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

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the List of muni ...

, 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.

History

Early history

In 1946, recognizing demand for local

recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enoug ...

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 designed by Reynolds and WSM's facilities at the

National Life and Accident Insurance Company The National Life and Accident Insurance Company is a former life insurance company that was based in Nashville, Tennessee. National Life and Accident began in 1900 as the National Sick and Accident Association, a mutual company. It was reorgan ...

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 Francis Craig (September 10, 1900 – November 19, 1966) was an American songwriter, honky tonk piano player, and leader of a Nashville dance band. His works included " Dynamite" and "Near You", the latter being the first Billboard #1 hit out of ...

and His Orchestra's

Ryman Auditorium Ryman Auditorium (also known as Grand Ole Opry House and Union Gospel Tabernacle) is a 2,362-seat live-performance venue located at 116 Rep. John Lewis Way North, in Nashville, Tennessee. It is best known as the home of the ''Grand Ole Opry'' fr ...

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 studio equipped with their mixing console, an Ampex Model 200 tape recorder, and a Scully lathe, establishing the first commercial recording space in Nashville. Castle cut master discs for all major labels (except

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

), and independent labels like

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

Notable artists

Hank Williams Hank Williams (born Hiram Williams; September 17, 1923 – January 1, 1953) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century, he reco ...

recorded his first demos at Castle Recording on December 11, 1946, and went on to record almost exclusively at Castle for his entire career.

Paul Cohen Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician. He is 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 award ...

and

Owen Bradley William Owen Bradley (October 21, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American musician and record producer who, along with Chet Atkins, Bob Ferguson, Bill Porter, and Don Law, was one of the chief architects of the 1950s and 1960s 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), m ...

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 to women in country music with her 1952 hit recording "It Wasn't God W ...

, and

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

at Castle Recording before Bradley went on to co-found

Quonset Hut Studio Quonset Hut Studio was a music recording studio established in 1954 in Nashville, Tennessee by brothers Harold and Owen Bradley as Bradley's Film & Recording Studios and later operated as Columbia Studio B. The Quonset Hut was the first commerc ...

References

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