She Came From

Over the last few years Ace has built up a series of prime British female pop releases, with individual collections drawn from four of the country's leading record companies of the 1960s: Decca, Pye, EMI and, most recently, Philips. With this latest compilation, rather than spotlight a particular company, the focus is on a location: the music hotbed of Merseyside. While male beat groups ruled the Merseyside roost in the 60s, the area was also home to its fair share of female talent. To illustrate the point, here are 25 hand-picked girl-pop artefacts from thereabouts. Liverpool's pop queen Cilla Black is featured with her two most Merseybeat-oriented tracks, including a terrific version of A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues, the first song she ever recorded at Abbey Road. Guitar-toting cover girls the Liverbirds, who released no records in the UK but were stars in Germany where their repertoire of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry numbers made them favourites at the Star-Club also appear twice.

In recent years Ace Records has released a successful series of compilations spotlighting 1960s girl-pop recordings from Japan, France, Italy, Sweden and Spain. Here they visit Hungary, a country whose young female singers performed beat music every bit as bold and brazen as their male counterparts. Spanning the years 1966 to 1971, the collection features feisty freakbeat, folk rock, funky pop and more from 14 of Hungary’s foremost female recording stars, with musical accompaniment provided by some of the nation’s leading beat groups.