“Let the work that I do speak for me.”
Louise and Thomas Boddie paraphrased a Bible verse and made it their personal motto while running Cleveland’s first Black-owned recording studio. The Boddie Recording Company at 12202 Union Avenue is now a Cleveland Landmark. City council approved the designation on Wednesday night.
Before moving to the pre-World War I Dutch colonial in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood in 1960, the Boddies had been running an affordable recording service for 12 years. Their new home came with a garage and a building used as a former dairy and auto repair shop, which they converted to a studio. Today, the property still has its former Sinclair Oil Corporation sign out front, painted over in the 1960s with a black and white Boddie logo sporting two eighth notes.
Louise Boddie spoke briefly at a Wednesday council meeting meeting to express her appreciation that council was considering landmark status.
“I’m so honored to see all of you people here,” she said. “Many of you I’ve known over the years, which makes me a feel a little bit young.”
Her son, Dennis, spoke of his father’s day job as an organ repairman and “electronics genius,” which led to the company’s legacy of more than 300 records and 10,000 hours of recordings made before Thomas Boddie passed in 2006.
“He recorded any and everybody,” he said. “It was for giving people the opportunity of being a star in music.”
Boddie said his parents made location recordings at the nightclub Leo’s Casino for Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin and the Temptations. In the 1970s, they pressed records for Devo and the Kinks. Louise Boddie told Ideastream’s “Applause” in 2013 that they even pressed 5,000 copies of the Cleveland cast album of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” the show which is credited with saving Playhouse Square.
A 2011 boxed set from Numero Group brought national recognition to the company, which is profiled in Numero’s 2022 book, “Soul Music of Ohio.”
Cleveland City Councilman Kevin Conwell recalled recording at Boddie in 1978, and said the studio's history needs to be recognized.
"When you look at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's not telling the story," he said. "So we must go beyond this legislation so our children know the background history."
Council President Blaine Griffin called the honor “overdue” before City Planner Karl Brunjes discussed the property’s significance.
“There’s a saying in preservation that the history of a place is not always obvious,” Brunjes said. “Architectural significance can be identified by sight. Cultural significance, on the other hand, often hides in plain sight.”
The Boddie family is also pursuing recognition by the National Register of Historic Places. They were recognized with a Cleveland Arts Prize in 2018. Louise Boddie's 2013 interview from “Applause” is below:
The Boddies created sublabels for different genres of recordings. Plaid Records covered jazz and ran from 1958-59 before being resurrected in 1970. Bounty (gospel) and Luau (Latin) Records started in 1965. Soul Kitchen (blues) followed from 1967-73. Other recordings were released on Cookin Records and Caribi Records. Disks were made on-site, and each one took four minutes of heat and compression to physically press. Boddie ceased pressing vinyl around 1987.
