The Best of Roscoe Shelton [CD] (ONLINE ORDER ONLY)

Although Nashville is best known for its gargantuan contribution to country music history, Music City also hosted a thriving rhythm and blues community during the postwar era. John Richbourg, a top-rated deejay on Nashville’s 50,000-watt R&B station WLAC, was a prime mover and shaker on that scene, especially after he hooked up with Sound Stage 7 Records as a producer during the mid-‘60s. In that role, Richbourg helmed seminal hits for many of the label’s best soul singers, including Lynchburg, Tennessee native Roscoe Shelton. Shelton started out as a gospel vocalist, initially with the Fairfield Four and then the Skylarks, before making the secular switch in 1958 at the behest of Excello Records owner Ernie Young. Roscoe made seven singles for Excello stretching into 1961, but he didn’t hit his stride until he signed with the locally-based Sims Records, where he crashed the national R&B charts with “Strain On My Heart” in 1965. Moving over to Sound Stage 7 the following year, Shelton hit again with “Easy Going Fellow” and made more great platters for SS7 into 1968 before retiring from show business. This bountiful 28-track compilation of Roscoe’s SS7 years offers the most in-depth examination yet of a soul music pioneer’s most productive period, his mellifluous voice never failing to thrill. Nashville soul at its finest!

• Format Detail: CD Jewel Case
• Format: CD
• Genre: R&B