Louise and Thomas Boddie's affordable and convenient recording company served Cleveland and beyond for decades.
The Boddie Recording Company helped shape Cleveland’s music scene for more than two decades, recording albums by local artists who might not have gone on to fame but whose work was important right here in Cleveland.
“This is the Black/African American culture finally having something that's going to be put in the urban Black community that's going to represent basically all musicians, all artists, all creators. We have the Boddie Record Company studio, that's going to be in our Black community," she said. Orphaned at a young age, Thomas Boddie was raised in Cleveland by his grandparents. Thomas practiced his lifelong love of electronics at East Technical High School, graduating in 1942.
The two married in 1963 after mutual friend and DJ Bill Hawkins played matchmaker. Although Thomas bought the Union Avenue property in 1959, it took the pair years of work to transform and open the studio behind their house. When the Boddies’ supplier of vinyl pellets, which they used to press records, stopped selling to Black people amid the 1970s oil embargo, the Boddies got creative. Without pellets, the Boddies ground up old records for vinyl to press new ones.
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