Results for “compilations”

One of the reasons why these CDs are so cheap is that no royalty is paid to the artists or producers of the masters utilised and so your bargain is in part funded from money that would normally be paid to the talented people who created the music in the first place.

Another major saving in the cost of production is the audio is lifted from other companies’ releases, including those of Ace. In doing this, the labels exploiting the copyright law are saving themselves the trouble and expense of dubbing original 45s and 78s, cleaning them up and EQing the resulting masters to make them sound good. By the very nature of their business these companies are unlikely to have access to master tapes and essentially they are dependent on companies like Ace to produce high quality audio that they can steal. In gaining access to masters, we can maintain high standards of audio and often turn up great previously unreleased material.

So the money you save in buying these CDs is in part due to theft of top quality digital masters from the companies who have done all the groundwork in locating and post-producing the audio. 

Ace also releases music that was recorded after 1962 and this has to be licensed from legitimate copyright holders. These companies cannot be expected to look kindly on us if we issue their pre-1963 recordings without paying for them. So, on that practical basis alone, we cannot benefit from the free ride on royalties, even if we wanted to. And we don’t want to, as we own many pre-1963 recordings on which we continue to pay artist and producer royalties.

As owners we are contractually liable to artists and producers for royalties, since early contracts did not make allowance for expiry of copyright. In any case, as most of these artists are US-based (where the copyright term is longer than in Europe) they would expect to be paid royalties anyway. It would not be helpful for our relationship with them to withhold royalties on sales outside the US.

So we still pay royalties to artists and producers of pre-1963 recordings, not only because we think we should, (and we have numerous examples of gratitude from older artists for whom even the smallest amount due is extremely welcome) but also because we are running a business and have practical considerations to take into account.

Furthermore the copyright in the songs embodied in the masters is protected for 70 years after the death of the songwriter, and without being recorded the income from these songs would be very limited. So the artists and record companies who provide the vehicle for income to the songwriters are denied the same copyright protection and ability to earn.

We like to think that we issue well-annotated, good looking CDs that sound as good as they can and the truth is, it costs money. We have been running a business since 1976, so have a pretty good idea of what it takes to survive in a tough market place and we fully intend to do so as honestly and fairly as we can.

So we ain’t cheap, but that’s because we ain’t cheapskates.

Ace has been in the R&B business since the early 80s when LPs from the likes of Huey Smith, Earl King, Rosco Gordon and Ike Turner were released. In 1982 our Kent label kicked off with “For Dancers Only” and “For Dancers Also”, inspired by my and Randy Cozens’ 6TS Rhythm ‘N’ Soul Society functions. Alongside the soul sounds the LPs featured tracks by Lowell Fulson, Z. Z. Hill, Vernon Garrett, Ike & Tina and Johnny Otis all of which were on the R&B side. Kent continued to feature R&B sides on its label-based CDs of Carnival, Excello and Poncello and there were compilations from R&B giants Chess - “Chess Club Rhythm & Soul” and Atlantic - “At The Club” devoted to where R&B met soul.

In 2001 Kent came up with “New Breed” to describe the sort of R&B records that were getting played on the emerging dance scene frequented primarily by second-generation Mods and Northern Soul dropouts. The increased interest led to prices of the most popular dancefloor plays rising; vintage music fans, record collectors and dealers took notice. A high percentage of the spins were from the early 60s, a period which had been somewhat overlooked by traditional blues collectors. As black music began to experiment with different productions, instrumentation and backing vocals, many collectors felt the music had been bastardised and any pop tendency was looked down on. Some stunning records with poppy choruses or heavily featured organs and the like were overlooked by collectors but this new dance scene was paying more attention to the beat than the virtuosity of the guitarist so a sub-genre came about. Ace having purchased Modern and Kent records in 1990, that catalogue was a natural one to mine for our first foray specifically targeting the new scene. With the help of Manchester’s Hideaway club DJs we put an impressive collection of R&B together and adopted the “New Breed” moniker of Jimmy Holiday’s 1967 Kent release of the same name. It was an appropriate raver of a record that summed up the burgeoning scene’s vitality and freshness.

The CD was very well received and within months “New Breed” was being used as a term for this new approach to black music. A year later we delved into the vaults of King and Federal records, an even better source with monsters such as Mike Pedecin’s ‘Burnt Toast And Black Coffee’, Little Willie John ‘I’m Shakin’’ and Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s ‘I Say I Love You’. Running parallel with interest in the blues was the influence of the Belgium-originated Popcorn scene in the UK. These records were more mid-tempo than what would normally be played here but Popcorners had a thirty year history even then. Their DJs had discovered some sublime black music grooves from this very period over those years. They were not averse to slowing down records that did not fit their perfect dance groove, so some were already suited for UK plays at the correct rpm. Many of the black Popcorn records were accepted onto the New Breed scene simply because they were brilliant, previously overlooked tunes. The mod end of the crowd in particular had no trouble adapting to them.

So in 2008 we brought out the CD “New Breed R&B with Added Popcorn” with tracks like Nappy Brown’s ‘Coal Miner’ and Harold Atkins’ ‘Big Ben’ which fitted neatly with the raucous R&B of Banny Price’s ‘You Love Me Pretty Baby’ and Luther Ingram’s dancefloor sensation ‘Oh Baby Don’t You Weep’. In 2012 we produced a second volume from the deep King vaults and the following year saw “New Breed Blues With Black Popcorn” emphasising the musical hue of Popcorn on there.

Some of the tracks used on the Various Artists CDs were tasters to label stories or solo projects that usually appeared on our Ace label. The Tiny Topsy and Lula Reed shared CD of their Federal recordings was sub-titled “Queens Of New Breed R&B”. Little Willie John’s R&B sound is a cornerstone of New Breed and Ace has four solo CDs riddled with dance classics. Kent Harris’ early productions were spotlighted on “Kent Harris’ R&B Family” Ace CD in 2012 and “Foxy R&B; Richard Stamz Chicago Blues” on the same label the following year, was mainly mid to uptempo R&B that would entertain New Breeders with a hunger.

By the time of those releases younger collectors who had been attracted to the new dance scene were broadening their interests and inevitably finding the wonderful music of the previous decade. Ace of course had been issuing exactly that throughout its thirty plus years and compilations by Etta James, Young Jessie, 5 Royales, Hank Ballard and Otis Williams were just some of the many compilations that would widen the R&B experience. The recently released Ace CD “Cracking The Cosimo Code” is an education in New Orleans R&B as well as a great listen.

Ace and Kent continue to lead the way in all things R&B with our access to master tapes, issued or unheard. We continue to find musical gems, frequently making their first digital (sometimes any) appearance.

14 November 1944 - 21 December 2019

Even before Peter Gibbon started to work with Ace, he would turn up at various studios where I was transferring tapes anxious to jot down every date and number from the tape boxes. In particular when I was copying the Stax tapes, he was totally in his element, not only getting to hear fantastic music every day but all those dates. Among the tapes was the motherlode of unissued sides from the early “blue” period and he finally got to compile CDs of Ruby Johnson and his all-time favourite, Carla Thomas. Peter did enjoy a female soul singer.

He was also very good company with an immense knowledge of doo wop and soul music in particular. I learnt a lot from him. At the time he was flying high with IBM, but was also one of the top discographers of American music of the post-War period. When he eventually left IBM, he joined the Ace team and built our fantastic US Singles Database, still invaluable to this day, even with the advent of 45cat and Discogs.

He could be irascible and did enjoy a drink, but it was all part and parcel of a man with a passion for the music that he not only documented but collected avidly and responded to emotionally. He was very much part of a generation of mainly middle-class British men who were in awe of these remarkable records wafting their way across the Atlantic. Peter was a perfect match for Ace, mixing a desire for as much information he could glean from the records while at the same time engaging in them musically.

One nice anecdote is that when we bought the Doré catalogue and the paperwork was shipped from the US, it contained boxes of shipping orders for records as well as the contracts. Under T for Teddy Bears, however, was an empty folder. We were going to ditch the pressing orders, much to Peter’s outrage – so much information to be had there. One day he came up from the warehouse with a contract. It was the Teddy Bears paperwork hidden by Lew Beddell in the middle of the pressing orders.

We have missed him for a while now as he had been getting progressively more ill, but I am sure he is logging the Celestial Choir’s repertoire up there somewhere. – ROGER ARMSTRONG

Peter and I met at Oxford University in the early 60s. As I recall, he was attending Wadham College and I was at Magdalen College. He was studying Maths and I was studying Chemistry. We met through a mutual interest in record collecting and discography. I had been listing record labels since my mid-teens and he had compiled similar lists. We used to compare notes and help each other improve our listings. Mine still contain some updates handwritten by Peter.

When we left University, Peter regularly visited my first wife and me in our flats in Wanstead and South Woodford, where Ray Topping and Norman Jopling were also frequent visitors. Later on Peter used to stay weekends with us in our cottage in Hatfield Peverel near Chelmsford in Essex. Amongst many other weekend and party guests at that time were Tim Rice and Storm Thorgerson, who photographed the “Atom Heart Mother” cow on the way home.

When Peter married Mickey and moved to Staines we didn’t see so much of him. Later on when I had remarried he became godfather to our second son, also named Peter. When he retired from IBM he became a consultant at Ace Records. – TREVOR  CHURCHILL

Peter came aboard at Ace Records as a consultant about the same time as me in the early 1990s. The label was expanding rapidly in the CD era, and Ray Topping and Ady Croasdell couldn’t handle it all.

