1. Big Shot 2. Rest 3. Tuff 4. Sittin’ Tight 5. Blues In My Heart 6. Blues Stay Away From Me 7. Summertime 8. Hoe Down Rock 9. Sugar Blues 10. 38 Special 11. Volare 12. Looking Back 13. Smokie Part Two 14. Tuxedo Junction 15. Rollin’ 16. Hearts Of Stone 17. Royal Blue 18. Movin’ 19. Twist-her 20. My Babe 21. So What 22. Blues For The Red Boy 23, Cattywampus 24. That’s Just Too Bad 25. That’s The Way I Feel 26. Cotton Pickin’ Boogie 27. At The Woodchoppers’ Ball 28. Bernero’s Boogie 29. I Don’t Mind
Ace Cannon • Sittin’ Tight: Early Singles & Rarities CD
The ‘Tuff Sax’ of John ‘Ace’ Cannon made him a mainstay of the Memphis music scene for five decades, and far and away the most prolific artist on the Bluff City’s Hi label for at least four of those decades. His ability to play anything from raucous rhythm and blues to soothing easy listening guaranteed him a sizeable global audience for his entire career, and particularly among mature West Indian and African record buyers. The amount of albums Ace shifted down the years is vastly disproportionate to the number of hit singles he had both on his own and, for a while, as a member of his label mates Bill Black’s Combo. For the first time, all those early solo singles are gathered in one place, along with a representative selection of the tracks he fronted for Black’s Combo, in this 29 track collection which starts at the very beginning of his recording career with some originally unissued material that he cut for Memphis’ pioneering Sun Records in the mid-1950s. These are the recordings on which a 50 year career was built – including two versions of his career song ‘Tuff’ – and span the whole range of his repertoire. If you like your sax tuff, Ace has the stuff.
