It’s fitting that indie soul gospel label Nashboro Records was founded by one of a rare breed in early 1950s music: an honest businessman. Nashville’s Ernest L. Young parlayed his success as a jukebox operator and a record shop owner before starting a company producing the kind of sacred music his mostly black customers were seeking. Once he started Nashboro, among other imprints for other genres, he didn’t cheat the acts who recorded for him and was generous with advance royalties.
That honesty paid off. Nashboro became a major player in its domain until shuttering in the ’80s. As part of Jack White’s efforts to pay homage to the musical legacy of his adopted hometown, his Third Man label has issued Give Me My Flowers, an LP collecting 16 tracks from Nashboro’s first two decades. Part of Young’s success with Nashboro was the slight layer of reverb he added in the studio, perhaps helping the discs to sound a bit more like church performances than the vinyl proffered by other gospel purveyors. The label’s range was wide, including the shouting style of singing that developed after World War II, sweeter serenading from the older jubilee mode, doo wop-like vocals, allegorical recitations backed by electric organ and minor chord sophistication that evinces gospel’s symbiotic relationship with R&B. Everything collected here is memorable and affecting.
Among the many acts who travelled hundreds of miles to record in Nashboro’s facilities was the still active, Milwaukee-bred Slim and The Supreme Angels, whose raw intensity is suffused with devotional sweetness. Without the sort of crossover aspirations of so much of today’s commercial radio soul gospel, these Flowers stand as a small garden of roots music transcendent in manifold ways.
