Ace Records

[Late]

Seeking recommendations for music on this label. Open to all genres. Thanks!

[Big Beat Steve]

Now THAT's a really wide field. How about checking out their online catalog and seeing what strikes your fancy?

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=61&label=144

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=50

Their reissues all in all really are carefully produced and thoughtfully compiled. (And expertly annotated, that goes without saying) So it all depends on what kind of music you REALLY are into above anything else.

Edited May 21, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[Head Man]

Now THAT's a really wide field. How about checking out their online catalog and seeing what strikes your fancy?

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=61&label=144

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=50

Their reissues all in all really are carefully produced and thoughtfully compiled. (And expertly annotated, that goes without saying) So it all depends on what kind of music you REALLY are into above anything else.

Yes, this is the label that sets the standard for how re-issues SHOULD be done. If there's an artist or genre that you like AND it's available on Ace, then you should get it there.

[cih]

fwiw though, this is a really great collection:

BANDERA BLUES AND GOSPEL FROM THE BANDERA, LAREDO AND JERICO ROAD LABELS

[king ubu]

Now THAT's a really wide field. How about checking out their online catalog and seeing what strikes your fancy?

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=61&label=144

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=50

Their reissues all in all really are carefully produced and thoughtfully compiled. (And expertly annotated, that goes without saying) So it all depends on what kind of music you REALLY are into above anything else.

Yes, this is the label that sets the standard for how re-issues SHOULD be done. If there's an artist or genre that you like AND it's available on Ace, then you should get it there.

How did they end up getting/doing some Fantasy material?

I recently got the great two discs by Percy Mayfield, one from Fantasy, the other from Ace - seems in that case they're identical (except for course for the logo and some minor differences in layout). In others, they made their own Fantasy twofers. Was that one of those licensing deals, just like ZYX had in Germany?

[Big Beat Steve]

Speaking of Percy Mayfield, I am assuming you are referring to SPECIALTY.

Ace has been doing Specialty reissues ever since there have been CDs and even before. The entire Little Richard and Larry Williams as well as Guitar Slim catalogs on Specialty (and probably more which I cannot recall offhand) had been on Ace for a long time in the vinyl era.

The way Ace has been operating ever since they've ben inexistence rules out ANY misgivings about these reissues being "shady". They are the real deal and have always been.

So never mind how they got it. There must have been SOME deal about the Specialty catalog, seeing how long Ace has been covering that label.

Honestly - being a collector I don't tend to think about labels like Specialty in terms of "Fantasy" or the like. Fantasy is the colored early Brubeck vinyls, Cal Tjader (and their ilk) and that's that. As for the rest, the world being the way it is today, tie-ups tend to change so fast these days that what's current today is likely to be passé tomorrow. So what then?

Besides, if you step back a bit further you will find more seemingly similar reissues done more or less in parallel. Back in the vinyl days a lot of Ace reissues were limited to Europe (non-U.S. anyway) distribution because Rhino had sewn up the U.S. territory. (Occasionally you tended to find both in secondhand bins over here anyway) But if you looked closer and compared you'd find that where Ace tried to cover the whole field in depth, Rhino reissues were notoriously incomplete, omitted tracks, had more scanty playing time, etc. etc. Thankfully those days are over.

Edited May 21, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[king ubu]

Hey, I hadn't the slightest of intentions to make the Ace reissue sound shady!

I was just wondering.

And me being young and a child of the CD era, I tend to think of many of those labels as "Fantasy", even more so when talking of compilations/reissues on CD (it took me many years to make a difference between Prestige, Riverside and others - I simply didn't bother at first, when I got into jazz as a teenager ... no one told me about it).

[John L]

For starters, you might try

The BB King Kent series is also wonderful, my favorite BB in top quality sound and production.

Edited May 21, 2012 by John L

[Big Beat Steve]

Hey, I hadn't the slightest of intentions to make the Ace reissue sound shady!

I was just wondering.

