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Cosmos Music and Ted Carroll, Trevor Churchill and Roger Armstrong - the founders of Ace Records and its associated companies - are happy to announce that Cosmos has entered into a long-term agreement to acquire a substantial interest in the owned master and publishing repertoire of the Ace group (amounting to some 9,000 masters and 3,000 compositions) and will work closely together with the management team at Ace Records to maintain and further build on its 46-year legacy.

Whether crafted by genius producers, cooked up by barely sane independent record company guys or stumbled upon after one too many beers, the hit record contains a little magic that insinuates its way into the ear, sticking to the relevant brain cells whether wanted or not. There is no formula for making a hit, they just happen, or more often than not – they don’t, for the hit record is a rare thing. Somewhere along the career path of even the most adventurous artist there is almost certain to be a hit record, or at the very least a blatant attempt at one. Though for some that hit was the career. In the Golden Age the hit came as a 45 rpm seven-inch and lasted anywhere from 1:14 to around 2:27. It was this leanness, this lack of excess that made them a delight; it was all over before you had a chance to think about it and left behind a fleeting memory of something wonderful. Of course these old hit records can be pure nostalgia, pushing emotional buttons, throwing you back into the moment, but they are also little works of art, miniature existential miracles and if you don’t have a stack of them in your heart, then something sure is missing.

Here come the girls! From Ace’s earliest days, there’s always been a place in our hearts for music’s feminine side. Every few months since then has seen a new release to keep girl pop aficionados satisfied – whether single artist sets and twofers or multi-act series and themed compilations. The Where The Girls Are collections zone in on the 1960s girl group sound, paying special attention to the rare and obscure: think castanets, anguished teen sirens, Svengali-esque producers and mini-sonatas about dancing and boyfriends (sometimes deceased). Get the picture? The Early Girls series, on the other hand, is drawn entirely (well, almost) from Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 of the pre-Beatles era.

Film directors have always been lionised by their industry and by fans who made household names of Ford, Hitchcock and Spielberg. Record producers, on the other hand, have by-and-large laboured in near-anonymity outside the music business. Ace has thoughtfully remedied that situation with an unofficial series of CDs spotlighting the studio output of visionaries who lived to bring the sounds in their heads to the grooves of a record.

Each of these auteurs relentlessly pursued his aural ideals, always with an eye on that ever-elusive next hit. Phil Spector, Jack Nitzsche, Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy clearly had the magic touch, and Kim Fowley and Gary Paxton managed to grab a couple of brass rings. It’s confounding that such singular geniuses as James Brown, Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were largely unable to duplicate their mega-success with the artists they produced, but each one of these CDs offers a fascinating jaunt into the oeuvre of a titan of pop music.