United Record Pressing Celebrates 75 Years
As vinyl’s vital place in the music ecosystem continues, Nashville-based United Record Pressing is also celebrating 75 years of pressing vinyl for artists including Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Adele, Stevie Wonder, and numerous others.
URP has been a central contributor to vinyl sales since 1949 when the company was formed by John Dunn, Joe Talbot, and Ozell Simpkins. The pressing plant was an offshoot of Bullet Records, one of Nashville’s first indie record labels. In 1949, the same year that RCA created the first 45 and seven-inch records became popular in jukeboxes across America, Bullet Records earned a massive hit with Francis Craig’s song “Near You,” which spent 17 weeks atop Billboard’s pop charts. They opened Southern Plastics (which would later become United Record Pressing) to keep up with the demand for the song. By 1962, the company had moved operations to Nashville’s Chestnut Street.
Today, URP’s more than 120 staff members oversee 64 on-site pressing machines, with the capacity to press over 80,000 records per day.
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