Story of British Rock And Roll

For anyone in their mid-teens in the mid-5Os, and into music, it had to be rock'n'roll - American rock'n roll. There was no British equivalent to the sound. In the UK, it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Platters, Alan Freed, Radio Luxembourg, Voice Of America. If the right people get to know about this and hear the quality, this will sell and sell.

For anyone in their mid-teens in the mid-5Os, and into music, it had to be rock'n'roll - American rock'n roll. There was no British equivalent to the sound. In the UK, it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Platters, Alan Freed, Radio Luxembourg, Voice Of America.

This exemplary four-disc box takes the high road, attempting nothing less than an honest reconstruction of the Who's stormy, adventurous, uneven pilgrimage. While offering an evenhanded cross-section of single hits and classic album tracks, 30 Years garnishes the expected high points with B-sides, alternate and live versions of familiar tracks, and the quartet's earliest singles as the High Numbers…

Various Artists - The Ace Story, Volume 2 (2010) {Ace Records CDCHD 1281 rec 1956-1964}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 249 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 135 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 10 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1956-64, 2010 Ace Records | CDCHD 1281
Rhythm & Blues / Rock & Roll / Early R&B / Soul / Funk / New Orleans R&B / Blues

To clear up a couple possible points of confusion about this 2010 release: although it came out on the British Ace label, it's actually a compilation of material that came out on the American Ace label between the mid-'50s and mid-'60s (with the exception of a couple cuts that didn't appear until the early '70s). Also, it's not identical to the 12-track LP titled The Ace Story, Vol. 2 that came out in the '70s. This edition adds 12 bonus tracks, making it a more comprehensive sampler of the label's rock and R&B.

The story goes that the legendary Huey P. Meaux, the self-described "Crazy Cajun," figured a band that combined Cajun musical sensibilities with the then dominant and popular British Invasion sound might go over big on the pop charts (no one can say that Meaux, offbeat as he was, didn't have prescient vision). Enter Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet were born. Recording for Meaux's Pacemaker and Tribe imprints, the Quintet mixed a garage band approach and some British jangle with informed bits of conjunto, R&B, Cajun, country, and blues elements to create an amazingly fresh and accessible hybrid that prefigured the roots-driven Americana movement of the 1990s by three decades. Meaux packaged up the group's various singles for his labels in 1965 and released them on an LP called The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet, which – along with some additional material from the time period – forms the basis for this CD collection.