Ace Records (United States)
Ace Records was the first American independent label to choose New Orleans as its main location and, from the mid-1950s, mainly released rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll records. In addition, from 1958 to 1961, 30 singles of the same styles were released on the sub-label Vin .
history
Founder and creation
The founder of the label was Johnny Vincent (actually John Vincent Imbragulio ; born October 3, 1925 in Laurel, Mississippi, † February 4, 2000 in Jackson (Mississippi) ). After a few jobs as a record seller, he started the short-lived Champion Records label in 1952 , for which he was temporarily able to win the legendary Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup , although he was still under contract with RCA Records . Crudup recorded six songs for the label, of which I Wonder / My Baby Boogies All the Time was released under the name "Arthur Blues Crump & His Guitar" so that RCA's breach of contract remained hidden. In the same year Vincent was hired by Specialty Records as the music director responsible for New Orleans, where he was responsible for several productions by John Lee Hooker , The Soul Stirrers and Lloyd Price . In March 1953 Specialty Records bought the small champion label. Vincent brought Guitar Slim to Specialty and made four recordings for the first time in Cosimo Matassa's J&M recording studio in New Orleans, including The Things I Used To Do , recorded on October 27, 1953. Through this song that brought it to million-seller status and up to Reached # 1 on the R&B charts, Vincent's reputation as a record expert was upgraded; but immense disputes with Specialty over royalties caused him to leave the label.
The August 13, 1955 issue of the "Cash Box" music magazine said that John Vincent had founded the Ace Records label based in Jackson, Mississippi. The focus of the label, however, was New Orleans, because this is where most of the recordings were leveled in Cosimo Matassa's J&M recording studio and this is where the distribution center was. The catalog started with Ace 500, registered for I Got The Blues For You Baby / Shuckin 'Stuff with Al Collins & Orchestra, published in September 1955. Because of the risky lyrics, the record was not played on the radio and hardly brought in sales. The Collins orchestra was played by the New Orleans pianist Eddie Bocage , who recorded Baby / So Glad (Ace 501) as Little Bo & Orchestra in the J&M studio on May 27, 1955 . Hit parade and sales successes were not yet to be reported here either. The national breakthrough came with Earl King , whose 2-bar blues Those Lonely Lonely Nights / I Had A Dream (Ace 509) was recorded exceptionally in Jackson in August 1955, reached # 7 on the R&B charts and sold 250,000 records. Vincent invested the US $ 10,000 profit from this record sales in the acquisition of Mac Rebennack (now Dr. John ), a pianist from New Orleans who was employed as a full-time producer at Ace from 1956 onwards. While searching for other artists, Vincent finally came across Huey "Piano" Smith & The Rhythm Aces , which were released under catalog # Ace 521 Everybody's Whalin ' , recorded in September 1956 in Cosimo Matassa's famous studio. Strictly speaking, this wasn't Huey's first recording: on the B-side of Eddie Bo I'm So Tired / We Like Mambo (Ace 515) he can be heard, dubbed Eddie Bo.
First million seller
Matassa's studio and house band became an integral part of Ace's success from then on. With one exception: the label's first million-seller, again by Huey 'Piano' Smith, Rockin 'Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu , composed by Smith and Johnny Vincent, was recorded in Jackson. The instrumental version received a text version that was declared to the B-side of Ace 530 in July 1957. However, this vocal version of the song unexpectedly developed into a million seller, which also became a crossover (# 7 R&B, # 52 pop charts). This was the first time Ace was represented in the “white” pop charts. A year later, High Blood Pressure / Don't You Just Know It (Ace 545) came out in July 1958, again by Huey "Piano" Smith & His Clowns, the biggest hit in the label's history. The song sold over 2 million copies and reached # 9 on the pop charts (# 4 R&B). That was no coincidence, because Huey Smith had the rare luck with his background singers that these singers dominated the recording sessions as well as the musicians. For Vincent the call and response style of the background choir increased phenomenally during this recording. At the end of 1960, however, Vincent lost interest in the formation after a few flops, and Huey "Piano" Smith switched to Imperial Records . Here the success failed completely, and Imperial released the group from their current record deal when Ace Records suddenly released Pop Eye / Scald-Dog (Ace 649) in February 1962 . It was a recording from earlier collections with Curley Moore as lead vocal and again composed by Smith. With this, Smith had picked up the famous, spinach-eating sailor character Popeye from the cartoon series of the same name and - unintentionally - provided the song for the modern dance of the same name.
