UK collection. Over the last few years, Ace has built up a series of prime British female pop releases, with individual collections drawn from four of the country's leading record companies of the 1960s. With this compilation, rather than spotlight a particular company, the focus is on a location: the music hotbed of Merseyside. While male beat groups ruled the Merseyside roost in the '60s, the area was also home to it's fair share of female talent. To illustrate the point, here are 25 hand-picked girl-pop artefacts from thereabouts. Liverpool's pop queen Cilla Black is featured with her two most Merseybeat-oriented tracks, including a terrific version of 'A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues', the first song she ever recorded at Abbey Road. Guitar-toting cover girls the Liverbirds, who released no records in the UK but were stars in Germany - where their repertoire of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry numbers made them favorites at the Star-Club - also appear twice. The Breakaways, the Vernons Girls and Beryl Marsden - three other acts intrinsically associated with Liverpool - are also featured. Along with a selection of proven fan favorites, the collection contains many lesser-known gems, among them new-to-CD tracks by the Three Bells, Nola York, Tiffany, Lyn Cornell, Cindy Cole and, not least, Samantha Jones, whose hitherto-unreleased-in-any-format 'I Don't Want To Lose Him' was recorded with visiting American producer Teddy Randazzo. Read all about these and the other featured artists in the accompanying picture-packed 28-page booklet, which contains a 7,000-word note by compiler Mick Patrick and genre expert Ian Chapman.