Listen: Adventures In Paradise / The Paradise Island Trio & Owen Bradley
The Paradise Island Trio / Owen Bradley
Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, k. d. lang. Now that’s some serious lineage. Well Owen Bradley produced them all. Why is he not recognized more often? I guess the ghetto of country music creates a constant oversight.
Although the handful of recordings he made as steel guitar player with The Paradise Island Trio don’t on the surface appear to have historical value, in actuality, their ambience in sound and tonality very much do. Completely typical of the clean, electric hollow body picking prevalent during ’62, ‘Adventures In Paradise’ most likely benefited from Owen Bradley’s producing and/or engineering skills. His mic technique alone is difficult to mistake.
I believe the island of paradise in question here is Nashville by the way, where combining stereophonic sound with Hawaiian tropics was a license to print money. The Three Suns were a must for every Noguchi knock off coffee table and Don Ho was right around the corner.
