2013 Year End Poll
However you care to slice and dice it, it’s been another astonishingly busy year for all of us here at Ace Towers. Our team of compilers and annotators has toiled unselfishly and unsparingly to come up with a selection of top-drawer releases, with over 130 different projects finding their way from imagination to origination in the past eleven months. As always Ace's releases have embraced an impressive span of genres, and it is fair to say that whatever kind of music you might like, you'll find lots of it in our 2013 schedule.
As usual the case at this time of the year, we’re letting you in on what the Ace workforce has dug the most from this year’s crop of goodies. To make it interesting – and in the expectation that they listen to more than merely their own releases! - we tasked the A&R boys with selecting only one of their own projects to go with four of those of their colleagues.
The Ace collective is again giving you further insight into what else its members like to listen to when they’re not listening to Ace titles, by choosing the one non-Ace release that has tickled their fancies the most over the course of 2013. And finally this year, we’ve invited all and sundry to select an event – musical or otherwise - that has meant something extra special to them personally…
Selected releases
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Roger Armstrong
Non-Ace: Longing For The Past - The 78 rpm Era In Southeast Asia (Dust To Digital) www.dust-digital.com
Event: Young Jessie with Big Boy Bloater - Jukebox Jam at the New Empowering Church
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From Blues to Rockin’ to Cool. Black music movers for today’s dancefloors.
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The vintage 1967 mono and stereo mixes of a psychedelic masterpiece on CD for the first time.
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The West Coast’s pioneer of bebop in a rare 1950s appearance. His earliest classic album, from the original master tapes.
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The celebrated compilation album issued in the UK in 1968, with eight previously unissued bonus tracks from the Motown vaults.
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Trevor Churchill
Non-Ace: Crystal Bowersox - All That For This (Shanachie) shanachie.com
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The celebrated compilation album issued in the UK in 1968, with eight previously unissued bonus tracks from the Motown vaults.
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The Innocents scored four quick hits, twice in their own right and twice with Kathy Young on the mysterious Indigo label of Los Angeles. Following its collapse, the cool trio went on to record equally strong material for Decca, Reprise and Warner Bros all of which is heard here together with previously unreleased masters from the same period.
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28 more raw Louisiana stompers – Rockin’ with rarities and Rollin’ with 13 unissued or alternate sides.
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28 Louisiana killer dillers, including 18 previously unissued tracks.
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The Detroit soul giant’s entire surviving output for Stax subsidiary Volt, including non-album cuts, exclusive singles mixes and four previously unissued demos.
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Ady Croasdell
Event: Bettye Swann live at Cleethorpes www.6ts.info
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Cliff Richard showed great taste when it came to cutting songs first recorded by other artists. Here are 24 originals he was savvy enough to cover on the way to superstardom.
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All of Del’s original UK singles as you heard them on London and Stateside between 1961 and 1966, plus a couple of special bonuses.
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The vintage 1967 mono and stereo mixes of a psychedelic masterpiece on CD for the first time.
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23 of the greatest compositions by this genius of Southern Soul songwriting, performed by some of the finest soul artists of the 70s.
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A great lost group of San Francisco’s mid-60s renaissance, Stained Glass had an innovative, baroque-tinged sound. Focused on the years 1965-1967 and their run of pop-psych singles for RCA, this first-ever Glass collection adds a swathe of unreleased extras, including some fabulous early recordings as the Trolls.
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Alec Palao
Non-Ace: Honey Ltd - The Complete LHI Recordings (Light In The Attic) lightintheattic.net/
Event: Playing bass/keyboards with Rain Parade, Austin Psych Festival
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From 50s doo wop to 70s glam-punk via girl group melodramas and Long Island psychedelia – the unlikely story of enigmatic producer/ songwriter George “Shadow” Morton.
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Rare mid-60s R&B and soul, originally issued on Huey Meaux’ plethora of labels. All tracks taken from the original tapes and virtually all are on CD for the first time.
