I'm working through some 9,000 albums in my house from A to Z. Here's a more detailed introduction.

Album Odyssey: Part 3: Buddy Ace-Roy Acuff

Buddy Ace
Don't Hurt No More
Released: 1988
Acquired: circa 2008 at Cactus Music, Houston
From Me to You
Released: Unknown
Acquired: circa 2008 at Cactus Music, Houston

This photo should explain why Buddy Ace was known as "the Silver Fox of the Blues."

Buddy Ace

He was born Jimmy Lee Land in Jasper, TX in 1936. He sang gospel early on and took on the handle Buddy Ace and tried his hand at R&B. Ace recorded in the '60s but never managed to find a hit. His available output today is scant. I tracked down these albums used, but I believe both are out of print. I didn't know Ace from Adam, but I tend to buy things that have album covers like the above. Those two recordings and a couple of others were recorded late in his career, before he died in 1994.

The production on Don't Hurt No More is a little dated and some of the songs feature some pretty bad come-ons. But he turns in an admirable Pouring Water on a Drowning Man. From Me to You was a tribute to his pal Bobby "Blue" Bland. Ace wasn't the dynamic singer that Bland was, but he makes smooth work of the songs.

Johnny Ace
Memorial Album
Released: 1955, reissued 1973
Acquired: circa 1997-1998, Sounds, New York City

I also tend to buy albums that have covers like this one.

Johnny Ace: a cautionary tale

Once upon a time New York City's East Village was teeming with record stores. En route to a bar, I'd tend to hit all of them and work my way from A to Z in the used section of each. Though my memory is foggy, I must've come upon this one pretty quickly.

Most of those stores are gone now, leaving lower Manhattan with just the great but small Other Music and great but small Norman's Sound and Vision and a few scrappy survivors. If you're a brick-and-mortar purist, you can do better in 2009 in Houston.

Anyway, Ace was a very promising young R&B singer/pianist from Memphis whose Houston ties range from innocuous (he recorded for the Duke label) and dubious (to come). It was here at the City Auditorium on Christmas day 1954 that he engaged in a game of Russian Roulette. This activity is great for rock cred but poor for longevity. Ace lost. He was just 25. A few months later he landed his only charting pop hit with Pledging My Love.

For a while Memorial Album was all the only digital documentation of his work. There have been a few subsequent anthologies. His hit is actually a fairly lush piece of balladry. I tend to like his hotter stuff like How Can You Be So Mean. There's some great stuff on here, plenty of evidence that music and guns don't go well together.

The Action
Rolled Gold
Released: 2002
Acquired: 2002 from the record label
Action Packed
Released: 1981
Acquired: circa 2002, FYE, New York City
One of the things I'd hoped to do with this music marathon is pare down the amount of shit in my house. I'm a pack rat with a finite amount of space. The Action, a mid-'60s rock band from Liverpool, is one I don't much reach for. In fact, I'd never heard of the band until Rolled Gold crossed my desk in 2002. My understanding is it's in the grand tradition of "lost albums," which seemed to be found more often in the digital age.

Their stock is a sort of Kinks-y vibe, plenty soulful and clearly part of Paul Weller's DNA, sort of a post-mod sound that doesn't quite commit to psychedelia (to its credit). I was sufficiently enamored to where when I found Action Packed for $7 at FYE (despite gouging for new stuff, the deceased chain was generous with some catalog titles). It was a steal. They don't steal Land of 1,000 Dances from Wilson Pickett, but they own a little piece of it. The whole set suggests there was a misprint on Weller's birth certificate. So much for downsizing here.

Roy Acuff
The Great Roy Acuff
Released: 1964
Acquired: circa 2003 from the record label
Songs of the Smoky Mountains
Released: 1955
Acquired: circa 2003 from the record label
The Voice of Country Music
Released: 1965
Acquired: circa 2003, from the record label

There was a lot of country music in my home growing up, though little of it was from the genre's golden age. Don Williams and some other country softies were the soundtrack for the '70s, along with tougher cats like Waylon and Willie. By the '80s Dad was hip to Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle and the like. So I didn't really know who any of the Hee Haw regulars were, even though I watched the show. It was sort of like identifying circus performers; they were just part of the spectacle.

Life magazine created a memorable country music issue that was published, I believe, in the summer of 2004. I bought it at the Bookstop on Shepherd (R.I.P.) and proceeded to do homework on everything that preceded 1970. Though Acuff was "the King of Country Music" (before George Strait was born) I failed to find a serviceable anthology at a reasonable price. That failure continues to this day, though these three collections -- fine but not essential -- crossed my desk in the mid-aughts. He's clearly past his prime on these, which seem to be collected from his '50s work. Songs of the Smoky Mountains is the spryest, with remakes of his core catalog like Great Speckled Bird (a phrase I was first introduced to through an Ian and Sylvia Tyson record, not Acuff) and Wabash Cannonball.

Columbia's Essential -- part of a very reliable series of country anthologies -- seems like the first thing to put on my shopping list.

Stay tuned for Part 4: Ryan Adams (aka the impetus behind doing this Odyssey).