RCA Studio B

Nashville’s only historic studio tour. Stand where Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, and Roy Orbison made music history. Operated by
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The Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum preserves and interprets Historic RCA Studio B as a legacy landmark in the rich history of popular music, in Nashville and the U.S. the museum makes Studio B accessible to the public through regular tours, educational programs, and events. Tours depart daily from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

05/29/2026

A story that traces the blood harmony of two brothers from a houseboat in Louisiana to the top of the country charts . . .

Cajun musicians Doug and Rusty Kershaw came by it honestly. "A houseboat tied to a big tall tree / A home for my papa and my mama and me," sings older brother Doug on their hit "Louisiana Man." The song, written by Doug and recorded at RCA Studio B, is autobiographical—a scrappy kid from the swamp watches his father make a living trapping furs.

Douglas James Kershaw began his career as a child, performing with his mother, Mama Rita, a fiddler, guitarist, and singer. In 1948, he formed the Continental Playboys with his brothers Russell Lee ("Rusty") and Nelson ("PeeWee"). Doug and Rusty began performing as a duo and recorded a number of country songs before making the pilgrimage to Nashville.

In 1955, they appeared on "Louisiana Hayride" before moving on to the "WWVA Jamboree" in Wheeling, West Virginia. In September 1957, their song "Love Me to Pieces" rose to No. 14, and that November, they joined the Grand Ole Opry. In 1958, they notched a No. 22 single with Felice and Boudleaux Bryant's "Hey Sheriff" before their career was short-circuited when the pair were drafted.

After finishing their military service, Doug and Rusty returned to the recording studio to cut some hard-hitting, Cajun-flavored songs, including "Louisiana Man," a No. 10 country hit of 1961, and "Diggy Liggy Lo," which went No. 14 later that year.

The brothers split up after 1964, and Doug went on to win fame as the "Cajun Hippie," whose outrageous stage antics and driving performance style made him a favorite of the musical counterculture of the 1970s. In 1970, Rusty released his acclaimed solo album, "Cajun in the Blues Country," a genre-blending cult-favorite.

05/20/2026

Take home a piece of history. Stop by The Museum Store at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and shop Historic RCA Studio B merchandise.

Shop in person or online: shop.countrymusichalloffame.org

05/15/2026

Kentucky native Hugh X. Lewis, born Hubert Bradley Lewis, began his recording career with a few sides for the independent Fern Records before signing with Kapp Records (founded by Dave Kapp, brother to Decca founder Jack Kapp). He had his biggest artistic successes there, including the No. 21 hit “What I Need Most” and Top Forty-charting “Out Where the Ocean Meets the Sky,” from his self-titled debut album.

Lewis also scored big as a songwriter. He composed the tragic “B.J. the D.J.,” which became Stonewall Jackson’s final No. 1 in 1964. Other artists who cut Lewis’s songs include Charley Pride, Lynn Anderson, and Little Jimmy Dickens. He also appeared in a handful of music-themed films including “The Gold Guitar” and “Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers.”

In the 1970s, Lewis opened a bar in Nashville’s Printer’s Alley and hosted a syndicated television program called “Hugh X. Lewis Country Club” from there. He lived a long life, dying in 2020 from complications related to Covid-19.

Pictured: Hugh X. Lewis in a recording session at RCA Studio B

05/08/2026

During a golden window, from 1957 to 1977, approximately 18,000 sessions were recorded within Studio B's walls, including more than 200 songs by Elvis Presley.

Explore the legacy here.

05/01/2026

A song that transcended generations and genres . . .

By 1960, husband and wife Boudleaux and Felice Bryant had established themselves as the Everly Brothers’ primary songwriters. "Their stuff fit us like a glove, because it was designed to fit," said Don Everly. The Boudleaux-composed ballad “Love Hurts” was no different. The Everlys were a unified voice for teenage heartbreak, and "Love Hurts" was an anthem.

The pair recorded the song that summer—but due to a falling-out with then-manager and publisher, Wesley Rose—it was never released as a single. The Everlys' version of "Love Hurts" didn't chart and was ultimately passed to another balladeer who sang of lost love and loneliness.

Roy Orbison recorded "Love Hurts" at RCA Studio B in 1961, though with a much different flavor than the Everlys' stripped-down melancholy. Orbison's version packaged the song's heartbreak in lush instrumentation, characteristic of much of the music coming from the studio at the time.

