The spring of 1955 brought high billboard charting to Johnny Ace’s song, which became a #1 hit, Pledging My Love, his eighth #1 Billboard hit in R&B. In the spring following Ace’s passing, his songs weren’t only charting at the top of R&B charts, they were also crossing over into the charts of Pop music as well. With the record label’s next move to release the next of The Duke’s Record LP, their first long-play and 33-speed record, the ten-inch record titled Memorial Album for Johnny Ace.

Johnny Ace and His Memorial Singles and Albums

Accompanied with dramatic liner notes as a tribute to Ace’s music, his latest album, published after his death in the spring of 1955, music listeners couldn’t get enough of his talent. White and black teens across the country were looking for more 45 singles of Johnny Ace’s music and the record company provided them with a double EP, two 45s, named Memorial Album Johnny Ace and a Tribute to Johnny Ace, covering eight of Ace’s previous hits.

Requests for Johnny Ace Memorabilia

While the record company was selling memorial albums as soon as they were produced, they also found themselves swamped with requests for photos of Johnny Ace from fans, which poured in from all over the country. Paul Simon was quoted, “The photos were sent to the fans, post haste, with the signature at the bottom.”

The Band Post Ace’s Death

Even though Johnny was gone, the band still played out the six-month promotion cycle for music production. Duke now starts releasing a pre-recorded song that held and didn’t previously produce. With the two songs Anymore and the flip side of the record playing How Can You Be So Mean? These two songs were a cut-and-paste copy of the previous tracks.

Listen in to discover what Johnny’s band produced in the July 1954 Houston recording session, the last one before his death, how the new music which was last recorded had a different sound, and how his hit single Pledging My Love compared with other singles he launched previously.

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