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28 Louisiana killer dillers, including 18 previously unissued tracks.
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The celebrated compilation album issued in the UK in 1968, with eight previously unissued bonus tracks from the Motown vaults.
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Two landmarks of funk poetry. The A-side is one of the most important moments in black American music. The flip is a raw slice of social commentary made famous by Esther Phillips.
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Mick Patrick
Non-Ace: The Paley Brothers - The Complete Recordings (Real Gone Music) realgonemusic.com
Event: Sunday brunch with Ginger Bianco and Margo Lewis, Greenwich Village
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The celebrated compilation album issued in the UK in 1968, with eight previously unissued bonus tracks from the Motown vaults.
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Groovy girl pop from the land of the Rising Sun.
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Hell hath no fury - Future Ace Of Cup Denise Kaufman socks it to her hapless boyfriend in this savage girl garage nugget, one of the rarest records of the 1960s.
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The classic compilation that invented a genre on vinyl for the first time.
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From Blues to Rockin’ to Cool. Black music movers for today’s dancefloors.
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Tony Rounce
Non-Ace: The Haystack Hi-Tones Rockin’ Hall (Haystack Records / facebook.com/Haystackhitones)
Event: The wonderful Haystack Hi-Tones at Rhythm Riot, Camber Sands
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Tough Chicago blues and proto-soul produced by one of the city’s most vivid and renowned DJs from his stable of talented local artists.
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12 previously unknown tracks by one of Southern soul’s most under-recorded vocalists, plus his two Fame 45s.
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The Innocents scored four quick hits, twice in their own right and twice with Kathy Young on the mysterious Indigo label of Los Angeles. Following its collapse, the cool trio went on to record equally strong material for Decca, Reprise and Warner Bros all of which is heard here together with previously unreleased masters from the same period.
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A Chicago child prodigy who showed emotional maturity and vocal excellence from his first hit, made in 1965.
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Dean Rudland
Non-Ace: Samuel Purdey - Musically Adrift (Good Sounds/ RAK/ Tummy Touch) samuelpurdey.com
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A Chicago child prodigy who showed emotional maturity and vocal excellence from his first hit, made in 1965.
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This deluxe edition of the Seeds’ “Future” paints a fresh picture of their 1967 psychedelic epic. It features the stereo album master and period mono mixes, plus an illuminating second disc of early takes and alternate mixes demonstrating that beneath the overdubs, the band’s classic rock’n’roll heartbeat remained as strong.
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23 exceptional examples of how blurred the line that separates country and soul music can be.
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Bob Thiele’s Flying Dutchman record label started out as a collision of politics and spiritual jazz. This compilation uses music, poetry and speeches to tell the story of those radical early years. The shadows of John Coltrane and Martin Luther King loom large as does a new, more violent world that rose up in their wake.
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Carol Fawcett
Event: Ice Age At The Arrival Of The Modern Mind exhibition at the British Museum
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A great lost group of San Francisco’s mid-60s renaissance, Stained Glass had an innovative, baroque-tinged sound. Focused on the years 1965-1967 and their run of pop-psych singles for RCA, this first-ever Glass collection adds a swathe of unreleased extras, including some fabulous early recordings as the Trolls.
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From 50s doo wop to 70s glam-punk via girl group melodramas and Long Island psychedelia – the unlikely story of enigmatic producer/ songwriter George “Shadow” Morton.
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Tracks selected by David Holmes from the acclaimed independent British film, the story of Terri Hooley, his record shop and his label set up during the hey day of Belfast punk.
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The weeks leading up to the second American Federation of Musicians recording ban yielded some sublime R&B, jazz and gospel. Here are the results of eight days of frenzied recording activity in late December 1947 caught on acetate for posterity by Modern Records. 39 previously unissued tracks or takes.
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From Blues to Rockin’ to Cool. Black music movers for today’s dancefloors.