Studio B – November 7, 2021 – Nashville, Tennessee

You catch a bus that takes you to music row and the most historic place in Nashville Studio B. There were so many major hits that were recorded there I get emotional just thinking about it. But of course the most famous is the King himself. Our tour was very Elvis driven. Down to the configuration of the colored overhead lights in the studio. You just felt like you were a part of history when you are there, it’s something everyone should experience in their lifetime, especially if you are a fan of music, or in the music business.

Information about Studio B:

RCA Studio B was a music recording studio built in 1956 in Nashville, Tennessee by RCA Victor. Originally known simply as “RCA Studios,” Studio B, along with the larger and later RCA Studio A became known in the 1960s for being an essential factor to the development of the musical production style and sound engineering technique known as the Nashville Sound. In the two decades the studio was in operation, RCA Studio B produced 60 percent of the Billboard magazine’s Country chart hits.^[1] The studio closed in 1977.

The studio is located centrally in the Nashville’s historic Music Row district. Since 1992 the studio has been under the ownership of the Country Music Hall of Fame, which offers scheduled tours of the facilities.

After years of using portable equipment to record projects in various recording facilities around Nashville, in 1954 Steve Sholes and Chet Atkins established RCA Victor’s first Nashville recording facility within the Methodist Television Radio & Film Commission building at 1525 McGavock Street.^[2][3][4] In January, 1956, Sholes and Atkins produced a session with Elvis Presley, during which he recorded the song that would become his first Heartbreak Hotel, gold record and the biggest-selling single of 1956.

In 1977, the studio was made available to the Country Music Hall of Fame for tours, and in 1992 it was donated to the Country Music Hall of Fame by the late Dan Maddox. Until 2001, it was operated as an attraction when the new home for the Hall of Fame was built in downtown Nashville. From 2001 to 2011 the studio was co-operated by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Belmont University‘s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business program, which utilized the studio to teach students basic techniques of analog recording.^[11]

In 2012, the National Park Service listed RCA Studio B on the National Register of Historic Places.^[12] The same year, operation shifted solely to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which offers daily scheduled tours of the studio.

Artists who have recorded at Studio B: