Shelby Singleton Dead at 77
tr...@iwvisp.com
Wednesday from brain cancer. He was 77.
Singleton cut hits like Jeannie C. Riley's 1968 No. 1 country-to-pop
crossover "Harper Valley P.T.A." before settling in as owner of the
lucrative Sun Records catalog, purchased from founder Sam Phillips in
1969.
After a stint as a regional salesman for Chicago-based Mercury
Records
in the late '50s, Texas-born Singleton's record biz career lifted off
when he was promoted in January 1961 to head of the company's
Nashville subsidiary Smash Records.
After licensing independent hits like Bruce Channel's "Hey! Baby,"
Matt Lucas' "I'm Movin' On," and Paul and Paula's "Hey Paula" for the
label, Singleton struck gold by signing singer-songwriter Roger
Miller, then languishing at RCA. Miller recorded a series of sly
down-home hits for Smash.
He also nurtured the careers of comedic singer Ray Stevens and
guitarist-vocalist Jerry Reed.
In 1967, Singleton ankled Mercury and started his own indie label,
Plantation. He scored almost immediately with Riley's tart number
about small-town hypocrisy, written by Tom T. Hall.
He soon parlayed that massive success into a small indie-label empire
and the purchase of Sun's masters. The Memphis label recorded
timeless
rock 'n' roll and country material by his onetime Smash charges Jerry
Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich, plus classics by Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison
and Carl Perkins, among others.
Transaction proved a goldmine, as Singleton cashed in on a bonanza of
LP and CD repackagings and ancillary marketing and licensing of Sun's
masters and logo. He even managed to propel four old Sun tracks by
Lewis onto the country charts in 1969-70.
While Elvis Presley's Sun masters had been bought by RCA in the 1956
deal that took him to the label, Singleton still capitalized on
Presley's Sun tenure by marketing the masked vocalist Orion - real
name Jimmy Ellis - as a kind of alternate-universe Elvis.