Ace Cannon

Ace Cannon ranked among Nashville’s leading session musicians from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. An alto saxophonist, he first picked up the instrument at age ten and secured a contract with Sun Records amid rock & roll’s initial wave. He worked alongside Billy Lee Riley and Brad Suggs before entering the original Bill Black Combo in 1959, where the group cut sides for the Hi label. Cannon remained until 1961, then launched his solo career with the instrumental “Tuff,” which climbed into the country Top 20. A Top 40 follow-up, “Blues (Stay Away From Me),” appeared next, along with the minor Santos-label entry “Sugar Blues.” Two additional Hi singles, “Cotton Fields” and “Searchin’,” reached the charts during the mid-1960s. In 1974 the documentary film Ace’s High profiled his career. After relocating to Nashville in the mid-1970s, his reading of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” registered a modest hit and earned a nomination for Best Country Instrumental Performance at the Grammy Awards. Cannon remained active onstage into the 1990s, regularly sharing bills with early-rock pioneers such as Carl Perkins.