More million sellers
Much had happened at Ace in the meantime. The label had signed a record deal with the white Jimmy Clanton in September 1957 after Matassa was convinced by good studio rehearsals and had pushed for the contract. Vincent was not enthusiastic at first, but then released Clanton's first single I Trusted You / That's You, Baby (Ace 537, November 1957). She failed, as the record boss had foreseen. But Matassa took great care of the young man, and Just A Dream / You Aim To Please (Ace 546) as Jimmy Clanton & His Rockets, published in July 1958 and composed in Clanton's collaboration with Matassa, became a success. The # 4 in the pop charts developed into a million seller. With that, Ace had its first white teen star and was able to compete with other labels ( Fabian , Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell fulfilled this role for competing labels). Experts and consumers apparently rated the song with the studio band Matassas (Huey Smith, Earl King, Lee Allen) and the intense voice as "black" and brought it to # 1 R&B. Just a Dream , the subsequent Go, Jimmy Go (# 5 Pop, December 1959) and Venus in Blue Jeans (composed by Neil Sedaka , # 7 Pop Charts, August 1962) each earned the label a gold record.
Vincent was now interested in finding another white teen idol for his catalog, which was exclusively made up of black performers. The trained singer and dancer Frankie Ford came at just the right time. Vincent routinely took him to Matassa's studio, where Cheatin 'Woman / The Last One To Cry (Ace 549) was recorded. The only regional hit was followed by a million-seller: Sea Cruise / Roberta (Ace 554) had come about in a strange way. Sea Cruise was originally a song recorded and composed by Huey "Piano" Smith in 1958 with the indisposed lead voice of Bobby Marchan, and therefore initially disappeared in the Ace archives for 7 months. For Frankie Ford, the instrumental part was provided with an overdubbing of Ford's voice, which had been slightly increased by a slightly faster voice track. In addition, the sound track has been enriched with the sound of the sea and a ship and fog bell. The recording, mixed in this way in March 1959, conveyed atmospheric authenticity, because the Mardi Gras-infected rhythm advanced to another hit for Ace Records in April 1959 (# 11 R&B, # 14 Pop).
At that time it became clear that the label catalog was too sparse to regularly develop a high level of hits from it. Vincent recognized that too: "We just didn't have the capacity to publish so many titles to get a constant number of hits".
Vin Records sub-label
From 1958 to 1961 Johnny Vincent released 30 singles on the sub-label "Vin". The artists corresponded for the most part to those in the main catalog. This enabled further recordings to be brought onto the market with these. The first release was in 1958 with "Vin 1000" by "Huey & Jerry" "Little Chickee Wah Wah" / "I Think You're Jiving Me". "Huey & Jerry" were Huey "Piano" Smith & The Rhythm Aces & Gerri Hall. Whether Jimmy Clanton's 31st single "Vin 1030" "Heartbreak Hotel" was actually released in 1961 has not yet been established.
Cooperation with Vee-Jay Records
In July 1962, an advertising and distribution agreement was therefore concluded with the much larger label Vee Jay Records , which started promisingly with Clanton's Venus in blue jeans . The contract guaranteed Vincent $ 500,000 a year over a five-year term. This allowed Ace to concentrate fully on the search for talent and the production of records, while Vee-Jay made his distribution network available. From this, however, a great risk arose: Ace no longer had any revenue sovereignty, was no longer able to keep records of record sales and was dependent on Vee-Jay's sales information. The first test case, Venus in blue jeans, sold 1.5 million copies, but Vee-Jay denied that number and passed on lower sales. Vee-Jay also did not transfer the proceeds from new local sales companies, while the old sales companies stopped paying because they suspected Ace was already in the crisis. Although Vee-Jay marketed its own successful catalog, the Chicago label went bankrupt in May 1966, due to embezzlement, while the contract was still running. The chronically undercapitalized label left Vincent in debt on the order of approximately $ 650,000 to local distributors. The small label Ace couldn't recover from that. Vincent tried hard to keep the label, but in 1970 he had to file for bankruptcy. Two attempts to revitalize the label failed in 1971 and 1974. The Ace catalog finally went to the British Westside label in 1997.
statistics
The label Ace Records was one of the small labels with a catalog of almost 200 singles, but was able to surprise the professional world with some crossover hits and million sellers. A total of 15 hits came into the US pop charts. According to the BMI , 59 compositions are registered for the former label boss Johnny Vincent . He died in his hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, aged 74.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt, Little Labels - Big Sound , 1999, p. 127
- ^ Cash Box Magazine, April 4, 1953
- ↑ Rick Kennedy and Randy McNutt, Little Labels - Big Sound, 1999, p. 131
- ^ John Boven, Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans , 1995, p. 113 f.
- ^ Cosimo Matassa in John Boven, Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans , 1995, p. 122
- ^ John Boven, Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans , 1995, p. 132
- ↑ Ace Records Discography, The Vin Series 1958-1961 , see weblink to "Vin" below
- ↑ Vee-Jay was one of the half dozen US labels that received the distribution rights for Beatles records from March 1964. In just one month in 1964, Vee-Jay sold 2.6 million Beatles records
- ↑ In the August 13, 1966 issue of Billboard Magazine reported that liquidation had been ordered