I know you didn't, but others - reading your question - might have got started thinking in the wrong direction.

[J.A.W.]

Ace were the U.K. licensee of the Fantasy catalogue (including Prestige, Riverside, OJC and Specialty) before Concord bought Fantasy. Nothing shady about it. They still are the Specialty licensee.

Edited May 21, 2012 by J.A.W.

[kh1958]

The Elmore James box set is great.

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=59&release=7530

[king ubu]

Okay, thanks J.A.W. - that's what I thought.

They did more (and it seems better) with the catalogue than ZYX did, for sure!

[John L]

The Elmore James box set is great.

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=59&release=7530

Yes, and if you want to economize a bit, their single disc collection contains almost all of the masters. I own the box, but play the single disc (without the multiple alternates and breakdowns) much more often.

[Head Man]

This is a GREAT series!

Edited May 21, 2012 by Head Man

[paul secor]

Ace has been in business for too long and have released too wide a variety of musics to make individual recommendations. As Steve said, look through the catalog. If something strikes your fancy, you can safely bet that Ace has done it right. They're one of the best reissue labels out there.

[J.A.W.]

Ace has been in business for too long and have released too wide a variety of musics to make individual recommendations. As Steve said, look through the catalog. If something strikes your fancy, you can safely bet that Ace has done it right. They're one of the best reissue labels out there.

Seconded, with one caveat: a few years ago they released CDs that sounded rather LOUD and harsh (don't remember any titles right now), but as far as I've heard them their more recent releases are OK.

[paul secor]

Ace has been in business for too long and have released too wide a variety of musics to make individual recommendations. As Steve said, look through the catalog. If something strikes your fancy, you can safely bet that Ace has done it right. They're one of the best reissue labels out there.

Seconded, with one caveat: a few years ago they released CDs that sounded rather LOUD and harsh (don't remember any titles right now), but as far as I've heard them their more recent releases are OK.

The LPs they issued in the 1980's remastered by Bob Jones are some of the best sounding records I own. He had great ears and skills and used them well.

[J.A.W.]

Ace has been in business for too long and have released too wide a variety of musics to make individual recommendations. As Steve said, look through the catalog. If something strikes your fancy, you can safely bet that Ace has done it right. They're one of the best reissue labels out there.

Seconded, with one caveat: a few years ago they released CDs that sounded rather LOUD and harsh (don't remember any titles right now), but as far as I've heard them their more recent releases are OK.

The LPs they issued in the 1980's remastered by Bob Jones are some of the best sounding records I own. He had great ears and skills and used them well.

I agree. The masterings by the late Bob Jones (he died in 2009) are great. He also worked for Bear Family.

Edited May 21, 2012 by J.A.W.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Okay, thanks J.A.W. - that's what I thought.

They did more (and it seems better) with the catalogue than ZYX did, for sure!

I know they issued a lot of soul jazz on the BGP label - some of which never came out on CD in the USA (eg Freddie Roach, Boogaloo Joe Jones, Rusty Bryant, Billy Hawks, Funk Inc) - as well as some compilations with unusual stuff. But really, even though I find it wonderful, that's a tiny fraction of Fantasy's former jazz holdings. For more mainstream, bebop and modern jazz, there's a hell of a lot that didn't come out on Ace but did come out on ZYX. Well, that's not clear: the two companies were in a consortium licensing the Fantasy material with other firms in other countries, listed on the backs of the CDs. But most of what ZYX manufactured you couldn't buy in the shops here, even though it said Ace in the list; you had to import it from the USA, or Germany - both expensive options, in the days before Amazon. I downloaded an Ace Fantasy catalogue in 1996 and it's tiny. (And anything that was also available in the USA (except the ZYX items) was marked 'Not available for export to the USA & Canada' - eg the Legends of Acid Jazz series.)

