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Cosmos Music and Ted Carroll, Trevor Churchill and Roger Armstrong - the founders of Ace Records and its associated companies - are happy to announce that Cosmos has entered into a long-term agreement to acquire a substantial interest in the owned master and publishing repertoire of the Ace group (amounting to some 9,000 masters and 3,000 compositions) and will work closely together with the management team at Ace Records to maintain and further build on its 46-year legacy.

For all record & sync licensing please contact chris.lines@acerecords.com

However for sync licensing on the Flying Dutchman catalogue only please contact Bob Thiele on (owenpop@mac.com).

MODSTOCK will take place over the Easter holidays this year and will showcase all aspects of Mod culture. 

The organisers have put together a strong four day program with confirmed acts including The Velvelettes, Brenda Holloway, Secret Affair, Stone Foundation, The Apemen, Les Cappuccino and The Mergers.

www.229thevenue.com/portfolio/modstock/

Welcome to the other Great American Songbook.

Music publisher Max Dreyfus, the head of Chappell Music and dean of New York City’s allegorical Tin Pan Alley, once said, “Always take care of your writers. Without them you are nothing.” Dreyfus knew a good songwriter when he heard one – Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin and Cole Porter, to name but three – and we like to think we do too, although we specialise in a more recent era. It takes nothing away from the towering achievements of Rodgers, Gershwin and Porter to acknowledge that the 1950s and 60s produced their own fair share of brilliant songwriters.

Each CD in Ace’s Songwriter series offers an overview of a very specific artistic vision and personality, from the tongue-in-cheek playfulness of Leiber & Stoller to the soul stylings of Van McCoy and the earthy street-grounded rockers of Ernie Maresca. Randy Newman and Burt Bacharach are widely considered the embodiment of the word songwriter, but Neil Diamond and Jackie DeShannon are so firmly embedded in the public consciousness as star performers that many may be momentarily surprised to encounter them as the prolific tunesmiths they actually were. Great songs are all you would expect from a Bacharach set, but perhaps you’ve never stopped to think just how many great songs Bo Diddley wrote. Luckily, Ace have, and now you can enjoy hearing the proof.

The halcyon days of the Brill Building era are represented by the great writing teams of Leiber & Stoller, Pomus & Shuman, Goffin & King, Mann & Weil, Sedaka & Greenfield and Greenwich & Barry, who so dominated the Hot 100 during that golden age (although not all of them actually operated out of the Brill).

Those writers in turn influenced those who came along in their wake. The Sloan & Barri and Boyce & Hart teams added a folk-rock slant to the mix. Chip Taylor delved into a more country-flavoured sound. Nick Ashford, Valerie Simpson & Joshie Armstead borrowed from the church for their soul epics. All of them made tremendous contributions and more than earned the honour of being anthologised in the usual Ace fashion, with accompanying action-packed booklets filled with interviews, essays, rare photos and vintage clippings.

You’ll find big hits, fabulous near-misses, obscure LP cuts, interesting interpretations of hits and rarities, sung by a dazzling array of star performers, living legends, notorious characters, cult favourites and talented also-rans. The real stars here, though, are the songwriters. And, of course, their great songs.

It’s tempting to say that had these writers been the only ones working in the second half of the 20th century, the 50s and 60s would still be considered rock’s golden age. But one thing is certain: it wouldn’t have been a golden age without them.

Here come the girls! From Ace’s earliest days, there’s always been a place in our hearts for music’s feminine side. Every few months since then has seen a new release to keep girl pop aficionados satisfied – whether single artist sets and twofers or multi-act series and themed compilations. The Where The Girls Are collections zone in on the 1960s girl group sound, paying special attention to the rare and obscure: think castanets, anguished teen sirens, Svengali-esque producers and mini-sonatas about dancing and boyfriends (sometimes deceased). Get the picture? The Early Girls series, on the other hand, is drawn entirely (well, almost) from Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 of the pre-Beatles era.