Richard "Rick" Blackburn (16 November, 1942 – 30 November, 2012) was a Nashville music executive. He was a president of

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...

in Nashville and shared his skill with Mercury Records and

Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America Sony Corporation of America (SONAM, also known as SCA), is the American arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group ...

. Blackburn was known for hiring top artists like Ricky Van Shelton and George Jones and for dropping

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his ca ...

off at Nashville Records around 1985 or 1986. He retired from the music industry in the 1990s and died in his Tennessee home of kidney failure.

References

1942 births 2012 deaths People from Nashville, Tennessee American music industry executives {{US-business-bio-1940s-stub