|
RELEASE DATE:AVAILABLE NOW
CD Edition limited to 5000 non-numbered limited edition copies.
50 years ago, Johnny Ace entered pop history for all the wrong reasons. Playing a game of Russian roulette backstage in Houston on Christmas Day of 1954, Ace was felled by a single shot.
Ace had a great number of reasons to want to live, foremost among them being his career, which couldn’t have been much hotter. He’d had a chart-topper with the song “The Clock,” and had scored several Top Ten R&B chart hits as well. Among his musical cohorts were such notables as B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Johnny Otis.
One can only wonder what Ace might have become, had he lived to be older than 25. Poised as he was at the junction of R&B and rock and roll, he might have joined Little Richard and Chuck Berry as one of the founders of rock. Instead, we are left with a few great sides, some dimming memories, and a lot of questions.
DID YOU KNOW? After Johnny Ace’s death, Texas singer Jimmy Lee Land signed to Duke as Johnny’s “brother,” Buddy Ace.
|