Just The Tracks, Ma’am: Ace Collects “Criminal Records” On New Compilation

Long before CSI, there was Dragnet.  The granddaddy of the television procedural drama, Dragnet actually began on radio in 1949, moving to television in 1951, where it has remained a staple ever since in both repeats and revivals.  So it’s appropriate that the ominous theme to Dragnet both opens and closes Ace’s rip-roaring new compilation, Criminal Records, subtitled “Law, Disorder and the Pursuit of Vinyl Justice.”  Between Ray Anthony’s treatment of that famous theme and Stan Freberg’s delicious parody of the program, you’ll find 22 other wild vignettes of cops, robbers, private dicks and prisoners.  Along the way you’ll meet “Dick Tracy,” “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon” and “Bad Dan McGoon” and travel all the way from Folsom Prison to Birmingham Jail.  And be careful when you approach that riot in Cell Block No. 9!

Avoiding such staples as The Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law,” Criminal Records instead concentrates on lesser-known songs, or familiar songs in rare versions.  Most tracks date from the 1950s and early sixties, but make no mistake: this is raucous music, not well-scrubbed pop from handsome guys named Bobby!  Among those lesser-known interpretations of classic tunes, you’ll find a hyper-charged, distorted “Jailhouse Rock” from Dean Carter.  So aggressive is this 1967 track that you might classify it as proto-punk!  In a similar vein, it’s Jumpin’ Gene Simmons, not Johnny Cash, heard with “Folsom Prison Blues.”   Though Gene doesn’t jump quite as much as Dean Carter, his “Folsom” also ups the tempo from the familiar original.

Famous fictional characters appear throughout Criminal Records, too.  The Chants immortalized Chester Gould’s famed detective in the 1961 “Dick Tracy,” and the detective would doubtless agree with the group that “crime doesn’t never pay!”  Even more oddball is Bob Luman’s catchy “Private Eye,” a 1961 curio from the Warner Bros. label.  Luman, a Rockabilly Hall of Famer, name-checks Edd “Kookie” Byrnes of Warner Bros.’ television show 77 Sunset Strip and TV detective Peter Gunn in his wacky song written by Boudleaux and Felice Bryant (“All I Have to Do is Dream”).  Of the real-life characters heard here, one would certainly be Scatman Crothers.  The actor and voiceover artist perhaps best known for his role in Chico and the Man actually had an accomplished musical career, and offers this collection’s earliest track, asking the musical question behind 1949’s “Have You Got the Gumption?”

There’s more gumption and woe after the jump, plus the full track listing with discography and an order link!