Ruby Johnson

A tremendous Southern soul vocalist whose gift for rendering deeply felt heartache ballads places her alongside the finest singers of her era, Ruby Johnson nonetheless failed to land a breakout single throughout the classic soul years. Hailing from Memphis, she launched her recording career on V-Tone in 1960 before joining the Volt roster in the mid-'60s, yet she cut fewer than a dozen sides across the stretch from 1962 to 1967 and also worked with Nebs in Washington, D.C. Isaac Hayes and David Porter handled production on her Volt material, which featured the Mar-Key Horns along with Booker T. and the MG's, but none of those releases scored on the charts and subsequent Johnson sessions recorded at multiple studios remained unissued. In 1974 she stepped away from the music industry entirely. Fantasy released a comprehensive Ruby Johnson anthology in 1993 titled I'll Run Your Hurt Away, assembling twenty remarkable singles of which fourteen had never before appeared.