Vintage Review: Various Artists - Night Train To Nashville (2004)

Ask most people what they think of when you mention Nashville, Tennessee and they’ll inevitably respond with ‘country music’. The “Music City” has been so closely identified with the country music industry for so long that most people don’t know that the city hosts a thriving rock music scene and is the longtime home of the gospel music industry. Long before Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones helped put Nashville on the entertainment map, the ‘Athens of the South’ was famous for red-hot rhythm & blues.

Nashville’s post-war R&B boom lasted for a quarter-century, a time when almost a dozen clubs featured regional and national performers nightly, attracting wealth and celebrity to north Nashville. This period is lovingly documented by Night Train To Nashville, Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945-1970, a two-CD set featuring 35 songs representing the history of Nashville’s R&B era. Compiled by producers Michael Gray and Daniel Cooper to accompany a Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit, the set includes an excellent introduction by noted music writer and Tennessee native Ron Wynn and song-by-song liner notes by Gray that are accompanied by a wealth of rare photos.

Nashville was once home to independent labels like Bullet and Excello and a literal “who’s who” of R&B talent once came to Nashville to record. Night Train To Nashville features R&B hitmakers like Etta James, Ruth Brown, Arthur Alexander, and Roscoe Shelton. It’s the obscure artists that brighten up the grooves, though, long-forgotten performers like Little Hank Crawford, Rudy Green, and Sam Baker enjoying another turn in the spotlight. Highlights include Gene Allison’s smooth “You Can Make It If You Try”, Sonny Hebb’s pop crossover hit “Sunny”, Frank Howard’s “Just Like Him”, and the Sam Phillips-produced “Just Walkin’ In The Rain” by the Prisonaires, a song favored by Elvis.

Thanks to the Country Music Hall of Fame, fans of classic R&B can rediscover the soulful sound of this overlooked chapter in Nashville’s music history with Night Train To Nashville. (Lost Highway Records, released February 24th, 2004)

Review originally published by the Community Free Press, Springfield MO

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