Records produced by shrewd American composer (8)
I believe the answer is:
archives
'records' is the definition.
(an archive is a collection of records)
'by shrewd american composer' is the wordplay.
'by' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'shrewd' becomes 'arch' (I've seen this before).
'american composer' becomes 'ives' (Charles Ives, 1874-1954).
'arch' put next to 'ives' is 'ARCHIVES'.
'produced' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for archives that I've seen before include "Rich vase (anag.)" , "Stored records of organisations" , "Collections of old documents" , "Record collection" , "data" .)