Jerry Bradley, a file government who apprenticed with two of essentially the most storied producers in nation music — his father, Owen Bradley, and the guitarist Chet Atkins — earlier than difficult that legacy and shaking up the business, died on Monday at his house in Mount Juliet, Tenn., close to Nashville. He was 83.
His loss of life was introduced by Elice Cuff-Campbell, senior director of media relations for BMI Nashville. No trigger was given.
Mr. Bradley was finest often called the driving drive behind “Wished! The Outlaws,” the groundbreaking 1976 compilation that includes music by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Mr. Jennings’s spouse, Jessi Colter.
Rowdy and irreverent, the file was an out-of-left-field success, licensed by the Recording Trade Affiliation of America as the primary million-selling album within the historical past of nation music. It additionally ruffled the Nashville established order, posing a risk to the hegemony of the graceful Nashville Sound related to the work of Mr. Bradley’s father and Mr. Atkins.
The time period “outlaw” had been gaining traction in nation circles because the early Nineteen Seventies, when the publicist Hazel Smith and others began utilizing it to explain the do-it-yourself, anti-establishment ethos of Mr. Nelson and Mr. Jennings. However it was Jerry Bradley, then head of the Nashville division of RCA Data, who had the foresight to package deal the rising outlaw aesthetic and put it on the market to a wider public.
That included modeling the album’s cowl after a Western-style “most wished” poster sporting mug photographs of the 4 singers on the file. And in a nod to the outlaw motion’s youthful, extra rock-oriented viewers, Mr. Bradley enlisted the Rolling Stone journalist Chet Flippo to put in writing the liner notes.
“The looks and the advertising and marketing of the album have been extraordinarily necessary in making Nashville look hip for the primary time,” Mr. Flippo stated in discussing Mr. Bradley’s achievement in a section of the 2003 BBC documentary sequence “Misplaced Freeway: The Story of Nation Music.”
Constructing on the unprecedented success of “Wished!,” Mr. Bradley would go on to signal future superstars like Ronnie Milsap, Eddie Rabbitt and the band Alabama throughout his nine-year tenure at RCA. Every of these acts would launch quite a few No. 1 hits for the label whereas reinvigorating the nation airwaves with extra wide-ranging pop, rock and soul sensibilities.
Mr. Bradley additionally directed the careers of a number of established nation stars whereas at RCA. He produced chart-topping late-Nineteen Seventies hits for Charley Delight and supervised the making of “Right here You Come Once more” (1977), Dolly Parton’s first million-selling album. He was even concerned in Elvis Presley’s mid-’70s return to the highest of the nation charts after an nearly 20-year absence, re-establishing his connection along with his core nation viewers shortly earlier than his loss of life.
“I wasn’t a lot a musical chief,” Mr. Bradley stated, assessing his legacy in an interview commemorating his induction into the Nation Music Corridor of Fame in 2019. “I used to be extra of a coach.”
Jerry Owen Bradley was born in Nashville on Jan. 30, 1940, one in every of two kids of William Bradley, often called Owen, and Mary (Franklin) Bradley, often called Katherine. His father, a former orchestra chief, grew to become one of many chief architects of the Nashville Sound by his work as a producer for the likes of Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. His mom was a homemaker.
Jerry graduated from Hillsboro Excessive College and as a young person raced sports activities vehicles on the Nashville speedway.
Within the early Sixties, after attending Peabody School, he started working at Forest Hills Music, the household’s music publishing firm. He additionally began spending time on the Bradley’s Barn recording studio, the place, underneath the tutelage of his father and his Uncle Harold (each are additionally members of the Nation Music Corridor of Fame), he noticed classes by the likes of Joan Baez, Brenda Lee and Dinah Shore and every so often contributed to them.
In 1970, desirous to forge his personal path within the music enterprise, Mr. Bradley went to work for Chet Atkins at RCA, the place he grew to become a liaison with the label’s headquarters in New York. Three years later, when most cancers curtailed Mr. Atkins’s actions, Mr. Bradley succeeded him as head of RCA’s Nashville operations.
Mr. Bradley left RCA in 1982 and, after a quick hiatus, grew to become basic supervisor of the Opryland Music Group, which had just lately acquired Acuff-Rose, the music writer whose holdings included the catalogs of luminaries like Hank Williams, Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers. Not one to relaxation on his laurels, Mr. Bradley recruited a brand new technology of songwriters, together with Kenny Chesney, earlier than his retirement in 2002.
A longtime board member of the Nation Music Affiliation, Mr. Bradley performed an important function within the growth of the CMA Music Competition. Held yearly in Nashville because the early Nineteen Seventies (when it was referred to as Fan Honest), the occasion showcases some 400 artists performing for 100,000 or so followers over 4 days.
Mr. Bradley is survived by a daughter, Leigh Jankiv; a son, Clay; 5 grandchildren; 5 great-grandchildren; and a sister, Patsy Bradley. Connie (Darnell) Bradley, his spouse of 42 years and a distinguished government within the nation music business, died in 2021. His marriage to Gwynn Hastings Kellam, the mom of his kids, resulted in divorce; she died in 2001.
“Greatness doesn’t come by blood; it’s achieved by motion and invention,” Kyle Younger, chief government of the Nation Music Corridor of Fame and Museum, stated, reflecting on Mr. Bradley’s entrepreneurship on the Bradley Corridor of Fame induction.
“Jerry Bradley had his father, Owen, and his uncle, Harold, as north stars,” Mr. Younger went on. “He understood that he couldn’t imitate or reproduce their presents or their manners. He must discover his personal path.”
