Jim Beck

Vocation

Influential country music talent agent, record promoter, recording studio owner, A&R engineer, record producer, and music publisher. Beck is credited with discovering — and on July 25, 1950, being the first to record in Corsicana, Texas — Lefty Frizzell. He is also credited for introducing Frizzell and Ray Price to Frank Jones (1926–2005) of Columbia Records, which led to their first major recording contracts. Marty Robbins recorded his first hit — "I'll Go On Alone" — at Beck's studio. Record labels and producers who recorded at Jim Beck Studios included Decca (via Paul Cohen), Bullet, King, Imperial, and Columbia Records. Between 1954 and 1956, Frankie Miller recorded a series of singles for Columbia at Beck's studio. Beck built his second studio — the "Jim Beck Studio" — in 1950 at 1101 Ross Avenue in Dallas. Norman Petty, who later built and ran his own recording studio, worked as a part-time recording engineer at the Jim Beck Studio. Jim Beck died on May 3, 1956, at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, after collapsing at his recording studio from accidentally inhaling carbon tetrachloride fumes while he and his assistant Jimmy Rollins were cleaning recording equipment. Link to Wikipedia biography