Ace Records - All Releases April 2005

[Mike]

New Releases for APRIL 2005

from Ace Records

JACK NITZSCHE STORY 1962 - 1978 / Hearing is Believing - ACE - CDCHD 1030

Arrangers are truly the unsung heroes of rock'n'roll. Stanley Applebaum, Riley C Hampton, III, Robert Mersey, Paul Riser, Perry Botkin, Jr, Nick De Caro, Garry Sherman, Harold Battiste, Alan Lorber, Herb Bernstein, Jimmie Haskell, Gene Page, Claus Ogerman, Charles Callelo, Bert Keyes, Belford C Hendricks - these consummate orchestrators (and many others like them) deserve anthologising. Peers, musos and aficionados laud them, yet they remain virtually anonymous to the public at large. One of the most illustrious of their number, the late Jack Nitzsche, is the subject of HEARING IS BELIEVING - one of this month's key releases from Ace, and an oeuvre-defining compendium that will hopefully open the door for other similar sets from his contemporaries in the future. more

THE VENTURES / In The Vaults - ACE - CDCHD 1031

Now I just bet that all you Right Track readers love to show off at 60s music quizzes. So here's a question for you: name the 60s sixth biggest seller in the US Top 100 album charts? The Beach Boys? The Rolling Stones perhaps? How about the Monkees? The Dave Clarke Five maybe? No. Beating all of those mega-grossing acts were the VENTURES. Yup, the instrumental quartet who began their chart life in 1960 with Walk Don't Run out-sold all of those during music's most exciting decade. In fact they were the first rock band to realise the potential of LP sales with no less that 33 entries in the US album charts - 37 if you extend the time frame up to 1972. more

HADDA BROOKS / That's Where I Came In - ACE - CDCHD 1046

I cottoned on to Hadda Brooks fairly early - or so I thought. In 1950 I purchased I Hadn't Anyone But You, on London Records, her first UK release. Sometime later I witnessed her performing that selfsame Ray Noble song in the Bogart film In A Lonely Place. Then, one night at the Wembley Pool, during a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game, somebody wheeled a piano out into the middle of the auditorium. A loudspeaker blurted that, during the interval, we'd be entertained by Miss Hadda Brooks! And for fifteen glorious minutes Hadda sang and played superbly, in intimate style, while the audience generally indulged in grabbing crisps and ice-creams or merely heading for the nearest loo, totally ignoring Hadda doing it Steinway and leaving me mentally screaming. more

THE CHECKERS / "Checkmate" The Complete King Recordings 1952-55 - ACE - CDCHD 1047

The Drifters are usually considered to be Rhythm & Blues' first supergroup, in terms of the names that passed through their ranks in their 50+ year history. A strong case for that accolade can also be made for Billy Ward's Dominoes, whose membership included not only future Drifter, Clyde McPhatter, but also Jackie Wilson and the great Eugene Mumford, formerly of the Larks. Somewhere in between those two lie the Checkers, one of King Records' greatest-ever groups, with a personnel that included both former members of the Dominoes and future members of the Drifters and Clovers. more

THE PEANUT BUTTER CONSPIRACY / Spreading From The Ashes - BIG BEAT - CDWIKD 245

Wafting in on a warm Californian breeze comes this magical collection of rare tracks, previously unheard demos and out-takes from one of Los Angeles' prime exponents of psychedelic folk rock, the PEANUT BUTTER CONSPIRACY. Spanning their career 1965-67, from pre Peanut Butter outfit the Ashes through to their Columbia Records era, this collection is an Aladdin's cave of priceless musical gems from one of the most prolific song writing teams of the time, John Merrill and Alan Brackett. Add the intoxicatingly beautiful vocals of Barbara "Sandi" Robison to the mix, and you have a perfect blend that produced some of the most outstanding music to emerge from the mid-60s Sunset Strip scene. more

THE RADIATORS / TV Tube Heart - BIG BEAT - CDWIKM 251

How to paint from memory the oddly fertile desert that was Dublin in the mid-1970s? The palette would require sepias for the old town still tantalisingly glimpsed alongside the risible chrome-blue monuments to commerce and international diplomacy; a thick brown for the malodorous Liffey; perhaps, on a good day, a generous leafy wash for the eternal sanctuary of St Stephen's Green; ecclesiastic purple for the bitter swill consumed in the modish cellar wine bars. A variety of umber and ochre tones for the G-plan decor of the aspirant - if still comparatively poor - middle class; and a flickering snowy-grey for the new medium of the (nominally black and white) telly in the corner. more

THE RADIATORS / Ghostown - BIG BEAT - CDWIKM 252

"No Irish band has ever attempted anything as ambitious as Ghostown, and no one ever will. Why should it? It has been done and, like Pet Sounds, it's a monument forever." - George Byrne, Sunday Times, 1998.

Strumpet City in the sunset / Suckling the bastard brats of Scot, of Englishry, of Huguenot /

Brave sons breaking from the womb, wild sons fleeing from their Mother.

- The Old Lady Says No! by Denis Johnston, 1928. The actor playing Robert Emmet takes a blow to the head and imagines himself wandering in 20th Century Dublin. more

SOUTHERN SOUL SHOWCASE: Cryin' In The Streets - KENT - CDKEND 243

This is the first in-depth look on CD of the high quality output of the SSS International Group run by Shelby Singleton out of Nashville, Tennessee. Shelby had his greatest commercial success with Jeannie C Riley's Harper Valley PTA so it comes as no surprise that his musical tastes veered towards the country side of soul, which, as any self respecting soul fan will know, is the essence of Southern soul. Revered soul artists like Bettye LaVette, Johnny Adams and Sam Dees were taken into the great studios of Muscle Shoals, Memphis and Nashville in the late 1960s/early 1970s and came up with many classic Southern and deep soul tracks. more

OLD TOWN AND BARRY SOUL SURVEY - KENT - CDKEND 244

The Kent label has had a long and happy relationship with Old Town Records and its subsidiary Barry. The first recordings we put out was the wildly named "Think Smart Soul Stirrers: Jerk It At The Party In Chinatown" Various Artists LP. A contender and probable winner for any "Let's see how many track titles we can get into an album name" contest. That was in 1987 and featured all the labels' Northern Soul classics like the Gypsies It's A Woman's World, Lorraine & The Delights Baby I Need You and the Fiestas Think Smart. more

JOAN BAEZ / Any Day Now - VANGUARD - VMD 79741

For someone who wasn't sure about having a second guitar on her early folk recordings - because it might be considered too "commercial" - Joan Baez had certainly revised that philosophy by the late 1960s. In March 1968, Baez had married anti Vietnam War draft resistance leader David Harris. Harris's country music tastes reignited Baez own admiration for the genre and in December of that year she released ANY DAY NOW, a double album of Bob Dylan songs, replete with country music backings delivered with impeccable taste by the cream of Nashville session men, including Harold Bradley, Kenneth Buttrey, Fred Carter, Norbert Putnam, Jerry Reed, Hargus 'Pig' Robbins, plus rock contemporaries like David Briggs and Stephen Stills. more

JOAN BAEZ / David's Album - VANGUARD - VMD 79746

DAVID'S ALBUM came out in 1969 and was a heartfelt response to David Harris's imprisonment on draft resistance charges. Baez appeared at the Woodstock festival in upstate New York, heavily pregnant with their child. The resulting movie captures her talking with both pride and apprehension about her husband being carried away to jail, shackled between two threatening guards. "David's Album" contains one of her finest performances ever in Poor Wayfaring Stranger (with vocal harmonies by Mimi Fari±a), a stirring Will The Circle Be Unbroken (with Elvis Presley's old backing singers the Jordanaires) and a strong country rendition of Green, Green Grass Of Home. The presence of many of the country session greats who graced "Any Day Now" helps establish a relaxed, assured mood. moretion

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THE R&B INDIES - Second Edition

Whether your favourite musical areas are blues, R&B, doo wop or jazz; whether you are an interested collector or a researcher and compiler of CDs; we all need to consult discographies from time to time to see just which records were released and when. Normally, these are organized by artist and whilst being a perfectly good tool to see the output of the artist, it's not very good for getting a view of records that shared similar sounds through a commonality of producers, arrangers, writers and record company owners. For that you need to be able to view a the output of a particular record label or group of labels. moretion

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