Results for “Chiswick”

ROCK ON ~ BIRTH OF AN EMPIRE
1971-74

“Rock’n’Roll
I get my records at the Rock On stall,
Rock’n’Roll
Teddy boy he’s got them all”

So sang Phil Lynott on Thin Lizzy’s 1973 single, ‘The Rocker’, and he was not the only rock star cruising down to Ted Carroll’s Rock On stall in a flea market at 93 Golborne Road, off Portobello Road. Ted had been selling the coolest wax in town there since 1971, with Elvis wallpaper behind him and squeezed into a space barely bigger than a phone box. Oldies were Ted’s sideline, actually. His main business was co-managing Thin Lizzy.

THE EVOLUTION OF ACE REISSUES

1978

When Chiswick was licensed to EMI in 1978, they made it clear that they had enough back catalogue of their own, thank you. So, we needed a new label name for the reissue end. Just before signing on with EMI, Johnny Vincent of Ace Records in Jackson, Mississippi signed on with us. Without any malice aforethought we promptly borrowed his label name, though he was cool about it at the time.

We maintained a dynamic on-off working relationship with him, using the old-style record business trick of continually fronting him cash then chasing the recoupment with some more releases. The five volumes of “The Ace Story” we put out remain definitive.

Ray Topping, a regular customer of Ted’s who had helped pen the notes for the Link Wray album, suggested we explore the Houston-based group of labels owned by Pappy Daily. Ray was one of the small group of pioneering blues aficionados and discographers in the UK who had been instrumental in bringing that music to a wider audience in the 60s. He became Ace’s first repertoire consultant. With an encyclopaedic knowledge and tremendous feel for blues and R&B as well as rockabilly and country, he was an essential element in the growth of Ace. The standards he set way back then have underpinned everything the label has since done.

So in 1978 a licensing deal was signed with Daily, who produced the early George Jones recordings and trawled the Gulf Coast areas of South Louisiana and East Texas to acquire recordings for his D, Dart, Dixie and Starday labels. Ted and Ray headed out west to Texas in search of musical gold; the first of many trips to the US in search of masters. We issued a compilation of fine rockabilly sides from George Jones and a 10” comp of Sonny Fisher’s Starday recordings, which even then fetched big bucks on original 45s. Ted and Ray tracked down Sonny and in 1980 he left the States for the first time in his life and toured the UK. He also cut an EP of new material for Ace on his visit.

Discovery of the year: the previously unissued monster rockabilly side ‘Jitterbop Baby’ by Hal Harris.

1979

To accommodate catalogue records that didn’t fit on Ace and new recordings deemed to have insufficient commercial appeal for EMI, we set up another label, BIG BEAT. It debuted with the debut 45 by Johnny (Winter) and the Jammers. Later it became home to the burgeoning psychobilly/garage scene, our own punk and rock back catalogue and repository for all things 60s beat, folk, garage and psych.

The Ace reissue 45s just kept coming as well, notably Thumper (George) Jones’ ‘Rock It’ and Link Davis’ ‘Allons A Lafayette’, a real swingin’ in-house favourite and a solid smash in any other universe. Having acquired something of a jones for the deliciousness of 10” records, we put out a couple more. But, because Chiswick through EMI took up so much of our time, catalogue issues took a back seat to the pop end of our business.

If you go to the Media Space at London’s Science Museum between now and 27^th July you can experience the remarkable sound of the 27 feet long Exponential Horn built in 1929 by R. P. G. Denman, then the museum’s curator. The man behind the restoration is Aleksander Kolkowski, who Damned fans will recognise as the violin player on the alternative version of ‘Anti-Pope’ currently featured on ‘The Chiswick Singles: And Another Thing’. But this is a minor part of his extensive CV and since those heady youthful days Aleks has moved relentlessly into the past whilst creating the most contemporary of music using archaic instruments and recorders long abandoned by others to produce original and at times challenging music. The Exponential Horn fits into this picture perfectly and delivers a unique and spectacular sound impossible to reproduce using more contemporary equipment.

It is with sadness that we learned of the death of Steve Lewins, the original bass player with Chiswick Records’ very first band , the Count Bishops, who recorded the ‘Speedball’ EP [SW1] in September 1975. This 7” record was released in November 1975 and went on to sell over 10,000 copies, playing a seminal part in helping to establish the fledgling Chiswick Records label.

About as far from Pat Boone as you can get are the true believers in the power of rock’n’roll to raise hell, whilst speaking in tongues and letting most all of everything hang out. Fuelled by the increasingly powerful radio stations broadcasting across America, post-war teens came out of the MOR closet and ignited by the spark that was Elvis, quiffed or bouffanted their hair and cut loosefrom the restraints of austerity. Suddenly anyone could be a rock’n’roll star, with a few chords and a backbeat and enough attitude to carry it off. As the big companies were slow to get it daddy-o, indie record labels sprang up to fill the void, and into the void was sucked the weird, the wonderful, the wild and the downright demented.

Some 30 years later these demented teens inspired a whole new desire to take apart rock’n’roll and reconstruct its constituent parts into a brand new monster. And so it came to pass that the meek may have inherited the earth, but the sun, the moon and the stars were domain of extreme rock’n’roll and long may it wail.

photo caption: The Meteors, courtesy Chiswick Records