Ace (united kingdom)

London-based British record label, started in 1978 as a division of Chiswick Records, founded in 1975 by Ted Carroll and Roger Armstrong, as the imprint for the company's reissue catalog. Ace soon became the principal label and grew into one of the most important sources of reissues of blues and R&B recordings from the 1940s onward. A&R consultants prominent in programming blues and R&B releases have included John Broven, Ray Topping, and Tony Rounce.

Striking licensing deals with American labels, Ace was prominent in the LP era both for high-quality reissues of mainstream blues artists such as B. B. King, Elmore James, and Smokey Hogg and for systematic reissues of many R&B artists including Maxwell Davis, Floyd Dixon, Gene Phillips, Pee Wee Crayton, Jimmy McCracklin, Joe Houston, Saunders King, Little Willie Littlefield, Jimmy Nelson, and Joe Lutcher. In pursuit of this endeavor, the company briefly revived the long-defunct ten-inch LP and further pursued the idea in 2003 by issuing a series of CDs called ''The Ace 10" Series,'' that catered to situations in which the intended program made for a short CD. The Modern and associated labels, whose masters Ace acquired in the CD era, have figured largely among the sources drawn on for reissues and have been repackaged systematically on CDs in the twenty-first century. Such CDs include lavishly annotated boxed sets by B. B. King and Elmore James. Similar access to Detroit's Sensation label has allowed releases by John Lee Hooker and Todd Rhodes.

Significant blues releases have been licensed from Excello and from Specialty, including releases from Joe and Jimmy Liggins, Roy Milton and Camille Howard. These releases were unusual in that they used American-compiled packages; most Ace issues are assembled in house. Other labels that have been drawn on include Decca, Combo, Bandera, Bobbin, Peacock, King/Federal, Old Town, Goldband, Stax, Dig, and other labels associated with Johnny Otis. In 1995 the catalog included eleven CDs by John Lee Hooker, six CDs and a seven-CD boxed set by Sam ''Lightnin' '' Hopkins, and ten CDs by B. B. King. In 2003 there were twenty CDs in the catalog by Albert King alone. These statistics exemplify the lavish scale of Ace's operations.

Bibliography

Ace Records website, http://www.acerecords.co.uk/.