Ed Boutwell

C. Ed Boutwell (born 1937) founded Birmingham's first commercial recording studio, Boutwell Studios, in 1961.

Boutwell worked weekends at Decca studios in Nashville in the 1950s. He edited Johnny Horton's "The Battle of New Orleans". During the week he worked as a radio engineer at WAPI-AM and recorded musicians in his informal home studio.

He started his own business in 1961 and began writing and recording radio commercials, using the rock and roll bands that came by as session musicians in exchange for studio time. He wrote more than 850 jingles over the course of his career, and won three Clio awards for his jingle for Southern Airlines in 1975. He also invented the "rolling punch" process for electronic editon.

Boutwell retired from working at his studio full time in 1986. He was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1991 and into the Birmingham Record Collectors Hall of Fame in 2007. He is member of the Alabama Historical Radio Society.

References

• Haden, Courtney (August 16, 2007) "Ed's head: Ode to a record-breaking enthusiast." Birmingham Weekly.

External links

• Boutwell bio at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame