| Paramount Records | |
|---|---|
 1926 disc label | |
| Founded | 1917 |
| Founder | Wisconsin Chair Company |
| Defunct | 1932 |
| Status | Inactive |
| Distributor(s) | Jazzology |
| Genre | Jazz, blues |
| Country of origin | U.S. |
| Location | Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Official website | www |
Paramount Records was an American record label known for its recordings of jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey, Tommy Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Paramount Records was founded in 1918 by United Phonographs, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company, which trademarked its record brand from Port Washington and began issuing records the following year on the Puritan and Paramount labels. Puritan lasted only until 1927, but Paramount, based in the factory of its parent company in Grafton, Wisconsin, published some of the nation's most important early blues recordings between 1929 and 1932. [1] The label's offices were located in Port Washington, Wisconsin and the pressing plant was located at 1819 S. Green Bay Road in Grafton. The label was managed by Fred Dennett Key. [2] Recordings often occurred at studios in Chicago.
The Wisconsin Chair Company made wooden phonograph cabinets for Edison Records. In 1915 it started making its own phonographs in the name of its subsidiary, the United Phonograph Corporation. It made phonographs under multiple brand names through the end of the decade; the brands failed commercially.
In 1918, a line of records debuted on the Paramount label. They were recorded and pressed by a Chair Company subsidiary, the New York Recording Laboratories, Inc. which, despite its name, was located in the same Wisconsin factory in Port Washington. Advertisements, however, stated: "Paramounts are recorded in our own New York laboratory".
In its early years, the Paramount label fared only slightly better than the Vista phonograph line. The product had little to distinguish itself. Paramount released pop recordings with average audio quality pressed on average quality shellac. With the coming of electric recording, both the audio fidelity and the shellac quality declined to well below average, although some Paramount records were well pressed on better shellac and have become collectible.
In the early 1920s, Paramount was accumulating debt while producing no profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies on a contract basis at low prices.
Paramount was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records. When the Black Swan company later floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and made records by and for African Americans. These so-called race music records became Paramount's most famous and lucrative business, especially its 12000 series. It is estimated that a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932 were on the Paramount label. [3] The company relied on offices and agents in nearby Chicago to find and record artists for its blues and jazz offerings. [4]
Paramount's race record series was launched in 1922 with vaudeville blues songs by Lucille Hegamin and Alberta Hunter. [5] The company had a large mail-order operation which was a key to its early success. [2]
Most of Paramount's race music recordings were arranged by black entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams. "Ink" Williams, as he was known, had no official position with Paramount, but he was given wide latitude to bring African American talent to the Paramount recording studios and to market Paramount records to African American consumers. Williams did not know at the time that the "race market" had become Paramount's prime business and that he was keeping the label afloat.
Problems with low fidelity and poor pressings continued. Blind Lemon Jefferson's 1926 hits, "Got the Blues" and "Long Lonesome Blues", were quickly rerecorded in the superior facilities of Marsh Laboratories, and subsequent releases used the rerecorded version. Both versions were released on compilation albums.
In 1927, Ink Williams moved to competitor Okeh, taking Blind Lemon Jefferson with him for just one recording, "Matchbox Blues". Paramount's recording of the same song can be compared with Okeh's on compilation albums. In 1929, Paramount was building a new studio in Grafton, so it sent Charley Patton —"sent up" by Jackson, Mississippi, storeowner H. C. Speir —to the studio of Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, where on June 14 he cut 14 famous sides, [6] which led many to consider him the "Father of the Delta Blues". [7]
After Williams left Paramount, he placed the business in the hands of his secretary, Aletha Dickerson, who had not been informed that her former employer had quit. Dickerson continued working for Paramount, and eventually moved to the company's new headquarters is Grafton. In 1931, she quit when the management, facing hard times, cut her wages. [8]
The Great Depression drove many record companies out of business. Paramount stopped recording in 1932 and closed in 1935.
Like other record companies during the Great Depression, Paramount sold most of its master recordings as scrap metal. Some of the company's recordings were said to have been thrown into the Milwaukee River by disgruntled employees when the company was closing in the mid-1930s. [9] A 2006 episode of the PBS television show History Detectives showed divers searching the river for Paramount masters and unsold 78s, but they were unsuccessful. [10] Author Amanda Petrusich also dived in the river looking for records for her 2014 book Do Not Sell At Any Price , but did not find any. [11]
When Riverside re-released the original recordings, they used records from the collection of John Hammond. [12]
John Fahey's Revenant Records and Jack White's Third Man Records issued two volumes of remastered tracks from Paramount's catalog, The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917–27) and The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume Two (1928–32), on vinyl records with a USB drive for digital access. [13] Each volume features 800 songs, contemporary ads and images (200 in volume one and 90 in volume 2), two books (a history of Paramount and a guide to the artists and recordings) and six 180-gram vinyl LPs, packaged in a hand-crafted oak case modeled after those that carried phonographs in the 1920s. [14]
Lemon Henry "Blind Lemon" Jefferson was an American blues and gospel singer-songwriter and musician. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s and has been called the "Father of the Texas Blues".
Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans. Founded by Harry Pace with W.C. Handy, Black Swan Records was established to give African Americans more creative liberties. Eighteen months earlier, in 1919, the Broome Special Phonograph Records was the earliest label owned and operated by African American George W. Broome in Medford, Massachusetts, featuring Black classical musicians including Harry T. Burleigh and Edward Boatner. Black Swan was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of its historic jazz and blues recordings.
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916.
Gennett Records was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana, United States, which flourished in the 1920s and produced the Gennett, Starr, Champion, Superior, and Van Speaking labels. The company also produced some Supertone, Silvertone, and Challenge records under contract. The firm also pressed, under contract, records for record labels such as Autograph, Rainbow, Hitch, Our Song, and Vaughn; Gennett also pressed records for the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Gennett produced some of the earliest recordings by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Hoagy Carmichael. Its roster also included Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Gene Autry.
OKeh Records is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Otto K. E. Heinemann but later changed to "OKeh". In 1965, OKeh became a subsidiary of Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. OKeh has since become a jazz imprint, distributed by Sony Masterworks.
Black Patti Records was a short-lived American record label based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, founded by Mayo Williams in 1927. It was named after the black opera singer Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, who was called Black Patti because some thought she resembled the Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. The label lasted seven months and produced 55 records. The Black Patti peacock logo was used in the 1960s by Nick Perls for his Belzona and Yazoo labels.
Grafton is a village in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. Located about 20 miles (32 km) north of Milwaukee and in close proximity to Interstate 43, it is a suburban community in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The village incorporated in 1896, and at the time of the 2020 census the population was 12,094.
Puritan Records was an American record label which lasted from 1917 to 1929. For most of its existence Puritan was a product of the Wisconsin Chair Company, which also marketed Paramount Records, but as a label, Puritan briefly predates Paramount and began with United Phonographs Corporation.
American Record Corporation (ARC), also referred to as American Record Company, American Recording Corporation, or ARC Records, was an American record company.
Odeon Records is a record label founded in 1903 by Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz of the International Talking Machine Company in Berlin, Germany. The label's name and logo come from the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris.
Record collecting is the hobby of collecting sound recordings, usually of music, but sometimes poetry, reading, historical speeches, and ambient noises. Although the typical focus is on vinyl records, all formats of recorded music can be collected.
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues. Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and the other singers in this genre were instrumental in spreading the popularity of the blues.
King Solomon Hill is the name assigned to a blues singer and guitarist who recorded a handful of songs in 1932. His unique guitar and voice combined to produce a sound that has been described as haunting. After much speculation and dispute, he has been identified as Joe Holmes, a self-taught guitarist from Mississippi.
Race records is a term for 78-rpm phonograph records marketed to African Americans between the 1920s and 1940s. They primarily contained race music, comprising various African-American musical genres, blues, jazz, and gospel music, rhythm and blues and also comedy. These records were, at the time, the majority of commercial recordings of African American artists in the U.S., and few African American artists were marketed to white audiences. Race records were marketed by Okeh Records, Emerson Records, Vocalion Records, Victor Talking Machine Company, Paramount Records, and several other companies.
Jay Mayo "Ink" Williams was a pioneering African-American producer of recorded blues music. Some historians have claimed that Ink Williams earned his nickname by his ability to get the signatures of talented African-American musicians on recording contracts, but in fact it was a racial sobriquet from his football days, when he was a rare Black player on white college and professional teams. He was the most successful "race records" producer of his time, breaking all previous records for sales in this genre.
Arthur Edward Satherley was an American record producer and A&R man. Often called Uncle Art Satherley, he made major contributions to the recording industry and has been described as "one of the most important pioneers in the field of country music production".
William Ezell, was an American blues, jazz, ragtime and boogie-woogie pianist and occasional singer, who was also billed as Will Ezell. He regularly contributed to recordings made by Paramount Records in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Ezell was noted by the music journalist Bruce Eder as "a technically brilliant pianist, showing the strong influence of jazz as well as blues in his work".
"That Black Snake Moan" is a song written and recorded by American country blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson. Inspired by singer Victoria Spivey's "Black Snake Blues", the song was released on Paramount Records in 1926, and has since become recognized as a signature composition which exemplifies Jefferson's unconventional melodic style and utilization of double entendres. The song was re-recorded a year later as "Black Snake Moan" for Okeh Records, and both versions have remained accessible through the availability of several compilation albums.
Arthur Charles Laibly was an American record producer and sales manager. He was the first to make commercial recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Skip James, and also recorded many other notable blues performers including Charley Patton and Son House, for Paramount Records in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Broadway Records was the name of an American record label in the 1920s and 1930s. Broadway's records were first manufactured in the early 1920s by the Bridgeport Die and Machine Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Most of the early issues were from masters recorded by Paramount Records. Starting in 1924, masters from the Emerson and Banner appeared on Broadway.
