Paramount Records

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For the label in the 60s, see Paramount Records (1969).

Paramount Records was an American record label, best known for its recordings of African-American jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Label of a Paramount record from 1926

Paramount Records was founded in the 1910s as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin, Fred Dennett Key, director.^[1] The chair company had made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records. Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the "United Phonograph Corporation" at the end of 1915. It made phonographs under the "Vista" brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially.

In 1918 a line of phonograph gramophone records was debuted with the "Paramount" label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary "The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated", which despite its name was located in the same Wisconsin factory complex as the parent concern (advertisements, however, stated somewhat misleadingly, "Paramounts are recorded in our own New York laboratory").

In its initial years, the Paramount label fared only slightly better than the "Vista Phonograph" line. The product had little to distinguish itself. Paramount offered recordings of standard pop-music fare, on records recorded with below-average audio fidelity pressed in below-average quality shellac.

Paramount Records ad, 1919

In the early 1920s, Paramount was still racking up debts for the Chair Company while producing no net profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies at low prices.

The Paramount Record pressing plant was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records. When that later company floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and thus got into the business of making recordings by and for African-Americans. These so-called "race music" records became Paramount's most famous and lucrative business.

Paramount's "race record" series was launched in 1922 with a few vaudeville blues songs by Lucille Hegamin and Alberta Hunter. It had a large mail-order operation that was a key to its early success.^[1]

Most of Paramount's race music recordings were arranged by Black entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams. "Ink" Williams had no official position with Paramount, but was given wide latitude to bring African-American talent to 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 he was essentially keeping the label afloat.

Problems with low audio fidelity and poor pressings continued. Blind Lemon Jefferson's big 1926 hit, "Got the Blues" and "Long Lonesome Blues", had to be hurriedly rerecorded in the superior facilities of Marsh Laboratories and subsequent releases used that version; since both versions appear on compilation albums, they may be compared.

In 1927, Mayo Williams moved to competitor OKeh records, taking Blind Lemon Jefferson with him for just one recording, the now classic "Matchbox Blues". Paramount's recording of the same song can be compared with OKeh's on compilation albums, to Paramount's detriment.

The Great Depression drove many record companies out of business, and the initial incarnation of Paramount closed down in 1935.

In 1942 the then-inactive Paramount Records company was purchased from Wisconsin Chair Company by John Steiner, who revived the label for reissues of important historical Paramount recordings as well as new recordings of jazz and blues. In 1952, Steiner leased reissue rights to a newly-formed jazz label, Riverside Records, which reissued a substantial number of 10" and then 12" LPs by many of the blues singers in the Paramount catalog, as well as instrumental jazz by such Chicago-based notables as Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (which included a very young Louis Armstrong), Johnny Dodds, Muggsy Spanier, and Meade Lux Lewis. Riverside remained active until 1964.

The rights to the portion of Paramount's back catalogue not yet in the public domain were next acquired by George H. Buck in 1970. Buck continues to reissue Paramount recordings as part of his Jazzology Records group, but use of the name "Paramount Records" was purchased from Buck by Paramount Pictures, a previously unconnected company.

As happened with a number of record companies in the Great Depression, the majority of Paramount's metal masters were sold for their scrap metal value. Some of the company's recordings were said to have been thrown into the Milwaukee River by disgruntled employees when the record company was closing down. In 2006 an episode of PBS television show History Detectives had local divers searching the river to try to find Paramount masters and unsold 78's, but they were unsuccessful. ^[2]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b Barlow, William. "Looking Up At Down": The Emergence of Blues Culture. Temple University Press (1989), p. 131. ISBN 0-87722-583-4.
^ Journal Sentinel article

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