Results for “kent”

Gene Norman, jazz impresario, disc jockey and record label owner, passed away peacefully at his home in Hollywood, California on 2 November 2015.  He was 93.

The millennium dawned with a host of new deals that brought into the Ace family of labels familiar names in fresh guises alongside rare cuts by long-cherished figures and previously undiscovered tracks that would have seasoned collectors drooling.

Dion Dimucci, the ultimate rock’n’roll survivor, had been a feature of Ace’s early reissues with his superb Laurie material. He’d maintained a notable career by staying tuned to current trends and Ace maintained its close ties with the Bronx-born star by picking up his Warners albums, including the part-Spector produced epic “Born To Be With You”. The albums issued alongside it included the first ever CD reissues of the albums “Sit Down Old Friend” and “You’re Not Alone” which highlighted Dion’s fresh and inspiring musical direction after his struggle against addiction.

Following years of no-show in the reissue stakes, the rights to the acclaimed Philadelphia labels Cameo and Parkway were finally licensed by Ace from ABKCO in 2010 and a wealth of material that hadn’t been available for decades appeared in the catalogue including albums by the twist king himself, Chubby Checker, the Orlons, Bobby Rydell, Dee Dee Sharp, the Dovells and even proto-screen star Clint Eastwood who crooned his way through some country favourites.

A similar deal with ABKCO also saw SAR material from Sam Cooke’s label gain release including the complete recorded output of his brother L.C. Cooke.

More vintage pop and soul appeared in 2011 when Ace bought the rights to record hustler Lew Bedell’s (slogan: who the hell is Lew Bedell?) Doré records, famous for cutting Phil Spector’s first outing ‘To Know Him is to Love Him’. Twenty-five of the 28 tunes on this first volume of “The Doré Story” appeared on legitimate CD for the first time, all taken from the original masters. 

Movie soundtracks and book tie-ins also began to play a definitive part in the Ace release schedule, starting in 2004 with the Pogues and Joe Strummer featuring on the original soundtrack of Alex Cox’s “Straight to Hell Returns”. Then in 2010 came a double CD to accompany Alan Govenar’s magisterial biography of Lightnin’ Hopkins. As Roger Armstrong suggested: “Read the book, enjoy the record.” Another book tie-in came with “A Rocket In My Pocket: The Soundtrack To The Hipster's Guide To Rockabilly” which accompanied the book by the same name by Max Décharné. Chock-full of classics such as ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin'’ by Johnny Burnette & his Rock'n'Roll Trio and the title track by Jimmy Lloyd, it was a pure delight.

Then, in September 2008, came another awesome box set, the three-CD, 75-track “Take Me To The River: A Southern Soul Story 1961-1977”, which as Tony Rounce and Martin Goggin explained, set out the story of Southern Soul “in an approximately chronological manner, from its early rumblings at the beginning of the 1960s, through its first golden era in the mid-60s and its second in the early 70s, and on to the valiant attempts to forestall its demise in the mid-to-late 70s” and featuring everything from “million-sellers to obscure 45s that didn’t get beyond the limits of the cities in which they were recorded”. Soul heaven indeed.