As Nashville’s United Record Pressing Celebrates 75 Years, a Look Back at 15 Essential Vinyl Pressings

According to 2023 Year-End data from the Recording Industry Association of America, revenues from vinyl records grew 10% to $1.4 billion, and accounted for 71% of physical format revenues last year. 2023 also marked vinyl’s 17^th consecutive year of growth.

As vinyl’s vital place in music’s ecosystem continues, Nashville-based United Record Pressing also celebrates 75 years of pressing vinyl for artists including Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Adele and Stevie Wonder and numerous other artists.

“The sustained growth of the vinyl record market has been going for nearly 20 years at this point in the U.S., but particularly cool is how the medium has evolved into the people’s art object, and a creative opportunity for artists to tailor their records to reinforce aesthetics, inspiration, ideas or cultural touchpoints for more curious fans,” Cam Sarrett, United Record Pressing’s head of sales and marketing, tells Billboard in a statement. “Plus, it impactfully benefits artists big and small at the merch table on tour and bolsters community at independent record stores, a vital culture all its own.”

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. The company’s founder Ozell Simpkins also designed the building and URP’s machines.

By the 1960s, Southern Plastics had established a deal to handle singles record pressings for Motown Records. Given that there were few accommodations available to Black artists, producers and executives in the South during that time, the company also created what would become known as the “Motown Suite,” a space to host Black artists, producers and executives when they visited Nashville. Today, that space has been preserved and is used to host special events, such as album release parties.

In the 1970s, Southern Plastics was renamed United Record Pressing. As in-house labels began shuttering their in-house pressing operations, soon URP became the foremost independent record pressing plant in the Southeast. Two decades later, URP acquired Dixie Record Pressing, which allowed the plant to begin pressing 10-and 12-inch records in addition to their 7-inch records. As vinyl began to reemerge and surge in popularity, especially in the mid-2000s, URP began pressing new versions of albums from Johnny Cash, Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan as well as new vinyls from contemporary artists including Adele, Swift, Harry Styles and Kendrick Lamar.

In 2017, URP consolidated operations into a new, larger facility on Allied Drive in Nashville, in order to keep up with demand for the company’s vinyl pressing services. In 2021-2022, the company added nearly 50 presses and added approximately 15,000 square feet to its facilities.

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.

Beth Proctor, United Record Pressing’s longest-standing employee, has been with the company for approximately four decades.

“I came to United in the ‘80s, and quickly learned there rarely is a dull moment pressing vinyl records. I fell in love with the owners, employees and the family environment,” Proctor told Billboard via a statement. “Then, [with] our customers, a lot of whom have become great friends over the years.”

Here, as URP celebrates 75 years of providing vinyl for consumers, we look at 15 distinct recordings that the company has pressed over the decades, ranging from the 1940s through to the 2020s.