Ace Records

Leonard Chess started with the Macomba Lounge, the Bihari brothers started with a Los Angeles eaterie and Ted Carroll began with a market stall decorated with Elvis Presley wallpaper. Each would go on to form record empires that would help change the face of popular music. 
The Chess and Bihari brothers would give us the music and the artists that defined and then fostered a sea change in American popular music in the postwar years, fuelled by white hillbilly, black American rhythm and blues, Delta blues, storefront gospel, modern jazz, cocktail crooning, Louisiana cajun and scores of other strands of that nation's vast and elaborate musical patchwork.

TED CARROLL was part of a magical triumvirate that included mandarin musical mastermind ROGER ARMSTRONG and the patrician-like record biz wizard TREVOR CHURCHILL that would transform the whole concept of record reissues and set an industry standard for the three Rs - reclamation, restoration and research - that has yet to be bettered.

If, as a record-buying generation, we're now better served and better informed about such seminal performers as B.B. King, Dion, Slim Harpo or even the likes of Jaibi and Little Willie Littlefield, then it's no thanks to the major companies who have sat on the material for the last half-century. Instead, it's been companies like Ace who went digging and unearthed some of the finest and most influential records of the postwar era.

Ironically, too, it's taken a small company like Ace to make us re-evaluate one of the forgotten giants of the American music scene, the Modern record company founded by the Bihari brothers, and now, happily, wholly owned by Ace Records in Europe and Africa.

But all this was a long way in the future when Carroll sold black and silver London 45s, red and white Top Rank singles and the red and yellow Sue classics from a stall in Golborne Road, West London. An ex-bank teller, bus driver and latterly manager of an up-and-coming Irish rock band called Thin Lizzy, Carroll had decided to go back to his first love - records. From his stall in Golborne Road he attracted a growing number of regular customers. He also ran across an old friend, the Belfast-born Roger Armstrong, who, after tour managing Horslips and managing a short-lived band called St James' Gate, had decided he wasn't cut out for the management life. Soon, he was helping Ted, who had now expanded to a stall in Soho and the idea of launching a small record label was born. Would it be something to rival the beloved UK London label? No one could tell. But they decided to call it Chiswick, so that it sounded like "a branch from the same tree" as Roger puts it.

Soon, they had a band. The Count Bishops, fronted by the extrovert American Mike Spenser and a nifty EP, Speedball, which became a steady seller. Then came the addition of the last of the mighty Ace triumvirate, Trevor Churchill. A reader of Billboard since his teens, winner of the fiendishly difficult Record Mirror blues and soul quiz and a record man down to his finger tips, Trevor brought a steady hand and an air of astute professionalism to the fledgling company. A former EMI management trainee, he'd worked for Bell, the Rolling Stones record label, Tamla Motown and Polydor and had flogged some of his vast record collection to Ted, which is how they met.

He also acquired for Chiswick the rights to the company's first reissue, Brand New Cadillac by English rocker Vince Taylor, which, in the era of the UK chart-making Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell, began to sell by the bucketload. Then, as Britain witnessed the rise of pub rock, more acts were signed, including the 101'ers whose single featured Joe Strummer before he left for the Clash and, in 1977, Motorhead, whose valedictory single for the label turned into an album. Other releases came from the Radiators from Space, Radio Stars, Riff Raff (featuring a young Billy Bragg), Johnny & The Self Abusers (featuring an equally young Jim Kerr) and Drug Addix (featuring the late and much-lamented Kirsty MacColl). The wonderfully menacing Link Wray featured in one of Chiswick's first reissue albums and possible chart success beckoned with the signing of Rocky Sharpe & The Replays. There was also hits in both the UK and abroad for Sniff'n'The Tears (who made #15 in the US) and the Damned.


But as the 70s slowly segued into the 80s record production and promotion was to becoming an expensive game. This was still pre-MTV, but promotional videos were becoming de rigueur and as the costs of taking records into the charts spiraled, Ted, Trevor and Roger looked more to the steady but rewarding world of reissues.

A licence was struck with mighty EMI in 1978 for the pop end of the Chiswick label, so a new name had to be found for the re-issue side. As some of this product was to include Frankie Ford's Sea Cruise and an album's worth of Huey "Piano" Smith, the three decided to follow a route taken by the UK Sue label which had simply taken the name of the US label of origin. So with the permission of Johnny Vincent of Ace Records, Mississippi, Ace Records of Camden Town was born.

As several volumes of the Ace story came off the presses, other leads were followed up, thanks to the efforts of a musically-obsessed, devoted record fan and Ace consultant Ray Topping whose ability to sniff out good music was as highly developed as a Perigord pig trained to hunt for truffles.