Peter was an Oxford University graduate and former IBM executive who had a spell living in the US in New Jersey. He was a very serious record collector and discographer. I still recall being in awe the first time I saw his collection, including an enviable run of Golden World singles.

It was no surprise that he used his keen intellect, computer knowledge and discographical expertise to build an unparalleled database at Ace. He supervised many soul and doo wop releases. What a great time we had at the Ace consultants’ meetings – hard work and hard play, where we all bounced ideas off each other. Peter always came armed with a library of discographies. I also recall fondly his visits with Mickey to Shelley and me in Long Island on their annual trips to the US Open Tennis Championships in Flushing Meadows. His work in helping to elevate Ace to become one of the world’s leading reissue labels will always be treasured.

It is entirely appropriate that his life is due to be celebrated at The Bells in Staines, Middlesex, where he entertained many of us royally over the years. Please raise your glasses, everybody, in Peter’s honour. – JOHN BROVEN

I corresponded with Peter about soul label listings and discographies for Shout and Soul Bag magazines in the 1970s and we met up at various record fairs pursuing those elusive 45s. In the 1990s I was delighted to help Peter set up the Ace database and assist him on several compilations for the company. Peter and I took every opportunity to attend live music gigs, especially Ady Croasdell’s Cleethorpes Soul Weekenders. Our first visit there featured the amazing line-up of Barbara Lewis, Lou Courtney and Betty Lavette, all on top vocal form, sounding just like their records. We lost touch for a while due to his illness, but Bob Dunham and I managed to re-establish contact a couple of years ago. Bob will tell you more. – ROB HUGHES

I first met Peter Gibbon when I joined Ace Records in the late 1990s. In his consultancy role Peter was instrumental in training me up for the grand position of Tape Administrator and Archivist, a job that continues to this day, some 23 years later. I’ve also had the pleasure of working from the US Singles Database he instigated at Ace. I thank him.

Peter was bedevilled by leg problems which steadily worsened to the point he was unable to continue working, and contact was lost for some years. He was eventually confined to a wheelchair and mostly housebound, with wife Mickey becoming his main carer. On top of that, arthritis in his fingers prevented him from using a keyboard, a telephone and, heaven forbid, his trusty record player. Peter’s mental strength and sharpness got him through such challenges, and those powers continued undiminished.

These troubles all came to light when former Ace staffer Rob Hughes and myself eventually re-established contact with Peter, and in recent years we made a number of visits to Staines. Not to his house, mind you, but to The Bells, his local pub, to where Mickey would wheel him the two minutes from home. Occasionally she would stay but usually tended to disappear and return some three or four hours later to take Peter home after he’d treated us to an excellent lunch and stimulating conversation to go with the liquid refreshment. Despite the arthritis he still found a way to raise the elbow.

To add to Peter’s woes Mickey sadly passed away in late 2018. Without his main carer, Peter subsequently booked himself into a care home in Virginia Water where he would spend the last period of his life. However, our visits to The Bells were by no means over. Peter tracked down a cabbie with wheelchair access, and myself and Rob were able to meet up with him a few more times during what turned out to be his final months. A further visit was planned for early this year, but it wasn’t to be. – BOB DUNHAM

Although he never had any book or major work officially published that I am aware of, Peter Gibbon was to my mind one of the great discographers. He was the ultimate denizen of the dead wax, a man to whom you could throw the title of an arbitrary 45 release, and off the top of his head he’d immediately and knowledgeably respond with “Money 215”, “Arock 1006”, or “Stax 243”. While I’d hesitate to equate Peter’s mind with that of the fictional savant in the film Rain Man, he wasn’t far off in his grasp upon the runes and hieroglyphs of deep record collecting, particularly when it came to its black American tributaries. People consider me a nerd who purportedly might know who made the tea on the session, but while I have always loved collating discographical info – about the only maths I can stomach – I am nowhere near Peter’s league as a record scholar.

Of course, myself and the other consultants who work for Ace Records have been for many years the beneficiaries of his expertise. In the days before Discogs and 45cat, there were few readily accessible resources to assess what and what hadn’t been released on vinyl from the golden era of the 1950s-1970s. Peter’s computer skills collated all the then-available info from books and elsewhere into a series of tremendous databases that are still an effective tool for compiling. I would happily pass on my findings in the field to him at a regular basis, and we could talk labels all day long, no doubt to the exasperation of those within earshot.

