Label Guide: Ace

Ace Records was founded in 1955 by Johnny Vincent to become the most successful Mississippi-based label of the 1950s and 1960s. It was named after the Ace Combs brand, well-known for James Dean's use of such a comb in the 1955 hit movie "Rebel Without a Cause". The label was based in Jackson, Mississippi, with a recording studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, and almost all its Blues and R&B artists came from those two states, including Arthur Crudup, Sam Myers, King Edward, Pat Brown, Willie Clayton, Jimmy Clanton, Frankie Ford, Huey "Piano" Smith, and Earl King.

In 1962, Vincent signed a distribution deal with Vee-Jay Records of Chicago, but that label's bankruptcy in 1966 also brought the end for Ace Records. Johnny Vincent revived the Ace label in the 1970s, and again in the early 1990s for making new recordings as well as repackaging old hits, before he eventually sold it to British firm Music Collection International in 1997. Ace had a budget subsidiary named Teem, which released about half a dozen albums in the late 1950s and early 1960s.