Ipod Nano scrolling thru Artist list

When my Nano is connected thru the USB port, it all works great so far, except that when I want to scroll thru the Artist list, of which there are hundreds, it always wants to start back at the beginning whenever I start a scroll, no biggie, but then only scrolls one page at a time, and each time it will open the first track on the page and start to play it before moving on. Very time consuming if I want to play the Who! Very occasionally, and seemingly at random, if I continue to hold the FF scroll button on the right of the screen, it will keep scrolling faster thru the pages, without playing the first artist on every page, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Any ideas?