The RCA Records president, Acuff-Rose publishing executive, and second-generation Nashville icon has died.
Jerry Bradley — a son of the Nashville Sound, peerless music industry executive and 2019 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame — has died at age 83, according to his family.
Excelling in a manner proportional to the legacy of Bradley’s father, Owen — a legendary musician and record producer who joined with Chet Atkins in broadening country’s musical influence and pop appeal beyond its bluegrass, folk and Western swing-defined roots — is a massive order. However, it is a standard Jerry met and often exceeded.
Over the course of his five-decade career, Bradley helped usher country music from the domain of traditionalists like Brenda Lee and Loretta Lynn (whom he recorded as a studio engineer at Mount Juliet, Tennessee’s Forest Hills Music Studio) through the rise of pop-aimed crooners including Dolly Parton, 70s-era Elvis Presley, Charley Pride and Dottie West, “outlaw” artists including Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to 80s-era superstars including Alabama and Ronnie Milsap. He served as RCA Records’ vice president of Nashville operations from 1973-1982.
During that decade, RCA Records was named “Label of the Year” by Billboard Magazine for ten consecutive years.
When the Gaylord company bought Acuff-Rose Publishing in 1985, Bradley was named the head of its newly formed Opryland Music Group. While at Opryland, he signed artists, including Kenny Chesney, to their first publishing deals.
In 1990, Opryland Music Group became the first Nashville publishing company to win “Song of the Year” honors from both ASCAP and BMI.
Chesney, who was signed in 1992, said Bradley “had a profound and unmeasurable impact on my life. [He also] helped change the lives of so many people that had a song in their hearts. Jerry’s impact on [music’s] creative community will be felt for years.”
The impact and power of recorded music best defined Bradley’s career and life.
“I’m not a musician. I’m not a songwriter. I think I was a pretty good businessman,” Bradley told The Tennessean upon his 2019 induction to the Country music Hall of Fame. “My dad told me the song was the most important thing: It cost just as much to record a bad song as it does a good one.”
At the press conference announcing his then-forthcoming induction, Jerry Bradley offered more sage advice given to him by his famous father.
Having ambitions – as any 20-year-old would at the turn of the 1960s — to produce rock and roll, Owen noted to Jerry that they lived in Nashville. The elder Bradley added that, as someone familiar with Nashville studios, more of them were in the business of making commercially successful country music than rock ‘n roll.
“[I got] country quick,'” Bradley joked.
Bradley’s quick thinking and financial acumen were showcased via his stewardship in developing RCA’s 1976-released “Wanted! The Outlaws” album.
Notably, the first-ever platinum-certified country album from the Recording Institute Association of America, “Wanted,” was comprised of older master session tapes of songs by Jennings, Nelson, Jennings’ wife Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser.
The breakout success of Colter’s “I’m Jessi Colter,” Jennings’ “Dreaming My Dreams” and Nelson’s “Red Headed Stranger” by June 1975 spurred Bradley to push past the more pop-traditional “countrypolitan” sound to, as Chet Flippo recalled in 2003, market Nashville in an unprecedentedly hip manner.
As Jennings noted in his 1996 autobiography, the album’s marketing — including posing Colter, Jennings, Glaser and Nelson on the cover as stereotypical cowboys on the run — a nod to “pure Old West – Dodge City and Tombstone.”
Jennings continues, “We loved the energy of rock and roll, but rock had self-destructed. Country had gone syrupy. For us, ‘outlaw’ meant standing up for your rights, your own way of doing things. It felt like a different music; outlaw was as good a description as any. We mostly thought it was funny; Tompall immediately made up outlaw membership certificates…RCA was delighted…At last, an image!”
The depth and scope of imaging and marketing of country music which Bradley’s legacy involves, is not limited to mainstreaming country albums. Bradley was CMA board president in 1975 and a longtime CMA board member intrinsic in creating the Country Music Association’s Fan Fair — now CMA Fest.
Bradley’s legacy is preceded and extended by his family.
His uncle Harold was a Nashville A-Team session guitarist and eventual Country Music Hall of Fame inductee in 2006 — joining Jerry’s father Owen, who was inducted in 1974. Before her March 2021 passing, Jerry’s wife Connie was CMA Board president in 1989 and worked for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) offices in Nashville from 1980 until retiring in 2010. Jerry’s uncle, Charlie, and cousin, Bobby, were studio engineers. His aunt Ruby Bradley Strange and sister Patsy excelled as a Music Row office manager and Broadcast Music Inc. executive, respectively.
Jerry Bradley is survived by many, including his son, Clay, who, alongside a career as an A & R, artist manager, CEO, creative director and music publisher, is currently the vice president of creative in Nashville for Broadcast Music, Inc.
Bradley’s most significant value to Nashville was as a record executive who understood how to best merge Music City’s commercial goals with the mainstream’s always-broadening tastes for country’s diverse sounds.
He summed up that notion best in a 2019 Tennessean interview.
“I feel like I filled a void and the music really changed.”
Jerry Bradley’s celebration of life will be held at Cedar Creek Yacht Club, 3581 Benders Ferry Rd, Mt. Juliet, TN on Sept. 10 at 4 p.m. CT. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to the Music Health Alliance, a resource for healthcare solutions and access for music industry members.
More information about the Music Health Alliance is available at musichealthalliance.com.
