Plastic Products Record Plant

Plastic Products, founded in 1949 by self-educated engineer R. E. "Buster” Williams with equipment he had researched and designed himself, became a major producer of the 45-rpm records that helped drive the rock 'n' roll wave of the 1950s. Understanding the difficulties faced by small independent recording studios such as Sun and Stax, Williams offered generous credit terms. By 1956 the company was pressing records around the clock for more than 49 labels nationwide, including Chess, Atlantic, ABC, Ace, Hi, Meteor, and Veejay, and that year Williams doubled production to more than 65,000 records a day. The Quonset huts housed shipping, printing, management offices, vinyl compounding and milling, the making of rectangular "biscuits" for pressing, and the presses themselves. Recording artists sometimes visited to watch their records being made, and in 1954 a young Elvis Presley came to see his early hit, "That's All Right, Mama," rolling off the presses. Plastic Products later moved to Coldwater, Mississippi, and Williams died in 1992 at age 83.

Memphis, Tennessee · United States