Excello Records & Shirley Brown
A Post-war record label in Nashville, Memphis and Muscle Shoals. I have come across them as I was looking for Shirley Brown albums. Shirley B was the last hit record artist Stax had in the 70s, with the classic Woman to Woman. But in the early 70s she had recorded with Excello, who were primarily southern soul at that time. There has been some re-issues of this stuff by AVI records in the 90s — Tom Moulton mixed and remastered the stuff, and it sounds great!
Shirley Brown is as talented as Candi Staton, who I’m seeing at Triptych, and with a similar warm and evocative voice, although she does belt it out like Aretha on many tracks - sometimes a little too much. The Arista album I have is very fine, with Al Green’s backing singers and Duck Dunn helping out. I was going to track down some of the later Malaco records until I saw she had done stuff with Excello and (?) A-Bet records before Stax. The album Uptown Down South reissue looks good, as does the Heart of Southern Soul CD.
The label Excello started out as gospel then moved into R & B, and Southern blues.
Also one under-appreciated female vocal soul talent to look out for is Doris Duke, more info on this fine soul blog I have recently discovered.