Shelby Singleton

Shelby Sumpter Singleton Jr. (Born December 16, 1931 in Waskom , Texas ; † October 7, 2009 in Nashville , Tennessee ) was an American music producer . He was one of the most influential record label owners and worked primarily in the country music sector.

Career

Margie Singleton - Take time out for love

His parents were Shelby Sumpter Singleton sr. and Alvina Marcantel Singleton. After graduating from school in 1947, he attended a business college in nearby Shreveport, Louisiana. He was then drafted into the Marines during the Korean War, where he sustained an injury in combat. After his return he married in 1948 the only 13-year-old Margie Ebey, who began recording country music under the name Margie Singleton from February 1957. Her husband was employed as a technician at Remington Rand and came into contact with the music business through Margie. In March 1957, she received a recording deal with Starday Records , a small label that had specialized in country and country blues since it was founded in 1953. Her husband got a connection to the music world as a co-author of the tracks Love Is A Treasure and My Picture Of You (both recorded in June 1957; Starday # 309) and Take Time Out For Love (October 1957; Starday # 323) his wife and made them known until it was accepted into the Louisiana Hayride in 1958 . Husband Shelby moved in October 1957 to Starday Records , which were connected with Mercury Records via a distribution agreement, where he was initially responsible for regional sales in Shreveport. When the collaboration between the two labels ended in July 1958, he joined Mercury Records as a regional sales manager.

Mercury Records

In July 1959 he moved to New York as Artist and Repertoire Director for Mercury. Singleton's name appeared there for the first time sporadically from 1960 onwards as a music producer, but not in the intensity of the great music producers of the time such as Leiber / Stoller , Jerry Wexler or Chips Moman . He jumped seen for the first time as a producer on Please Help Me I'm Falling and the Mule Skinner Blues by Rusty Draper (recorded on April 24, 1960), plug remained as the designated producer in the snowstorm; this cover version sold 150,000 copies. When Brook Benton came to Nashville for studio recordings in April 1961, there were difficulties with his accommodation because the hotels there did not accept colored guests. "I had to let him stay with me," Singleton recalled. With him, Singleton produced the Boll Weevil Song , a traditional folk song about the fictional conversation between a cotton pest (the cotton boll beetle ) and the affected farmer, published in May 1961. Benton achieved second place on the pop charts and thus his best ranking ever. Singleton brought Clyde McPhatter from Atlantic Records to Mercury Records in 1961 and produced the hit Lover Please (March 1962; Rank 7 Pop) and other singles with him . Three hit productions for Ray Stevens followed , of which Ahab the Arab was the most successful in 1962 .

Leroy van Dyke - Walk on By

Country singer Leroy Van Dyke has been produced by Singleton since January 1961, including his second biggest hit Walk on By (recorded on May 12, 1961) with session guitarist Jerry Kennedy (Margie Singleton played the harmonica and sang in the choir), which became one of the greatest country hits with a total of 1.5 million copies sold. The hit was number one in the country charts and number five in the pop charts for 19 weeks, making it one of the most successful country songs. He produced a total of 13 sessions with van Dyke until January 1965, before he musically supervised him until 1980 in his singleton sound studio .

Singleton focused at the same time on potential hits with small record labels to enable them to sell nationally with better sales opportunities. That happened with Chantilly Lace ( Big Bopper on the label "D", August 1958) or Running Bear ( Johnny Preston , October 1959). Hey Baby , recorded by Bruce Channel in December 1961 for the Le Cam label and submerged , was picked up by Mercury subsidiary Smash Records in January 1962 and became the No. 1 hit (harmonica played by Delbert McClinton ); Hey Paula from the duo Paul & Paula also achieved the highest rank after publication in December 1962, also acquired by LeCam. Both hits were produced by former Air Force Major Bill Smith. In 1963 Singleton acquired the music publisher Dave Dreyer Music , when the namesake no longer wanted to continue his publishing company for reasons of age.

Joe Dowell - Wooden Heart

Smash Records was founded in February 1961 as a sub-label of Mercury and was planned as a rock & roll and jazz label. An earlier hit was the Wooden Heart produced by Singleton (an adaptation of the German folk song Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Städtele ) by Joe Dowell . His first recording session as a singer for the new label took place on May 26, 1961 at Bradley Film & Recording Studios , Nashville. Producer Singleton had seen the Elvis film GI Blues in the cinema the day before the recording date and had a premonition that Wooden Heart could be a hit. So he suggested Dowell record the song with Ray Stevens on organ and Jerry Kennedy (bass guitar). The studio was booked from 11:00 a.m., and Dowell had three hours to rehearse the song using the phonetic transcription. Together with the Merry Melody Singers , Shelby Singleton produced a version that was vocally very similar to the Elvis recording, which was implemented over a million times.

Singleton rose to Vice President of Mercury in November 1962, having been clearly the label's most successful pop and country producer since 1959, the music magazine Billboard reported . For Smash he signed record deals with Jerry Lee Lewis (September 1963), Roger Miller (produced there by Jerry Kennedy; January 1964) and Charlie Rich (June 1965), for Mercury with Faron Young , Dave Dudley and Ray Stevens. The Sun Records studios in Nashville were booked for Lewis between September 22 and 24, 1963 on behalf of Smash (produced by Singleton with sound engineer Billy Sherrill ), but the label was unsure of the style in which Lewis would be marketed ( Rhythm & blues , soul or rock music ); his spectacular touring successes in Europe (among other things, he appeared on April 5, 1964 in the Hamburg Star Club with the Nashville Teens ) did not impress Smash. The late success came in the country charts, where it was represented with some high-ranking hits. What's Made Milwaukee Famous (recorded April 16, 1968), an autobiographical song about the negative effects of beer consumption, reached number two on the charts in June 1968. Too late for the record company, because his record contract expired in September 1968.

