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S38E6: Brenda Lee: Rockin' Around | Clip

How Brenda Lee’s collaboration with producer Owen Bradley changed the course of her career

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Owen Bradley, producer at Decca Records, took Brenda Lee under his wing and became both a musical mentor and a life mentor to her. “Owen credited Brenda with really showing that pop music could be done in Nashville,” said music historian Alan Stoker.

TRANSCRIPT

(upbeat music) - What was so special about Owen, he didn't know how talented he was.

And that's 'cause he loved what he did, it was not a business to him.

He loved his artists, he loved his musicians, Buddy Harman, Bobby Moore, Grady Martin, Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer, Ray Edington.

It wasn't contrived.

There were no overdubs.

You either got it in one or two takes or you just didn't get it.

If you can't get it in the first couple of takes, it stopped the song for you, so we just quit and go... We go to something else.

It was just magic, it was the A team.

- They both had great ears.

They both knew kind of the path.

Owen credited Brenda with really showing that pop music could be done in Nashville, and I mean, international pop music.

She had hits all over the world, much more than anybody else coming out of Nashville.

- I'm certainly grateful for Owen Bradley, and I'm grateful for that little pair up.

- I felt a connection to Owen.

I was like his child, really, one of his children.

And when we weren't working, I'd be up on the boat with Owen and Catherine and the rest of the kids.

- And because they treated her as though she was an equal, not a some stupid little kid, I think that was her schooling, that was her college, so to speak.

He never handed her a song and said, "Okay, this is what you're going to do," they decided together.

But he was also very much a life mentor, a life influence for her.

He did sit her down at one point and said, "Look, as we move to toward different things in your career, you need to understand, you're not always going to be America's darling.

You will not always have the number one record in America.

So you need to figure out, as things change, where is your place, where are you happy.

And then you take that path and don't worry about anything else."

(upbeat music)