R.I.P.: Radio, Recording Engineer, Inventor Glenn Snoddy

Glenn Snoddy

Engineer Glenn Snoddy, who opened Nashville's Woodland Sound Studios and who revolutionized electric guitar sound with the distorted "fuzz-tone" heard on Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry" and, later, the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," died Monday evening at his Murfreesboro home.

He was 96 years old, according to The Tennessean.

Snoddy learned about radio and recording while in the Army, and after leaving the military, “I went to work at the Brown Brothers Transcription Company at Fourth and Union…we used to do a lot of radio shows out of there,” he told The Tennessean in 1987. “Some of us were also moonlighting at Castle Studio in the old Tulane Hotel. I was the backup engineer on the last Hank Williams recording session there. That’s a memory that doesn’t leave you.”

After Brown Brothers closed in the mid-1950s, Snoddy started working at WSM 650 AM as a engineer and did sound for the Grand Ole Opry every weekend. He also began working with producer Owen Bradley at the Quonset Hut. He became chief engineer in 1960 and stayed on after the Quonset Hut was sold to Columbia.

“I did so many records (there) I can’t remember them,” he said in 1987. One of those records was Johnny Cash’s 1963 chart-topper “Ring of Fire.”

While working on a session with country artist Marty Robbins, a technical malfunction in the mixing console ("I'm pretty sure what happened was the primary transformer opened up," Snoddy told The Tennessean in 2013) turned session musician Grady Martin's guitar sound on Robbins' "Don't Worry" into something fuzzy, distorted and irresistible.