Plant has needle on the pulse of vinyl fanatics

But vinyl still accounts for a small percentage of total music sales. Last year 858,000 LPs were sold compared with 553.4 million CDs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. While the 2006 figure was up slightly from 2005, the overall trend has been down from 1.5 million in 2000.

Ashworth believes the data is skewed, though, because a lot of vinyl is sold in mom and pop stores not reflected in the SoundScan numbers.

His company has managed to thrive by picking up business from competitors in a shrinking market. Today, he has only 13 competitors compared to several dozen before CDs took over in the '90s. Revenues hit $5 million in 2004 and grew to $7 million in 2005. Last year saw significant growth over 2005, Ashworth said.

And yet the plant remains a timepiece with its rumbling presses that jar the floor, noisy blasts of compressed air and vats of blue nickel solution used to create the master discs.

Ashworth regards it a relic of Nashville's past, every bit as important as the old RCA studio where Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers recorded, or the Ryman Auditorium where the Grand Ole Opry enjoyed its heyday.

"We want to be the last vinyl plant standing, no matter what," he said. "There is no other plant that looks like this in the country. This is an antique."

Indeed, it still has the furnished apartment where Motown Records executives stayed when they came down from Detroit during segregation. The apartment adjoins a party room where Wayne Newton celebrated his 16th birthday.

Most of the major labels and many of the independents contract with United. Elvis Presley's reissues are pressed here, as well as recordings by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Rod Stewart, Alan Jackson, John Mayer and many others.

"If you look at the Hot 100 singles, we represent about 80 percent of what's on the chart," Ashworth said.

Ashworth himself is something of an oddity. A longtime corporate executive and former chief financial officer at Nashville Gas Co., he bought this place in 1999 with no experience or knowledge of the industry. At the time, the vinyl record business seemed doomed.

"My son was very worried about whether he was going to be able to go to college," he said with a laugh, adding, "Thank the Lord for a trusting wife."

But Ashworth made a go of it and then some, boosting employment at United from 10 to 60 people and fulfilling his own need to create something.

"A lot of people spend their lives doing something as opposed to making something, and I wanted to make something," he said. "I wanted something tangible in my hands at the end of the day."

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