Nashboro Records

Nashboro was founded in Nashville, Tennessee by Ernie Lafayette Young (1892-1977), who was the owner of a record store, Ernie's Record Mart, and sponsor of a weekly hit parade show on radio station WLAC. In 1951, Young founded Nashboro to issue gospel records, and the following year also created Excello Records to release secular music, especially R&B and blues acts.[1]

Nashboro became a prolific issuer of Southern gospel groups, and Young frequently signed gospel acts from competing labels after they had folded. Some of the groups were backed by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in the studio.[1]

Young died in 1977, by which time Nashboro was increasingly reissuing out of its back catalogue rather than issuing new material. The label's catalogue was sold to AVI Entertainment in 1979,[2] MCA Records in 2000, and Hip-O shortly thereafter.[1] Relatively little of it has seen reissue, though in 2014 Tompkins Square Records released a four-CD compilation of Nashboro artists.[3]

Nashboro was one of several labels to have its catalog of master recordings destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[4]

• Excello Records