Session musicians are—pardon the pun—the unsung heroes of the country music industry. While rarely achieving the name recognition of A-list stars, these artists quietly fuel the Nashville machine. On this day (Jan. 31) in 2019, we lost perhaps the most prolific session guitarist of all time—Harold Bradley, a member of the famed “A Team” who played with everyone from Brenda Lee to Roy Orbison. Bradley died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, just 29 days after his 93rd birthday.
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Harold Bradley Played on Thousands of Records
Born Jan. 2, 1926, in Nashville, Harold was the younger brother of renowned country music producer Owen Bradley. Both siblings played an instrumental role in shaping the “Nashville sound” of the 1950s and ’60s.
While Harold Bradley was still in high school, Owen landed him a summer job playing lead guitar in Ernest Tubb’s touring band, the Texas Troubadours. Following a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Harold returned to his hometown in 1946 to study music and play in his brother’s dance band.
His first recording session came that same year with Pee Wee King and the Golden West Cowboys. Four years later, Bradley lent his acoustic rhythm guitar skills to Red Foley’s No. 1 hit “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy.”
Bradley spent the next six decades in the room where country magic happened, backing Elvis Presley, Eddy Arnold, Brenda Lee on “I’m Sorry,” and Tammy Wynette on “Stand by Your Man.” His skills took front and center on Patsy Cline’s signature 1961 hit “Crazy.”
The Bradleys Made Nashville What It Is Today
Today, Nashville’s status as the hub of country music seems like a foregone conclusion. And that’s largely due to the efforts of Owen and Harold Bradley, who opened the Quonset Hut Studio on Music Row in the ’50s. Together, they helped usher in a sound that often found space on the pop charts as well as country, including Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry,” and Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet.”
“Everything that was happening in the studio — that was my world; that was as big as it got,” Bradley said in a 2013 interview with NPR, according to his New York Times obituary. “And then one day, my brother came up and he said, ‘We’ve got 25 out of the top 50 songs.’ All of a sudden I’m thinking, ‘That stuff we did in the studio, people are listening to that all over the world.’”
(Photo by Ed Rode/WireImage)
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