The song wasn't a hit. At least, not for its original performers. Still, its timeless composition attracted the attention of artists across decades and markets. In 1973, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris would revive the song's original two-part harmony, a move that would help immortalize their chemistry on Parsons's posthumously released second album, "Grievous Angel."

In 1976, Scottish rock band Nazareth took “Love Hurts” to the Top Ten for the first time. Led by Dan McCafferty’s raspy, aching vocal, it is widely regarded as an early power ballad. The group’s rendition transforms a tender ballad into a romantic dirge, proving that heartbreak—and the melodies that carry it—are universal.

04/20/2026

A large portion of country music history was made inside RCA Studio B, known as the “Home of 1,000 Hits.”

The standalone structure was built of concrete blocks in 1957 by Nashville businessman and real estate developer Dan Maddox at 800 17th Avenue South, now 1611 Roy Acuff Place, in an area now known as Music Row.

Maddox recalled, “I was looking for some investments, and the bank asked me to look at some property and make them an offer on it, so I did.”

The property Maddox saw was the TRAFCO building on McGavock Street, which was where RCA’s country recording director, Steve Sholes, and his assistant, Chet Atkins, now both members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, had been recording RCA’s artists.

“It had two tenants in it. One was the Radio and Film Commission of the Methodist Church [TRAFCO], and the other was RCA Victor . . . both of them were unhappy because they had outgrown their space. So, being a Methodist myself, I favored the church.”

Maddox unknowingly favored RCA Victor as well when he offered to build a new structure to house the company’s studio. The label agreed to a long-term lease, and construction began in summer 1957. The final cost was $39,515.

RCA Victor’s New York engineer, Les Chase, and Nashville engineer Selby Coffeen outfitted RCA’s new workspace with recording equipment, and the first session, ironically booked for Columbia Records artist Jo Ann Davis, took place on October 29, 1957. But the succession of hits recorded at Studio B began with Don Gibson’s “Oh, Lonesome Me,” which was recorded on December 3, 1957, and became an eight-week #1 hit in early 1958.

RCA Studio B closed in 1977 after twenty years of operations. Today, it remains a fully functional studio that is available for tours, preserved through a partnership between the Mike Curb Family Foundation and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

04/02/2026

Ferlin Husky, seen here recording at RCA Studio B, had a reputation as a live entertainer that was formidable. Merle Haggard said of him, “There were a lot of years when nobody in the business could follow Ferlin Husky.” Born in Cantwell, Missouri, the versatile Husky honed his talents in the honky-tonks of St. Louis before heading off to California and appearing on Cliffie Stone’s “Hometown Jamboree.” Years working in radio led Husky to develop his comedic chops along with his singing, creating an alter ego named Simon Crum.

Husky’s biggest successes came after signing with Capitol Records and working with producer Ken Nelson. The first among them was Jean Shepard’s “A Dear John Letter,” the 1953 single about a deployed soldier whose girlfriend marries his brother instead. Husky provided the soldier’s recitation parts and Shepard sang the choruses, but Husky—at his own request—initially wasn’t credited.

“[T]hey didn’t put my name on it, because I didn’t want it on there,” Husky said in an oral history interview with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “So when it came out, I guess a lot of the disc jockeys and radio stations just shelved it, but it was the only war record at the time of the Korean War. But people was calling in and wanting to know who this guy doing the talking was. So then they finally—I think the first 50,000 or so that they put up, they didn’t have it. Then they put my name on there as a narrator or whatever, which they didn’t have to do.”

Husky scored further hits with Capitol, including “I Feel Better All Over (More Than Anywhere’s Else),” “Little Tom,” and a version of Smokey Rogers’s “Gone” that was one of the earliest examples of the Nashville Sound, reaching #1 country and #4 on the pop chart. Husky earned another major crossover in the early 1960s with Bob Ferguson’s “Wings of a Dove.” Given his skills as a performer, Husky made numerous television appearances and starred in movies such as “Country Music Holiday” (1958) and “Forty Acre Feud” (1965). Husky died in 2011, just months after his 2010 induction to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

03/21/2026

On Tuesday, April 27, 1971, Dolly Parton stood before a microphone in RCA Studio B to record what would become one of her most recognizable songs.

