Nashboro Records

Last updated

Nashboro Records was an American gospel label principally active in the 1950s and 1960s.

Contents

History

Nashboro was founded in Nashville, Tennessee by Ernie Lafayette Young (1892-1977), who was the owner of a record store, Ernie's Record Mart, and sponsor of a weekly hit parade show on radio station WLAC. In 1951, Young founded Nashboro to issue gospel records, and the following year also created Excello Records to release secular music, especially R&B and blues acts. [1]

Nashboro became a prolific issuer of Southern gospel groups, and Young frequently signed gospel acts from competing labels after they had folded. Some of the groups were backed by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in the studio. [1]

Young died in 1977, by which time Nashboro was increasingly reissuing out of its back catalogue rather than issuing new material. The label's catalogue was sold to AVI Entertainment in 1994, [2] MCA Records in 1997, and Hip-O shortly thereafter. [1] Relatively little of it has seen reissue, though in December 2013 Tompkins Square Records released a 4-CD compilation of Nashboro artists titled I HEARD THE ANGELS SINGING: Electrifying Black Gospel from the Nashboro Label, 1951-1983 (894807002981). [3]

Nashboro was one of several labels to have its catalog of master recordings destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire. [4]

Artists

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Isley Brothers</span> American family musical group

The Isley Brothers are an American family musical group originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, that began as a vocal trio consisting of brothers O'Kelly "Kelly" Isley Jr., Rudolph Isley and Ronald Isley in the late 1950s. With a career spanning over six decades, the group has enjoyed one of the "longest, most influential, and most diverse careers in the pantheon of popular music".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vee-Jay Records</span> American record label

Vee-Jay Records is an American record label founded in the 1950s, located in Chicago and specializing in blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2nd Chapter of Acts</span> American Christian musical group

The 2nd Chapter of Acts was a Jesus music and early contemporary Christian music group composed of sisters Annie Herring and Nelly Greisen and brother Matthew Ward. They began performing in 1972 and enjoyed their period of greatest success during the 1970s. The group disbanded in 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merle Travis</span> American country/Western singer-songwriter and musician

Merle Robert Travis was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and guitarist born in Rosewood, Kentucky, United States. His songs' lyrics often discussed both the lives and the economic exploitation of American coal miners. Among his many well-known songs and recordings are "Sixteen Tons", "Re-Enlistment Blues", "I am a Pilgrim" and "Dark as a Dungeon". However, it is his unique guitar style, still called "Travis picking" by guitarists, as well as his interpretations of the rich musical traditions of his native Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, for which he is best known today. Travis picking is a syncopated style of guitar fingerpicking rooted in ragtime music in which alternating chords and bass notes are plucked by the thumb while melodies are simultaneously plucked by the index finger. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1977.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lonnie Brooks</span> American blues singer and guitarist

Lonnie Brooks was an American blues singer and guitarist. The musicologist Robert Palmer, writing in Rolling Stone, stated, "His music is witty, soulful and ferociously energetic, brimming with novel harmonic turnarounds, committed vocals and simply astonishing guitar work." Jon Pareles, a music critic for the New York Times, wrote, "He sings in a rowdy baritone, sliding and rasping in songs that celebrate lust, fulfilled and unfulfilled; his guitar solos are pointed and unhurried, with a tone that slices cleanly across the beat. Wearing a cowboy hat, he looks like the embodiment of a good-time bluesman." Howard Reich, a music critic for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, "...the music that thundered from Brooks' instrument and voice...shook the room. His sound was so huge and delivery so ferocious as to make everything alongside him seem a little smaller."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Chapman (singer)</span> British musician (1941–2021)

Michael Chapman was a British singer-songwriter and virtuosic guitar player. Chapman originally began playing guitar with jazz bands, mainly in his home town of Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He became well known in the folk clubs of the late 1960s, as well as on the 'progressive' music scene, and released over 50 albums.

John R. was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC. He was also a notable record producer and artist manager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Gunter</span> American songwriter

Arthur Neal Gunter was an American blues guitarist and musician. He was best known for his song "Baby Let's Play House", which was later a hit single for Elvis Presley.

