Johnny Ace: Pledging My Love (1954)

 |   |  1 min read

Johnny Ace: Pledging My Love (1954)

And further to the now familiar story that death is good for a career . . . Johnny Ace had been enjoying a very good run of hits throughout the early Fifties, so much so that maybe he thought he was bulletproof. Literally.

His story is well known, how on Christmas night in 1954, while at a gig in Houston he was fooling around with a gun (legend has a Russian roulette game but that has been refuted) and pointed the thing at his head to show it wasn't loaded and . . .

But the hits kept coming for 25 year old Ace and this was his biggest. It spent 10 weeks at the top of the Billboard r'n'b charts after Ace's death and crossed over into the pop charts where Teresa Brewer also had a cover version.

Ace's biographer James Salem said of this song, "the tone, mood and sentiment represent not only a standard Johnny Ace performance but the quintessential Ace performance".

Word has it that his death and this song prompted "grown women to weep and write suicidal poems to newspapers and magazines". (Galen Gart) 

Johnny Ace's death was referenced by Paul Simon in his song The Late Great Johnny Ace (from his '83 Hearts and Bones album, see below) which also refers to the deaths of John F Kennedy and John Lennon.

He certainly wasn't the first or last to pay tribute. Within weeks of Ace's funeral there were tribute records by Johnny Fuller, Varetta Dillard (Johnny Has Gone) and Frankie Ervin . . . and as recently as 2011 Dave Alvin (who was born a year after Ace's death) had the story Johnny Ace is Dead on his Eleven Eleven album.

Johnny certainly was well dead by then. 

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory use the RSS feed for daily updates, and check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   From the Vaults articles index

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas: Third Finger Left Hand (1967)

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas: Third Finger Left Hand (1967)

Beyonce's thrilling Bollywood-influenced dancefloor hit Single Ladies; Put a Ring On It reminded of the long tradition of songs about wedding rings, or the lack of them, or how tarnished a memory... > Read more

The Beatnix: Stairway to Heaven (date unknown)

The Beatnix: Stairway to Heaven (date unknown)

There are any number of bands who can convincingly replicate the look, sound and songs of Beatles (our money always goes to excellent Bootleg Beatles). But Australia's Beatnix took a different... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

THE DIFFICULT ARTS UNDER NAZISM: The uncomfortable past -- and present

THE DIFFICULT ARTS UNDER NAZISM: The uncomfortable past -- and present

Back in the early NIneties there was a modicum of good news about the career of the German rock band Endseig whose name meant Final Victory. It was that they weren’t particularly popular and... > Read more

THE BARGAIN BUY: Grease (DVD)

THE BARGAIN BUY: Grease (DVD)

A fortnight ago when Grease appeared unexpectedly on our small screen we, the Elsewhere household, laughed at the terrible opening credits and thereafter -- both us -- were hooked. Neither of... > Read more