It is quite strange, though, that the publisher from the other side of the Atlantic is the specialist in compiling re-issue records of American music. Since 1991, UK’s base record company, Ace, has been released series of albums dedicate to the music from the ‘golden era’ of rock ‘n’ roll music.

So far (2007), 11 albums of this series have been released. Each one packs with 30 of the most popular songs of the period, all with superb remastered sound. The selections are also great and varied. The producer collects the popular songs from the artists who were well-known for only one or few songs. Many of them are pretty hard-to-find on CD. Each CD is a mix of songs from 1954 to 1963 in order to satisfy variety of taste in every album. There are the Crests’ “Sixteen Candles”, Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Wanna Dance?”, Rick Nelson’s “I’m Walkin’”, the Clovers’ “Love Potion No. 9”, the Five Satins’ “In the Still of the Night”, Jerry Butler’s “For Your Precious Love”, the Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie”, Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs’ “Sugar Shack”, etc. A great number of one-hit wonders are also presented in the series, from the most popular ones to the hard-to-find ones, including the Penguins’ “Earth Angel”, Little Caesar & the Romans’ “Those Oldies But Goodies”, The Jayhawks’ “Stranded In the Jungle”, The Rinky-Dinks’ “Early in the Morning”, the Aquatones’ “You”, Johnny Bond’s “Hot Rod Lincoln”, the Elegants’ “Little Star”, Chris Montez’s “Let’s Dance”, the Rivieras’ “California Sun”, Shep & the Limelites’ “Daddy’s Home”, etc.

However, you will not find here the big name of rock ‘n’ roll such as Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, and Bill Haley. Those famous artists who produced a string of hits already have tons of their own albums, and you should get them as separate collections. If there is a flaw in this series, it would be the lack of instrumental music. There are virtually no instrumental hits in this series whatsoever. (Maybe the producer saw that there are so many instrumental-only albums out there already.) For listeners who want to have a collection of those few-shots artists from rock ‘n’ roll era, there is probably no other collection that can surpass this one – both in term of quality and quantity.