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The Late Great Johnny Ace and the Transition from R&B to Rock'n'Roll |
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Monday, 06 February 2006 05:06 |
The Late Great Johnny Ace and the Transition from R&B to Rock'n'Roll
James M. Salem
University of Illinois Press
By John Sinclair
From the dust-jacket flap:
"If Elvis Presley was a white man who sang in a predominantly black style, Johnny Ace was a black man who sang in a predominantly white one. His soft, crooning 'heart ballads' took the black record-buying public by storm in the early 1950s, and he was the first postwar solo black male rhythm and blues star signed to an independent label to attract a white audience. His biggest hit, 'Pledging My Love,' was at the top of the R&B charts when he died playing Russian roulette in his dressing room between sets at a packed 'Negro Christmas dance' in Houston."
It's been fully 45 years since the mythical suicide of Johnny Ace took the life of America's fastest-rising young rhythm & blues star and one of the first Black recording artists to cross over to the burgeoning audience of white Americans just then beginning to tap in to the mainstream of African-American popular music.
Johnny Ace--born John Alexander, Jr.--had emerged out of a pack of Memphis singers and musicians who went on to make big marks in the R&B field: B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Rosco Gordon, Earl Forrest. King and Gordon would end up with the Bihari brothers' RPM and Modern labels out in Los Angeles; Ace, Bland and Forrest went with Duke Records, a Black-owned company based in Houston, Texas, where they joined an all-star roster that included Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, and a host of others.
But only Johnny Ace would break out of the R&B ghetto of 1954 to gain airplay on white stations nationwide and crack the pop charts for Duke Records owner Don Robey. This was a remarkable achievement at the time, and in The Late Great Johnny Ace author James M. Salem takes a close and penetrating look at what happened and why: tracing Ace's short life from beginning to end, examining the independent record industry in which Duke operated, limning Robey's extraordinary career as songwriter, publisher, clubowner, booking agency and recording company executive, and all-around Texas tough guy.
We learn that Ace was a shy fellow, a popular pianist with a reputation as a solid and sensitive accompanist who became a star performer almost despite himself and his insistence on staying behind the piano for his stage appearances instead of taking center stage as a best-selling vocalist with a string of hit blues ballads and hard-swinging jump tunes for Duke Records to his credit. Offstage he wasn't exceptionally bright, and in the last year of his life Ace developed a morbid obsession with handguns which evidently led right up to his suicidal game of Russian roulette on Christmas night 1954.
Salem has talked to all the right people, searched out the key documents, studied the mode of life of the period, listened to Ace's music, skewered some long-lived myths and drawn some interesting conclusions. As an early Johnny Ace partisan who was horrified (at the age of 13) to hear of the back-stage shooting death of the soulful auteur of the great ballad "Pledging My Love," a prized specimen in my fledgling record collection, this writer was fascinated and delighted to read the story behind the headlines of 45 years ago.
The contemporary reader, lacking such background, may find this an even more interesting story of a time now long ago when the stars of rhythm & blues first lit up the skies over America and led the way into a whole new frame of mind for an entire generation of their fellow citizens. It started when Johnny Ace released "Pledging My Love," and you can read about it here.
--Amsterdam
November 22, 1999
(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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