Before his physical health prevented him from participating, I would often see Peter on the Ace team’s Stateside visits, beavering over his laptop as myself, Roger or whomever else was along for the trip pulled reels from a vault’s shelves and threw them on the tape machine. He seemed genuinely happy entering the relevant data while we worked. Like Roger, Peter did a lot of time at the Stax coalface when that particular catalogue was owned by Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California, just down the road from where I lived. We’d get together not just to talk Ace business, but also to make jaunt outs to record fairs and stores on the farther-flung reaches of the Bay Area. It was there that I first caught sight of Peter’s trusty, dog-eared notebook with endless and copious listings of labels in which he would furiously jot throughout the crate-digging.

I got to know Peter a little, and discovered that as well as an old salt at the record collecting game, he was somewhat of a foodie. Although my wife Cindy remembers the time we served him dinner at our apartment and he rhapsodised about the apple pie – she didn’t have the heart to tell him it came from the freezer at the local Safeway. He also knew his ale, and many of our conversations were conducted over a jar or three at a pub down the road from Ace Towers, or indeed the bar at whatever hotel was hosting the consultants meeting – a wonderful tradition that sadly no longer occurs, where everyone got together to discuss their latest repertoire leads and talk turkey on all matters Ace. It was at some of these post-dinner reveries that Peter would confide highlights from his youthful days as a fan, including the time he visited the London hotel room of a beloved American soul chanteuse and sat quietly agog while she nonchalantly changed outfits in front of him.

I hadn’t been around Peter since he had had to withdraw from Ace activities due to illness, so my memories remain of how he was. There is a wonderful photo that Roger took at one of the above-mentioned meetings that sums up Peter’s personality. He is leaning forward with a crooked finger upraised, making a point in inimitable fashion. That’s how I will always think of Peter Gibbon: a feisty, irascible, but always kind man. – ALEC PALAO

THE EVOLUTION OF ACE REISSUES

1978

When Chiswick was licensed to EMI in 1978, they made it clear that they had enough back catalogue of their own, thank you. So, we needed a new label name for the reissue end. Just before signing on with EMI, Johnny Vincent of Ace Records in Jackson, Mississippi signed on with us. Without any malice aforethought we promptly borrowed his label name, though he was cool about it at the time.

We maintained a dynamic on-off working relationship with him, using the old-style record business trick of continually fronting him cash then chasing the recoupment with some more releases. The five volumes of “The Ace Story” we put out remain definitive.

Ray Topping, a regular customer of Ted’s who had helped pen the notes for the Link Wray album, suggested we explore the Houston-based group of labels owned by Pappy Daily. Ray was one of the small group of pioneering blues aficionados and discographers in the UK who had been instrumental in bringing that music to a wider audience in the 60s. He became Ace’s first repertoire consultant. With an encyclopaedic knowledge and tremendous feel for blues and R&B as well as rockabilly and country, he was an essential element in the growth of Ace. The standards he set way back then have underpinned everything the label has since done.

So in 1978 a licensing deal was signed with Daily, who produced the early George Jones recordings and trawled the Gulf Coast areas of South Louisiana and East Texas to acquire recordings for his D, Dart, Dixie and Starday labels. Ted and Ray headed out west to Texas in search of musical gold; the first of many trips to the US in search of masters. We issued a compilation of fine rockabilly sides from George Jones and a 10” comp of Sonny Fisher’s Starday recordings, which even then fetched big bucks on original 45s. Ted and Ray tracked down Sonny and in 1980 he left the States for the first time in his life and toured the UK. He also cut an EP of new material for Ace on his visit.

Discovery of the year: the previously unissued monster rockabilly side ‘Jitterbop Baby’ by Hal Harris.

1979

To accommodate catalogue records that didn’t fit on Ace and new recordings deemed to have insufficient commercial appeal for EMI, we set up another label, BIG BEAT. It debuted with the debut 45 by Johnny (Winter) and the Jammers. Later it became home to the burgeoning psychobilly/garage scene, our own punk and rock back catalogue and repository for all things 60s beat, folk, garage and psych.

The Ace reissue 45s just kept coming as well, notably Thumper (George) Jones’ ‘Rock It’ and Link Davis’ ‘Allons A Lafayette’, a real swingin’ in-house favourite and a solid smash in any other universe. Having acquired something of a jones for the deliciousness of 10” records, we put out a couple more. But, because Chiswick through EMI took up so much of our time, catalogue issues took a back seat to the pop end of our business.

2007

A year of deaths, celebration and buying catalogues.

In March, Hy Weiss of Old Town / Barry Records died in Florida. The idea of deaths as ‘burning libraries’ certainly applied to Hy, a fount of insider knowledge about the music business from the mid-50s onwards. He was frank about it being full of scams and dodges. Most of his artists we met had no illusions about him, but also real affection. Plus, he could tell you a thing or two about them, too. He featured in many books, some more discreetly than others and it is a shame he never did tell his own tale. What tales he had to tell: tall, frighteningly honest and often very funny.