The prize truffle was the mighty Modern label out of Los Angeles. In its heyday, the label had been up there with Chess, Atlantic, Savoy and Peacock as one of the top-selling indies of the late 40s and early 50s. But its star had waned and during the early 60s, when British blues groups latched on to UK reissues of Excello, Vee-Jay and Chess goodies, the Modern label was nowhere to be seen.

Still, Ray and several others realised the label's true worth and Ace began to reissue material from the label including classic early B.B. King, thus cementing a relationship with the world's greatest surviving bluesman which continues to this day. Other label stars, such as Howling Wolf, Richard Berry and John Lee Hooker got their share of the spotlight, culminating in a still deeply-wonderful three CD set of the complete early recordings of guitar god Elmore James. Eventually, in 1990 Ace became owners of the complete label - tapes and all - and moved the precious archives to their new and secure home in the Ace vaults.

Meanwhile back in the UK record jungle a new Ace label, Big Beat, was forcing its way out of the undergrowth. Formed to cater for the material that EMI wasn't interested in, it helped foster a previously unclassified brand of rock'n'roll that the label christened psychobilly. Signings included the Meteors followed by the US band who had inspired them, the Cramps. Their "Smell of Female" became the label's big-seller. Then the label entered the world of garage band reissues and other Nuggets-inspired artifacts, researched and reclaimed by writer, musician, full-time rock'n'roll fanatic and indefatigable Ace consultant Alec Palao.


Also evident was a need to cater for fans of soul music - and more especially for the diehard soul brothers who longed for the in-demand dancers from the golden era of the 60s. Ace had the music - the Modern subsidiary Kent had been a prime player - and also the man, soul aficionado Ady Croasdell, otherwise known as Harboro Horace, who compiled the first Kent/Modern long player "For Dancers Only" in 1982. It went on to sell 20,000 copies and is still in the catalogue today. The label it was on, took the name of its American counterpart (there was a precedent here) and Kent became an integral part of the Ace family.

Contemporary blues, but with a definite vintage flavour, was also getting a look in as Roomful of Blues made their way into the Ace catalogue, shortly followed by such British bearers of the blues beacon as Red Beans and Rice, Dana Gillespie and Diz and the Doormen, stars of the Hare and Hounds at Islington, who went on to record with New Orleans giants Walter Kimble and Lee Allen.

There was also a chance to hear some of these legends live when Ted organised a never to be forgotten concert featuring Young Jessie, Chuck Higgins, Big Jay McNeely and Willie Egan (now, sadly, recently departed) at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. Probably not cost effective, but a gas all the same.

On the reissue front, labels whose back catalogue would be examined as eagerly as a train enthusiast looking for pre-war rolling stock, included Cadence, home of the Everly Brothers and the Ballad Of Davy Crockett, and Laurie, where "white but all right" doo woppers Dion and the Belmonts ruled supreme. The Dion reissues also displayed Ace's commitment to sound quality of the highest possible order. On a scouting trip to New York Roger had discovered that the original master tapes of the Dion and the Belmonts sessions were languishing on a rack in the RCA studios. Armed with one of the first digital taping systems, the boys from Ace were able to release, for the first time, stereo masters and previously unheard sides. The result was vocal group heaven.

That particular triumph was followed in 1984 by a deal with one of the great rock'n'roll labels of the postwar era, Specialty Records. This led eventually to another jewel in the Ace crown, the Little Richard "Specialty Sessions" box set - six CDs of vintage Penniman which captured every sniff, sneeze and A Wop Bop a Loo Bop, a Wop Bam Boom of this seminal artist during his brief, hit-making, era. Little Richard supplied the music, Ace supplied the lavish packaging and Rick Coleman and the dedicated Ace consultant, Rob Finnis, supplied the words.

Many of the Little Richard tracks had been cut at the famous Cosimo studios in New Orleans and Ace ventured further into Louisiana to investigate the rich gumbo stew of swamp pop, cajun and zydeco to be heard on labels such as Floyd Soileau's Jin and Swallow and Eddie Shuler's Goldband. A deal with Soileau led to some great cajun music from the likes of the Balfa Brothers and Nathan Abshire, expertly annotated by South Louisiana music buff and soon to be Ace consultant John Broven, as well as a bubbling-under UK chart hit in the shape of Rockin' Sidney's original version of My Toot Toot.

As the mid-80s approached, the technological revolution gathered pace and records which had been released on 78s were now being reissued on small silver discs that revolved a few hundred times faster. Ace embraced the new technology with a vengeance and soon Jackie Wilson, Dion and B.B. King were filling the CD racks. By this time Ace had left North London behind for the more salubrious canal-side spaces of Harlesden where yet another addition to the Ace fold, GlobeStyle Records, was born. Unlike Ace, GlobeStyle also dealt in new artists and were responsible for first breaking Ofra Haza. Many of the records were produced by Ben Mandelson.