Even before its official release in the fall of 1971, “Coat of Many Colors” was already a fan favorite. Parton had performed the song on several occasions—including on "The Porter Wagoner Show" on television—and even used Studio B to cut a version as early as May of 1969. The song reached No. 4 on the country charts and went on to inspire covers from Shania Twain, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, the Oak Ridge Boys, and beyond.

Famously penned by Parton on the back of a dry-cleaning receipt while she was touring with duet partner Wagoner, "Coat of Many Colors" is a tender anecdote from Parton's childhood. Her mother, Avie Lee, made the now-famous coat from fabric scraps, telling a school-aged Parton the biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. Despite her pride in her new coat, Parton was teased by her classmates and confused by their cruelty.

"So that little song is like a world of things. It teaches about bullying, about love, about acceptance, about good parents," she said in her 2020 book, "Songteller." "That little story has even been written into a schoolbook to teach children about being different."

The song reached its peak on the country singles chart on Christmas Day, 1971. Wagoner had the dry-cleaning receipt framed not long afterward. "Coat of Many Colors" entered the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2011.

Pictured: "Coat of Many Colors" served as the title track to this 1971 LP, which peaked at No. 7 on the country album charts, a year after the song's initial release.

03/06/2026

Swedish-born Ann-Margret Olsson signed with RCA Victor in 1961, debuting that same year with the jazz-pop album, "And Here She Is… Ann-Margret." Having burst into show business with a vividly sultry voice, unparalleled s*x appeal, and high-octane stage presence, critics quickly dubbed her “the female Elvis.” To capitalize on the comparison, RCA sent Ann-Margret to Studio B in Nashville to use the same musicians, production team, and studio environment as Presley for her second album, "On the Way Up."

Envisioned to showcase Ann-Margret’s versatility and range as a vocalist, the album’s A-side was labeled “rock side” while the B-side was labeled “ballad side.” Production duties were also split, with producer/guitarist Chet Atkins and engineer Bill Porter at the helm for the grittier, more country-influenced tracks recorded at RCA Studio B, and producer Dick Pierce and engineer Al Schmitt handling the smoother Hollywood sessions.

Nashville-related songs featured on the album include a slinky version of Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” with Charlie McCoy on harmonica, and “Oh, Lonesome Me,” first recorded at Studio B in late 1957 by its songwriter, Don Gibson, whose version was a No. 1 country hit for eight nonconsecutive weeks. Other Country Music Hall of Fame participants included pianist Floyd Cramer and background vocal group the Jordanaires.

Despite the “female Elvis” marketing angle and their obvious similarities, Ann-Margret and Presley didn’t meet until she was cast as his love interest, Rusty Martin, in “Viva Las Vegas” in 1963.

02/14/2026

What makes a love song?

During a golden window, from 1957 to 1977, artists flocked to RCA Studio B to record what are now considered some of the greatest songs of all time—many recounting stories of love, lust, and loss.

In December of 1957, country singer Don Gibson stood before a
microphone in the newly built Nashville studio at the corner of 17th Avenue South and Hawkins Street, poised to record "I Can't Stop Loving You." An aching ballad of lost love, the song reached No. 7 on the "Billboard" country chart.

Don and Phil Everly, young men whose harmonies enthralled millions of youthful fans of both pop and country music alike, used RCA Studio B to record several hits that voiced the pangs and pleasures of teenagers falling in and out of love. In 1958 alone, the Everlys cut “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Bird Dog,” and “Devoted to You.”

During a two-week furlough from his army service, Elvis Presley visited RCA Studio B for the first time in June of 1958. It was during this session that he cut his No. 1 hit "A Big Hunk O' Love," a hard-rocking confessional of lust that became a staple in his live shows. Presley would go on to record more than 200 songs at the studio—plenty of which dealt in matters of the heart.

Other artists followed suit. Ann-Margret's "I Just Don't Understand" (1961) laments the pain of one-sided love, Rosemary Clooney's "I Really Don't Want to Know" (1963) expresses a desire for ignorance regarding a lover's past, and Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" (1963) imagines a world without goodbyes. Each left their fingerprints, along with their melodies and harmonies, heartbreak and healing.

Address

1611 Roy Acuff Place
Nashville, TN
37203

Website

http://studiob.org/

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