The Malaco Records Story, A Brief History ... - Page 2

Malaco also released its first recorded foray into the Gospel field with The Golden Nuggets take on the tune "Gospel Train." This was only a harbinger of many more successes in the field of spiritual based music that were to come for them.

Due in part to changing tastes, the advent of Disco and just plain fickleness of the record buying public, Malaco was in a slump by 1974. Rejection notices from labels with whom they had tried to place product were stacking up as were the bills from the day to day operations. With next to no operating capital left, they took a long shot that paid off and finally and firmly established Malaco as an independent force to reckoned with.

This coup came in the form of an ethereal, sweet soul ballad by Dorothy Moore called "Misty Blue." The combination of Dorothy's sexy voice, swirling strings and metronomic, low key drums seduced the public. It was a world wide hit reaching #2 R&B and #3 Pop in the US and # 5 in the UK charts. This effectively also launched Ms. Moore's career as she went on to have thirteen more chart hits and five Grammy nominations between the release of "Misty Blue" in 1975 and 1980.

The success of "Gospel Train " was paying off as well. Malaco signed up many top name and top notch artists including The Soul Stirrers (amongst whose alumni were Sam Cooke), The Sensational Nightingales, The Angelic Gospel singers and more). Mr Frank Williams of The Southernaires took over the A&R and day to day operations of their Gospel division until his eventual death in '93. What helped to make Malaco unique was that the large part of their continued success was due to the fact that while several of their hits did crossover to be largely successful with white buying audiences they still continued to pump out music that was by and large considered commercial suicide in the 1970's & 1980's: gospel, traditional sounding 60's styled R&B and Blues, genres that most labels would not have touched with a 10 feet pole at that point in time.

But the astute businessman they were, they knew that continued small successes would pay off better than a mega hit or two. Slowly they carved their niche amongst what is considered the "Chittlin Circuit" (a series of small clubs, taverns, gynasiums and even converted barns in small to mid sized cities that other larger perfomers generally eschewed after some larger degree of success) and the larger black neighborhoods of the South, North, Mid-West and Eastern Seaboard states as well as in the ghettos of large western cities such as L.A, Oakland, Seattle and Denver.

Article Author: HW Saxton

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