Shrine Part 3
Local sales were decent at first, peaking with the Epsilons, who had a regional hit with a multi-harmony tear-jerker called "Mad at the World." But soon after, Shrine stalled. Few of the singles gained traction. Airplay dropped off dramatically. Eddie and Raynoma were mystified and then frantic. Within a few months, Shrine was foundering, and by 1967 it was out of money.
How good was the music? Very good and often great, judging from the two-volume "Shrine: The Rarest Soul Label," released by a British label called Ace Records in the late '90s. Ace spent years tracking down whatever master tapes still existed, and vinyl copies of the rest of the songs. Then it negotiated a licensing deal with Eddie Singleton, turning a small fortune's worth of vinyl into a retrospective available to anyone with $34. (Amazon sells each disc for $16.98.) Listening to "Rarest" you realize how carefully Shrine relied on the template designed by Motown, famously described by Berry Gordy as music by black artists that white people would buy. But Singleton and his colleagues didn't write melodies as sweet as those produced by the Motown team, which is part of their slightly gritty charm. There aren't overlooked platinum records to be found here. Just emotion-drenched vocals, lush orchestration and songs so accomplished they force a question: "How come I've never heard this stuff before?"
Among the standouts: "I Wouldn't Mind Crying," by Tippie and the Wisemen, a ballad that savors the agony of love in cymbal crashes that echo like sobs of joy. And "I Won't Be Coming Back," which sets J.D. Bryant's blazing voice against deep and thumping heartbeat drums. Shirley Edwards's performance on "Dream of My Heart" makes you wish she'd accepted the invitation, later offered, to sing the title song of the James Bond movie "Goldfinger." (The tune launched the career of another Shirley, last name Bassey.) Nearly all of the songs come with elaborate horn and string arrangements, and all have that compressed, AM radio sound that is somehow both dated and timeless.
"There was unbelievable talent there," says Sydney Hall, who recorded as a solo vocalist and now lives in Connecticut. "Unbelievable. There were a lot of great acts. At first, it was a thing that none of us comprehended. Then we got old, and we saw where we could have been."
Today, among many Shrine performers and former higher-ups, bitterness about the label's death lingers. Reached at home in D.C. one recent morning, Shirley Edwards refused to discuss the subject, saying she didn't want to salt old wounds. Raynoma, who now lives in California and has been divorced from Eddie Singleton since 1971, politely declined to discuss the topic.
Others, like Harry Bass, talk about Shrine with a sense of bewilderment and surprising emotion.
"When I look back on it, if nothing else, it was a school for talent development," says Bass, sipping coffee in Union Station one afternoon. At 60, he has twinkly eyes and a tranquil air that's ruffled only when he discusses the label. Bass spent much of his life as a D.C. tour guide, work he enjoyed but not the career he had in mind in his twenties.
"I defied my family to have a life in music," he says. "My grandmother proclaimed I'd be a teacher or a preacher, and everyone expected me to go that way."
The resentment, in part, is about money. Neither Bass nor any other performers got much of it from Shrine, not from its original days in business, or from the secondary British market in Shrine vinyl, or from the Ace CDs.
What stings most, though, are the what-might-have-beens and the sense that many members of this professional family have vanished. I asked Bass about some Shrine artists who hadn't been heard from in decades, some of whom are apparently unaware of their remarkable second act in England. In particular, I was curious about the Cautions, an object of special fascination for Shrine fans because it was the only act to release two singles with the label. Little is remembered about the group except the names of a couple of members, one of them known only as AB Jones.
"These were street guys," Bass recalls. "Some of them may be in jail. Some may be dead." He mulls that for a moment, and looks toward the ceiling. He was like a big brother to the Cautions. Suddenly, there are tears rolling down his face. He dries them with a napkin, apologizes and then laughs.
"Sorry," he whispers with a smile. "I didn't know that was in me."
The mass appeal of obscure American soul in England isn't as bizarre as it might initially sound. Brits have a history of embracing artists who've been overlooked stateside. In the '60s, American bluesmen who struggled in their hometowns were greeted as celebrities in London. In the decade that followed, soul singers who had never charted in the United States found, to their amazement, that they had thousands of fans in cities whose names they'd never heard. To Brits, the songs were intensely moving and profoundly exotic.
"You've got to understand, there weren't any ghettos in this country in the '60s, no race riots and no place to get suffering music," says John Manship, owner of one of England's largest retail outlets of American soul. "You get a white guy with his hair all slicked back singing about a girl who'd run off with his best mate, and then you get someone like Otis Redding singing about the same thing -- it's a whole different ballgame. We'd never heard anything like it."
