Ace Kefford was a secondary member of the first lineup of
the Move, playing and recording with the band through 1968, during the most pop-oriented phase of their career. Before
the Move,
Kefford had played with
Carl Wayne & the Vikings, featuring future
Move singer
Wayne and future
Move drummer
Bev Bevan. With
the Move,
Kefford played bass (although he is also credited with guitar on the album sleeve for
The Best of the Move), and sang some backup vocals. He did not write any of the band's material, and had just one lead vocal, on the
Roy Wood composition "Yellow Rainbow" (featured on
the Move's first album). According to
Bev Bevan's liner notes for
The Best of the Move,
Kefford "functioned as the group's pouting glamour-man." He did write one quite
Move-like song, the playfully pop-psychedelic "William Chalker's Time Machine," which was recorded on a 1968 single by
the Lemon Tree.
Kefford left
the Move in early 1968, after increasing instability resulting from depression and panic attacks. He recorded about an album's worth of unreleased material in mid-1968 with producer
Tony Visconti (to become renowned for his work with
David Bowie), but the project was abandoned, without production complete on many of the tracks, when
Kefford had a breakdown. These sessions found
Kefford writing much of the material and trying his hand at an assortment of late-'60s rock styles, as well as singing it in his soul-rock voice, which wasn't nearly as distinctive or capable as the vocals of, say, his old
Move cohorts
Carl Wayne and
Roy Wood. Nine tracks from the unreleased album sessions, in their various states of (in)completion, were released in 2003 as part of the
Ace Kefford CD compilation
Ace the Face.
Kefford then became frontman for the short-lived
Ace Kefford Stand, who did one single, "For Your Love" b/w "Gravy Booby Jam," for Atlantic in 1969. The A-side was a drawn-out, heavy, and fairly tedious cover of
the Yardbirds classic; the flip, thrown together by the band the night before the session, was a forgettable psychedelic-progressive rock crossover effort with freaky guitar. The other members of
the Ace Kefford Stand, incidentally, had been previously known as
Young Blood, and did four singles for Pye;
the Ace Kefford Stand's most illustrious member was drummer
Cozy Powell. After the single,
Dave McTavish of
Tintern Abbey joined and the band changed their name to
Big Bertha, which did one single. Its A-side, "This World's an Apple" was, according to
Kefford (quoted in Record Collector) "crap"; the flipside was "Gravy Booby Jam," credited to
Big Bertha Featuring Ace Kefford.
Kefford drifted in and out of music in the '70s, continuing to struggle with mental problems, at one time attempting suicide. Feelers put out to work with
Ozzy Osbourne and
Jeff Beck came to nothing, though he was briefly in the band Rockstar, who put out a 1976 single "Mummy"/"Over the Hill." Both of those sides were written by
Kefford, with the A-side in particular showing a strong, early-'70s
David Bowie influence. All of
Kefford's post-
Move odds and ends were compiled on the
Ace the Face CD, including the unreleased 1968 album sessions;
the Ace Kefford Stand single, and a few
Ace Kefford Stand outtakes;
Big Bertha's "This World's an Apple"; the Rockstar single; and
the Lemon Tree's "William Chalker's Time Machine" single.
–
Richie Unterberger, Rovi