WSM History on DeFord Bailey Ave

1501 DeFord Bailey Avenue as it appears today

A home listed on the market (as of March 2025) appears at first glance of humble origins. Nestled in the Edgehill neighborhood, a passerby might assume this home is of no great importance and deem it a likely candidate for demolition and redevelopment. If it weren’t for local historian Mark Schlicher bringing it to the public’s attention, we might never have known this little house was actually the original transmitter building for radio station WSM, home of the Grand Ole Opry.

Before construction of the famed WSM tower off of Franklin Road, this transmitter station was responsible for WSM’s broadcast from its beginning in 1925. Positioned between two towers with an antenna connecting them, the little building was constructed to house the transmitter and serve as lodging for the engineers who managed it.

During the years that WSM engineer Aaron Shelton lived there, he also used it to house his cutting equipment for recording sessions at Castle Studios. Castle was the first recording studio in Nashville, which Shelton founded alongside fellow WSM Engineers George Reynolds and Carl Jenkins. Shelton described in an oral history interview with Dr. Rumble of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum how Francis Craig’s “Near You,” the mega hit single and the first number one made in Music City, was originally cut in the transmitter building:

“We did that original session out of the old WSM Studio C, but we recorded it out at the Fifteenth and Weston auxiliary transmitter of WSM’s, where we had our cutting lathes set up. We would pipe it out there over the regular line and cut the masters out there. Actually, they weren’t masters in the sense that they were going to be made into mothers at that point, but they were the original cuts on big sixteen-inch acetate discs.”

Shelton also stated how he enjoyed living across from the Grand Ole Opry star for whom the street is now named, DeFord Bailey.

While the fate of the building is still unknown (please read the Nashville Banner article to learn about preservation efforts) at least we have a little bit more of the story while it’s still with us.