Music
The clichéd image of Music City is that of the lone singer-songwriter, guitar in hand, trudging up and down Music Row, trying to get an audience with the big record companies towering over the street. The truth, though, is that our town has always been home to more mavericks than majors—the little independent labels that scrap for a hit any way they can. Shelby Singleton is among Music City’s most legendary mavericks, the man who scored with Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and wound up buying the Sun Records label in 1969. (You’ve probably passed his Sun Enterprises building on Belmont countless times.)
Unlike the majors on Music Row, Singleton wasn’t afraid to try anything on his various labels, which included the Plantation imprint—he released country, rock, R&B and head-scratching novelties. Most never cracked the charts and simply made their way to bargain bins, but some of the finest among those long-forgotten singles have resurfaced on two new collections of soul and R&B from Singleton’s late-’60s and early-’70s labels SSS International and Silver Fox. Shake What You Brought! and My Goodness, Yes!, both on Sundazed Records, are rich with pleading ballads, dance-floor pumpers and easy-greasy funk grooves from the likes of Bettye LaVette (one of the standouts), Jo Jo Benson, Peggy Scott, Gloria Taylor and Jamo Thomas. The irony is that, though his offices were based in Nashville, most of the artists came from all over the South, and few of them made their records in Nashville. Only Clifford Curry and Johnny Adams will be familiar to listeners who’ve picked up the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Night Train to Nashville compilations.
Still, it doesn’t matter much where the music came from once you’re listening to Betty Harris telling off her man in “There’s a Break in Every Road,” the squealing feedback and limber grooves playing off her righteous fury. Even tossed-off oddities like Wilbert Harrison’s “Pretty Little Women,” which overdubbed the singer’s vocal onto a reverb-heavy backing track recorded several years earlier, have their appeal, because they hint at Singleton’s unconventional spirit.