if you have any “ace” records left in your oldie moldie 45 record box by huey smith and the clowns, jimmy clanton or frankie ford, i’ll bet your still wondering just where in the hell was that record co, located. it sure wasen’t on the record label. that’s the first thing i looked for, where is this record company located, i might want to drop by and say hello to my favorite recording artist. some labels like sun just gave the name of the city, which was memphis and by 1955 14 million crazy teen age girls knew the street address also. imperial had the city of hollywood and street address on their label. that made sence if your record got broken you could write them for another one. columbia, decca, rca, and epic had no town or address on their label’s but i never wanted to get in touch with mitch miller or perry como, i was a rock fan and decca had no rock a billy artist on their label. i figured if i wanted to get in touch with ernst tubb i’d ask the valley troupadours the hillbilly band in our little town since they always played “walking the floor over you” at the county fair every year. as for rca some how i knew it was way, way up in a place called new york. it might as well have been egypt for all i cared, elvis must be crazy to be on a record label like that why did he leave a nice little label in memphis for new york anyway. then there was ace no city no street address no nothing, just ace records. it was all a big ole mystery and it wouldn’t be solved until almost thirty years later when no one hardly remembered the artist that recorded on the label and most of the ace 45′s had disappeared as well. ace was associated with new orleans as if that is where it had always been. before ace was formed in 1955, imperial and specialty, did a lot of recording in the “big easy” and took the recording back to hollywood and released them on their label from hollywood or los angeles. ace was owned by johnny vincent who had been a sales rep and producer for speciality records. once in business vincent did all his recording at cosimo matassa’s studio on rampart street in new orleans. vincent didn’t hurt for talent for his new label, after all he’d been in the business all his life and had learned from the best record men in the business, lew chudd who owned imperial and art rupp who owned specialty. new orleans had as much talent as los angeles maybe more, if not why did chudd and rupp make so many trips to new orleans to check out the talent in town. fats domino was from there so was lloyd price and little richard spent a lot of time there even though he was from macon, ga. ray charles lived just a few miles down the road from macon in albany, and nat king cole lived just up the road in montgomery, ala. nat king cole could have signed with ace had not capital gotton to nate king cole first and had atlantic not signed ray charles first. all this talent had been in new orleans form time to time along with b.b.king john lee hooker, slim harpo, and lazy lester. ace begin to sign artist to the label, huey piano smith, had hits with “rockin pneumonia and boogie woogie flu” and “don’t you just know it”. jimmy clanton was signed and sold millions and millions of records right into the 60′s. frankie ford’s “sea cruise” sold several million copies. by the mid 60′s the small independent record company’s business begin to fall on extreme hard times. ace got a distribution deal with vee jay records in chicago with vincent doing production for vee jay this only produced one hit “venus in blue jeans” by jimmy clanton. vee jay fell victum to the bigger labels and was forced out of business altogether. ace went back to being a regional record label and released a few records but by 1967 johnny vincent closed down the label and found other business interest. because of renewed interest in the label from historians of rock a billy and rock music and oldies collectors vincent started ace again in the early 70′s. he reissued most of the ole hits as he had complete copyrights to the material and leased the masters to various labels around the world from his warehouse in jackson, ms. johnny as of late is in bad health but on his good days you just might find him working from his small desk up in jackson where jimmy clanton, huey smith and frankie ford still wait for some record company to order some “moldie oldies”. ace records has always been operated out of jackson, ms. johnny if you had just had jackson,ms put on that record label i wouldn’t had to work so hard for 30 years to find out you were only 150 miles away. oh well, at least now i don’t have to ask, “where in the hell is ace records”??

~ Widmarc Clark