Vee-Jay Records & Ace Records
by Donald J. Mabry
Independents such as Ace Records prospered and survived
because they had developed a market in which the majors had little interest, but, once the
majors recognized how lucrative that market could be and moved into it, the independents
began to go under or sell off their assets. The majors had the financial resources to buy
artists and catalogs from independents or lease songs from them. Moreover, they also had
extensive distribution systems. Aladdin folded in the late 1950s. Specialty had
effectively quit releasing new records by 1960 and Art Rupe first began leasing his
masters and then sold his catalog. Sam Phillips of Sun switched his attention to the
newly-founded Holiday Inn motel chain after his major artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis and
Johnny Cash either switched labels or temporarily retired from recording. Atlantic
Records, perhaps the strongest of the independents, survived until about 1976, when it was
purchased by Warner Brothers.
In 1962, Johnny Vincent of Ace Records tied the
fortunes of Ace to Vee-Jay Records. Founded in 1953 in Chicago, Vee-Jay appeared to be a
very strong company. It had consistently had hits by black artists such as Jerry Butler,
and, by 1962, was also having hits with the Four Seasons, a white group. Vee-Jay's black
owners wanted to expand into the white market, and believed that an alliance with a white
company would help. Ace, headed by the white Johnny Vincent, had successfully sold records
by the white teen idols, Frankie Ford and Jimmy Clanton. Clanton had just had a major hit.
The first Ace record to be released after the Ace-Vee-Jay arrangement would be "Venus
in Blue Jeans," also a major hit. Under the arrangement, all of Ace's sales,
promotion, and distribution would be done by Vee-Jay, thus relieving Vincent of the most
troublesome aspect of the record business and giving him more time to develop new artists
and to produce. So, Ace pulled its records from its network of distributors, most of whom
owed Ace money, and placed them with Vee-Jay distributors. [Broven, 131-132; Vincent to
Donald J. Mabry]
Vincent believes that allying Ace with Vee-Jay Records
of Chicago in 1962 brought the demise of Ace, for it cost him one million dollars in one
year. Vee-Jay was being badly mismanaged and would go bankrupt in 196?. Its successes with
the Four Seasons and, in late 1963 and early 1964, with the Beatles (it was the first
company to release a Beatles record in the United States) demonstrated that it was
undercapitalized. It did not have the funds with which to press records fast enough, the
achilles heel of the independent record company. Vincent asserts that "Venus in Blue
Jeans" sold one and one-half million copies but Vee-Jay denied that it was that
successful and paid full royalties to Ace. Vee-Jay never paid Ace for switching
distributors, and the old Ace distributors, believing that Ace was going out of business,
also refused to pay Ace. Lacking money, Vincent could not operate. Effectively, Ace was
dead. The Vee-Jay bankruptcy in 1966 ended all hope of recouping an appreciable
amount of money from Vee-Jay.
4/12/02