One thing that's interesting is that a lot of this soul jazz that Ace did but no one else did is still available - on vinyl and CD. Boogaloo Joe Jones' "Snake rhythm rock/Black whip" - his last two and his two very best albums, with Rusty Bryant and Dave Hubbard respectively - and all the Funk Inc albums are still in the current Ace catalogue. I think Ace has been the only source for this material since the 70s - I could be wrong, but I don't think even Japanese Victor issued the stuff. Fantasy certainly didn't and Concord certainly won't.

ANd they're still issuing danceable jazz from the Concord labels, even though Universal hold the Concord license for Europe.

Almost all of this club DJ jazz stuff is on the Ace imprint BGP (Beat goes public).

I've been buying Ace stuff since 1981 - 10CH27 - Roll hot rod roll, by Oscar McLollie & his Honey Jumpers - a 10" LP of fifties material from Modern. Yeah, they do what they do very well.

MG

[cih]

I appreciate what you guys mean, but I think it's possible to recommend individual things you particularly like - obviously it's not a scientific approach but, for example, the Laredo Bandera cd has the Jimmie Lee Robinson blues sides on, and some great gospel.. which is not readily available elsewhere (as far as I know) - I guess if someone is faced with a mountain of releases then taking a recommendation or two is just finding a way of narrowing it down!

[Adam]

One reason is that, as far as I understand it, Ace has actually bought the masters for several labels - definitely a couple of the smaller Los Angeles-based R&B labels, so they really can do them right. A shame that no company in America was up for obtaining this important music, but at least Ace does right by it.

[Big Beat Steve]

I appreciate what you guys mean, but I think it's possible to recommend individual things you particularly like - obviously it's not a scientific approach but, for example, the Laredo Bandera cd has the Jimmie Lee Robinson blues sides on, and some great gospel.. which is not readily available elsewhere (as far as I know) - I guess if someone is faced with a mountain of releases then taking a recommendation or two is just finding a way of narrowing it down!

O.K., then, if you want it that way ...

Grab these if you want some meaty and varied 50s R&B (warblers & thrushes, honkers, vocal groups, instrumentals, you name it - fine music throughout but ABOVE ALL an offering that is not likely to shove too many overlaps with what you already have down your ears ):

http://www.acerecords.co.uk/content.php?page_id=60&artist=7605

Haven't bought Vol. 5 ("Further...") yet but if the other four from that "Mellow Cats" series are anything to go by then the entire series is to be recommended unreservedly.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I appreciate what you guys mean, but I think it's possible to recommend individual things you particularly like - obviously it's not a scientific approach but, for example, the Laredo Bandera cd has the Jimmie Lee Robinson blues sides on, and some great gospel.. which is not readily available elsewhere (as far as I know) - I guess if someone is faced with a mountain of releases then taking a recommendation or two is just finding a way of narrowing it down!

Well, I did!

One thing that's interesting is that a lot of this soul jazz that Ace did but no one else did is still available - on vinyl and CD. Boogaloo Joe Jones' "Snake rhythm rock/Black whip" - his last two and his two very best albums, with Rusty Bryant and Dave Hubbard respectively - and all the Funk Inc albums are still in the current Ace catalogue.

MG

[Dan Gould]

I can't believe no one has mentioned the extraordinary B.B. King reissue series Ace put out. Truly essential.

Actually the whole darn label is essential. They do a great job of transferrring and annotating so many great and in some cases nearly forgotten labels (and artists).

[Neal Pomea]

Balfa Brothers Play Traditional Cajun Music (their first 2 Swallow lps plus some singles that never made it to the lp era much less CD): http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Cajun-Music-Balfa-Brothers/dp/B005UXV5TM/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1337630514&sr=1-1-catcorr

Floyd's Early Cajun Singles: http://www.amazon.com/Floyds-Early-Cajun-Singles/dp/B00002M7YE/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

Nathan Abshire, Pine Grove Blues and Good Times Killing Me http://www.amazon.com/Pine-Grove-Blues-Times-Killing/dp/B000026EX4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337630383&sr=8-1

A few others in the area of Cajun French music.

Edited May 21, 2012 by Neal Pomea