Rose Drake

First Generation Records, Drake Music Group

A Nashville, native, Rose Drake played basketball at Glencliff High School throughout junior high and high school as well as working at local department stores and fast food restaurants beginning when she was 14. During her senior year, she began taking phone requests during the Midnight Jamboree at The Ernest Tubb Record Shop every Saturday night. She earned one album per month as compensation.

Rose attended nursing school at Vanderbilt University until she could talk Pete and Jack Drake into letting her work in their Window Music Group publishing company full time in 1965. An A-Team steel guitar player and record producer, Pete Drake was the first person to record a Beatle Ringo Starr in the U.S. His recordings with Bob Dylan and George Harrison gave Drake's Studio a hip factor. While Pete was in the studio, Rose and the staff broke new ground for the companies by successfully exploiting copyrights on an international level and striking deals outside the U.S. for Pete's productions. Rose determined to also make the Drake Companies a household name and a nurturing environment for musicians, songwriters and music lovers alike. Drake's studio and home soon became known as the "Drake School of Music."

In the mid-1970's, Pete and Rose formed First Generation Records, where Pete produced the artists and Rose managed the businesses. After Pete's death in 1988, Rose continued to administer the publishing companies and market the artists in new ways through www.countryrecords.com