Own record empire

In December 1966 Shelby Singleton left the Mercury label and in October 1967 founded Shelby Singleton Production & Publishing (SSS) with a country label Plantation , pop label SSS and soul label Silver Fox together with his sound engineer Joe Veneri (who had also left Mercury). The parent company of a medium-sized group was The Shelby Singleton Corporation in Nashville with its own recording studio, music publisher and 15 record labels. All new artists were accompanied by a recording studio, record label and music publisher in the group. Plantation Records should turn out to be the most important label of the empire . After Singleton finally moved to Nashville in May 1968, the Plantation label's third single brought the breakthrough in July 1968.

Biggest hit

His wife Margie followed her husband as a singer to the record labels, where he worked as a producer or A&R director. Margie stayed with Starday Records until July 1960 , where she had released eight singles and one LP. From August 1960 she was under contract with Mercury Records . She stayed here until November 1964, when she switched to United Artists from 1965 . The reason for this change was the divorce from Shelby Singleton in early 1965. In the same year she married country singer Leon Ashley, who owned a record label. When she finally went to Ashley's label Ashley Records in 1967 , in July 1968 she brought the original of a story song written by Tom T. Hall about a fictional encounter between a single widow and the parents' council of her child's school, who dealt with her clothing and alcohol and men of the village, under the title Harper Valley PTA . This original country song remained without hit parade resonance.

Jeannie C. Riley - Harper Valley PTA

Shelby Singleton found out about his ex-wife's single, secured the rights and booked a recording date for Jeannie C. Riley and another singer named Royce Clark for July 26, 1968 at Columbia Recording Studios in Nashville ; Singleton wasn't sure if Riley's vocal skills would be sufficient, as she only had a single recording session experience. The result was Harper Valley PTA / Yesterday and All Day Long Today , produced by Shelby Singleton and sung by Jeannie C. Riley. Singleton's longtime musical companion Jerry Kennedy played Dobro during the sparsely orchestrated recording session . The day after, Singleton went with the master tape to influential radio DJ Ralph Emery from WSM Nashville, who played the A-side several times on request. As the young label's third single, the title was marketed in August 1968 as Plantation # PL3 . At the time, Jeannie C. Riley still believed that the song was not “country enough” to establish her as a country singer. Just two weeks after publication, 1.75 million copies had been sold, in the USA alone there were a total of four million and over six million worldwide. From August 1968, Riley recorded her records only in the new Singleton Sound Studios in Nashville.

He also produced two medium hits for Peggy Scott and Jo Jo Benson ( Soulshake , February 1969, Rank 37 Popcharts and Pickin 'Wild Mountain Berries , October 1968, # 27), Reconsider Me (for Johnny Adams ; June 1969, # 28) or Groovy Grubworm (for Harlow Wilcox and the Oakies, October 1969, # 30).

Purchase of Sun Records

Elvis Presley: The Sun Years - Interviews and memories, page 2

With the income from his crossover - Millionenseller Harper Valley PTA funded Singleton acquisition of Sun Records and their master tapes on July 1, 1969. He acquired the entire label catalog for a price of one million dollars. In order to get the investment back, he took care of the regular and discographically careful publication of the Sun Records catalog and also of the previously unpublished recordings. The specialist literature criticized that he had flooded the market with low-price LPs. When Singleton decided to republish Elvis Presley's remaining Sun recordings shortly after his death (LP The Sun Years: Elvis Presley ; Sun # 1001; released in September 1977 with Elvis interviews), he was sued by RCA, had to pay 45,000 Pay dollars in damages and take the LP off the market. It turned out that only the final master tapes from Elvis were acquired by RCA when he switched. The LP was part of a series from all former Sun Records stars. In April 1997, Singleton Sun Records merged with Brave Entertainment Corporation and an extensive program of re-releases of the Sun catalog brought him back the investment costs.

statistics

According to BMI , Singleton has 61 copyright registered titles, including 1 BMI award. His former wife clearly surpassed him with 251 titles, including three BMI awards. He composed, for example, Am I That Easy to Forget (BMI Award), the original of which was recorded by co-composer Carl Belew on December 17, 1958 and covered at least 25 times. The most successful version comes from Skeeter Davis (recorded on December 14, 1959, ranked 11th in the country charts), ten years later Engelbert Humperdinck developed the title for the European market (January 1968, ranked 3 in Great Britain).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This is where the UNIVAC computer was later manufactured
2. ↑ Michael Kosser, How Nashville Became Music City, USA , 2006, p. 58.
3. ↑ John Broven, Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock & Roll Pioneers , 2009 S. 290th
4. ↑ Dave Laing: Shelby Singleton Obituary , The Guardian, October 12, 2009.
5. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, 158.
6. ^ Fred Bronson, The Book of Number One Hits , 1985, p. 95.
7. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 152.
8. ↑ Singleton Now Mercury Vice-President , Billboard Magazine, Nov. 10, 1962, p. 8.
9. ↑ Billboard Magazine, August 22, 1970, p. 44
10. ↑ James C. Hefley, Country Music Comin 'Home , 1992, p. 113.
11. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 269.
12. ^ Paul Kingsbury, The Encyclopedia of Country Music , 1998, p. 485
13. ↑ you can hear interviews with those involved and individual remaining takes with Elvis, which were overlooked when they were acquired by RCA. A detailed description can be found on Discovering Elvis from April 23, 2010 ( Memento from September 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
14. ^ Newsline , Billboard Magazine, April 5, 1997, p. 60.
15. ↑ BMI entry for Shelby Singleton  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
16. ↑ BMI entry for Margie Singleton ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.