Evergreen Records

A 1921 brick office on 16th Avenue South, on Music Row. In 1989 it housed Evergreen Records, the small label of owner Johnny Morris, which had released Sammy Sadler’s singles since 1986.

The Davidson County Assessor carries the building as a 2-story brick office built in 1921. Its most recent sale is dated January 17, 1983, so one owner has held it since before the killing.

On March 9, 1989, Sadler and Cash Box chart director Kevin Hughes stopped at Sadler’s office here after dinner. Around 10:20 they walked to Hughes’s car across the street, where a gunman shot them.

Sadler survived, but Hughes did not. Richard Frank D’Antonio was convicted in 2003 of Hughes’s first-degree murder, the conviction was affirmed in 2005, and he died in custody in 2014.

The earliest account of the Evergreen stop is Sadler’s own, given to the Nashville Banner in 1989. The Nashville Scene quoted that interview in its 2002 retelling, “With a Bullet.”

A private office with no marker, no tours, and no public interior, viewed from the sidewalk only. The shooting site is across the avenue, and the Cash Box office and Belmont Church are nearby.