Kitty Wells Ellen Muriel Deason (August 30, 1919 – July 16, 2012), known professionally as Kitty Wells, was an American pioneering female country music singer. She broke down a barrier for women in country music with her 1952 hit recording " It Wasn't God ...

, and

Webb Pierce Michael Webb Pierce (August 8, 1921 – February 24, 1991) was an American country music vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist of the 1950s, one of the most popular of the genre, charting more number-one hits than any other country and western pe ...

before Bradley co-founded

Bradley Studios Quonset Hut Studio is the nickname given to Bradley Studios, an independent recording studio complex established in 1954 in Nashville, Tennessee by brothers Harold and Owen Bradley. The first commercial recording studio facility in what would la ...

History

Early history

In 1946, recognizing demand for local

recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for Sound recording and reproduction, recording and Audio mixing, mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home proje ...

services in Nashville, WSM broadcast engineers Carl Jenkins, George Reynolds and Aaron Shelton established Castle Recording Laboratory (named after the radio station's nickname "Air Castle of the South"). The engineers utilized an 8-input mono

mixing console A mixing console or mixing desk is an electronic device for Audio mixing (recorded music), mixing audio signals, used in sound recording and reproduction and sound reinforcement systems. Inputs to the console include microphones, signals fro ...

National Life and Accident Insurance Company The National Life and Accident Insurance Company was an American life insurance company based in Nashville, Tennessee that operated from 1900 until it was acquired in a hostile takeover in 1982 by American General Corporation. History Foun ...

Building at 7th Avenue North and Union Street after broadcast hours, with signals transferred via telephone line to a recording lathe at WSM's backup transmitter site away. Less than a year later, Castle Recording recorded Francis Craig and His Orchestra's

Ryman Auditorium Ryman Auditorium (originally Union Gospel Tabernacle and renamed Grand Ole Opry House for a period) is a historic 2,362-seat live-performance venue and museum located at 116 Rep. John Lewis Way North, in the downtown core of Nashville, Tennesse ...

performance of " Near You" for

Bullet Records At least five record labels with the name Bullet Records have existed. Bullet Records, Nashville, 1946-1952 The earliest Bullet Records was a record label based in Nashville, United States, which was started in 1946 by Jim Bulleit and C.V. Hit ...

, which became the first number one song recorded in Nashville and the number one song of 1947.

Tulane Hotel

The subsequent demand for Castle Recording's services was too much for its owners to accommodate in WSM's studios after hours, and in 1947, with a $1,000 loan from Third National Bank to convert a banquet room on the second floor of the Hotel Tulane at 206 8th Avenue North into a recording studio equipped with their mixing console, an Ampex Model 200 tape recorder, and a Scully

lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, threading and turning, with tools that are applied to the w ...

, establishing the first commercial recording space in Nashville. Castle cut master discs for all major labels (except

RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

), and independent labels like

. Between 1947 and 1955 the Castle Recording Laboratory produced close to half of the songs on the country music charts.

recorded his first demos at Castle Recording on December 11, 1946, and went on to record almost exclusively at Castle while it was in operation.

and

recorded artists like

, and

at Castle Recording before Bradley went on to co-found

. In May, 1952,

recorded "

It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" is a 1952 country song written by J. D. "Jay" Miller, and recorded by Kitty Wells. It was an answer song to the Hank Thompson hit "The Wild Side of Life". First performed by Al Montgomery as "Did God ...

" at Castle Studio. The song became the first No. 1 ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'' country hit for a solo woman artist. Castle Recording Laboratory shut down in 1956 in light of WSM enacting new policies designed to limit employees' outside business interests, as well as the planned demolition of the Tulane Hotel. The studio's founders continued their WSM careers.

References

{{coord missing, Tennessee 1946 establishments in Tennessee 1956 disestablishments in Tennessee Recording studios in Tennessee Music of Nashville, Tennessee