1965
SHE WENT AWAY * LINDA AND THE VISTAS * SHRINE 100 * USA
Well I must confess that this truly magnificent record had sat in my rejected box for many, many years, it is fortunate for me that it never actually got sold on, as when it was relegated I had no idea that the label was sought after by Northern Soul fans and would probably have let it go for peanuts! Then some time ago I was going through the remnants of the box and gave it one last spin . . . . .
The Washington D. C. based Shrine label was launched in early 1965 with # 100 and folded nineteen releases later at the end of the following year, it was set up and run by the partnership of Eddie Singleton and his wife Raynoma Liles Gordy, second wife of Motown boss Berry Gordy; Raynoma used the moniker Miss Ray on the label credits. According to Eddie Singleton the song She Went Away was originally He Went Away a song written about the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, and was recorded as such by Linda Tate in 1963, but never released. Although it was the only record on the label credited to Linda (Tate) and the Vistas, it is a scorcher of a Soul ballad with an outstanding arrangement and has got to be one of the great female Soul ballads of 1965