The Fairfield Four is an American gospel group that has existed for over 100 years, starting as a trio in the Fairfield Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1921. They were designated as National Heritage Fellows in 1989 by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. The group won the 1998 Grammy for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album. As a quintet, they featured briefly in the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Excello Records was an American blues independent record label, started by Ernie Young in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, in 1953 as a subsidiary of Nashboro, a gospel label.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry McCain</span> Musical artist

Jerry McCain, often billed as Jerry "Boogie" McCain, was an American electric blues musician, best known as a harmonica player.

Earnest Lee-Pickford Hines is an American soul musician. He was born in Jackson, Mississippi.

<i>Merry Christmas</i> (Bing Crosby album) 1945 compilation album by Bing Crosby

Merry Christmas is a Christmas-themed compilation album by Bing Crosby that was released in 1945 on Decca Records. It has remained in print through the vinyl, CD, and downloadable file eras, currently as the disc and digital album White Christmas on MCA Records, a part of the Universal Music Group, and currently on vinyl as Merry Christmas on Geffen Records. It includes Crosby's signature song "White Christmas", the best-selling single of all time with estimated sales of over 50 million copies worldwide. The album was certified 4× Platinum by RIAA for selling over 4 million copies in United States. The original 1945 release and subsequent re-releases and re-packages spent a total of 39 weeks at no. 1 on the Billboard pop albums chart.

Dr. Horace Clarence Boyer was one of the foremost scholars in African-American gospel music.

The Angelic Gospel Singers were an American gospel group from Philadelphia founded and led by Margaret Wells Allison. The group continued through Allison's death in 2008; the group was called "the longest consistently selling female gospel group in African American history" by the Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music.

The Supreme Angels was an American traditional black gospel music group from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. The Supreme Angels were formed in 1953 by several young ministers. In the 1960s Reverend Howard "Slim" Hunt of Walnut Grove, Mississippi, joined the group as the guitarist. Having been called to further their ministry, the ministers left the group to pastor various churches. Rev. Hunt decided to continue on as the now the lead singer of the group, changing the name of the group in later years to Slim & the Supreme Angels. As personnel changes continued throughout the years, Robert "Sugar" Hightower, of DeLand, Florida formerly of The Hightower Brothers and Mighty Clouds of Joy became the group guitarist and vocalist. The remaining group members of The Supreme Angels were Quincy King on vocals, Larry Young on vocals and keys, Michael Kimpson performing on vocals and bass, and Maurice Robinson on drums and vocals. They released seventeen albums over the span of 51 years, and the imprints they utilized were the following: Melendo Records, Nashboro Records, Black Label Records, Intersound Records, MCG Records, Gospel Jubilee, Malaco Records, and Grammercy Records. The group got three albums to place on the Billboard magazine Gospel Albums chart, and those were 1989's Death and the Beautiful Lady, 1995's Stay under the Blood, and 1996's Nobody but You.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AVI Records</span> American independent record label

AVI Records was an independent record label established in 1968, as a unit of American Variety International. It released music from numerous genres, and was sufficiently successful with its disco recordings that it began doing its own distribution in 1977.

The Pilgrim Jubilees, also known as The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers, are an American traditional black gospel music group originally from the cities of Jackson, Mississippi and Chicago, Illinois, where they were established by Elgie Graham and Willie Johnson, in 1934. The group have released 25 albums with six record labels Nashboro Records, Peacock Records, Savoy Records, Malaco Records, MCA Records, and Benson Records. Five of those albums charted on the Billboard magazine charts.

Lillian Etta Offitt was an American blues and R&B singer.

Tompkins Square Records is an independent record label producing archival releases of gospel, blues, jazz, and country music.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Robert Darden, "Nashboro Records". W.K. McNeil, ed. Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music. Routledge, 2013, pp. 270-271.
  2. Lichtman, Irv (September 1, 1979). "American Variety Acquires Nashboro". Billboard. p. 3. Retrieved June 11, 2015.
  3. I Heard the Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel from the Nashboro Label, 1951-1983. Tompkins Square Records, 2014. Includes essay about label by Opal Louis Nations.
  4. Rosen, Jody (2019-06-11). "The Day the Music Burned". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-07-02.
  5. The Gospel Harmonettes disco Retrieved 29 October 2021

See also