[Article]

Blues in Wisconsin: The Paramount Records Story

by David Luhrssen

Nowadays it would be called niche marketing. But during the early years of recorded sound, the music industry's efforts to tap African-Americans for their entertainment dollars were tainted by segregation. Paramount Records, a Wisconsin company with studios in Port Washington and Grafton, was among the first to specialize in "race records," as African-American discs were called before World War II. Sixty-five years after its demise, Paramount remains the most historically significant record label to operate in Wisconsin.

Paramount, along with its sister companies, recorded a wide variety of music, but today it is remembered chiefly as an important footnote in the development of blues music. Probably Paramount would have received even greater notice from historians had it been located in Chicago, Memphis, or other places known as meccas for black creative endeavor. Operating instead from a pair of unlikely towns in what was then rural Wisconsin, Paramount has been relegated to the status of a curiosity, albeit an important one, for its role in documenting the first generation of blues musicians.

The Paramount story is also interesting for what it tells us about the origins of today's glitzy, multi-billion-dollar recording industry. Not unlike several other early record companies, Paramount began in a most unglamorous fashion, as a subsidiary of Wisconsin Chair Company, whose Port Washington and Grafton factories made low-cost chairs, tables, and school desks which were marketed in the Midwest and the South. A line of wooden cabinets for Edison phonographs was added sometime around 1914. Before long the company began to consider producing phonograph

THE PARAMOUNT BOOK OF BLUES

records as an incentive to phonograph buyers. From such nickel-and-dime concerns a new industry was nurtured.

The move from home furnishings to home entertainment came against the backdrop of a remarkable recovery for Wisconsin Chair Company after its facilities were badly damaged by the million-dollar fire in 1899 that destroyed most of what is now Port Washington's marina area. During the years in   [p. 18]   which Wisconsin Chair was rebuilt, the technology of sound reproduction improved. The wax cylinders originally employed by Thomas Edison's 1877 invention, the "talking machine," gave way to ten- and twelve-inch shellac discs containing up to four minutes of music per side. The phonograph business flourished by the onset of World War I, with record players selling for anywhere from $10 to $500.

The man who proved to be instrumental in Wisconsin Chair Company's bid to become part of the new industry traveled even farther to Grafton than the southern blues artists who later came there to record. Arthur C. Satherly, a romantic young Englishman, the son of an Anglican cleric from Bristol, came to Wisconsin in 1913 in search of the Old West he had read about in dime novels. Apparently the new world of sound recording came to fascinate Satherly as much as the mythic American past. He left Wis-consin Chair to work for Thomas Edison's company, but returned to Port Washington in 1917, or shortly thereafter, when Wisconsin Chair founded its first musical subsidiary, the New York Recording Laboratories, whose name conveyed the glamor of Manhattan and the scientific wonder of the phonograph.

Satherly was put in charge of manufacturing sound discs from clay mixed with shellac, a kind of varnish that was probably familiar to Wisconsin Chair from its more traditional product lines. Although fragile when compared with the vinyl recordings that replaced them after World War II, shellac discs were an effective medium for preserving sonic inscriptions. Satherly quickly set up a pressing plant in Grafton, a factory for stamping out copies of recordings. The recording sessions were done elsewhere for several years, primarily at New York Recording Laboratories' studio at 1140 Broadway in New York City, but also in Chicago. Recording sessions were not held in Grafton until 1929.

The New York Recording Laboratories' name appeared in fine print on the rim of the record labels. Most of the company's product was marketed under the bold-lettered legend of Paramount Records, though others were issued under the Broadway, Famous, and Puritan labels. The Famous label was sold in dime stores. Broadway records were marketed as a midline product. Selling at 85 cents a disc, with its blue-and-gold label bearing the image of an eagle perched atop the world, Paramount was the company's prestige brand. Even today, many record companies issue their product under several brand labels.

By the time New York Recording Laboratories was ready to release its first recordings to the public in 1918, the company's management---probably Wisconsin Chair president Otto Moeser and sales head Maurice Supper---decided there was limited value in trying to compete in the popular music market against Columbia and Victor, recording companies that would evolve during the second half of the twentieth century into Sony Music Entertainment and RCA Victor. It was decided that the Port Washington-based labels would concentrate on ethnic music, especially German, Scandinavian, and Mexican performers who would appeal to the large immigrant populations in the Midwest, one of Wisconsin Chair's sales territories. To hedge their bets, Paramount and its sister labels would also release recordings of popular singers, marching bands, and dance bands. During the 1920s the company also began recording country music, a form of popular music that was just beginning to coalesce from the folk traditions of the southern mountains.

Until the advent of electrical microphones and amplifiers in 1925, the recording process employed by New York Recording Laboratories and its competitors was extremely primitive. Performers played or sang into a recording horn which vibrated a diaphragm, causing the needle of a stylus to cut a wax master disc from which all copies would be stamped. Singers stood inches from the horn; brass players kept back lest they drown out the featured performer. The three-inch-thick wax masters recorded in New York or   [p. 19]   Chicago studios were packed in dry ice and shipped to a Grafton furniture factory that had been converted into a pressing plant. Shellac and other materials used in manufacturing the records were delivered to Grafton by railroad and hauled to the pressing plant by horse-drawn wagon. The plant was run by a rope drive powered by a water wheel. Both men and women were employed on the production floor.

Accidents sometimes found their way onto recordings. On a 1920 Paramount disc by Selvin's Novelty Orchestra, a peculiar racket is heard as the band offered its rendition of a contemporary hit song, "Avalon." Evidently a carpenter was at work in the next room, and his hammering became part of the recording. A few weeks after "Avalon's" release, Selvin's Novelty Orchestra was called back to make another recording of the song, this time without any unwanted accompaniment.

By 1921 the New York Recording Laboratories experienced financial troubles as the still nascent record industry reeled from the arrival of a competitor for home entertainment, radio, a medium which did not usually play music discs in its early years. Apparently it was Arthur Satherly, employing the clear-eyed cultural perspective of a foreigner, who saw that the African-American market might prove profitable even in the face of this new medium. His decision was surely influenced by the fact that most African-Americans still lived in Wisconsin Chair's major sales territory outside the Midwest, the South.

By 1922 Paramount began issuing "race recordings" of black artists. Since music shops and even dime stores were not always accessible to many of Paramount's potential customers, especially in the rural South, the label marketed its products largely through advertising in America's flagship black-owned newspaper, The Chicago Defender, which enjoyed a wide black readership below the Mason-Dixon Line. Paramount customers could order records by checking off selections on a form included with advertisements, in a manner not unlike today's CD clubs, and

Blind Lemon Jefferson, blind from birth, was born in Dallas and learned to play the guitar to entertain his friends. Eventually he became a commercial artist, recording exclusively on Paramount.

Ma (Gertrude) Rainey, from "the Bottoms" of Georgia, believed the blues expressed the heart of the south. She brought these beautiful and sad melodies to new York and greatly influenced other blues musicians.

mail in their orders. Payment was COD. Each of the fragile shellac discs was insured for a dollar, and many were returned broken. Paramount subcontracted its mail order business to F.W. Boerner Co. of Port Washington, who continued to market 1920s vintage Paramount blues recordings to black listeners as late as the end of the 1940s. According to local folklore, the heavy volume of orders received by Boerner for Paramount resulted in an elevation for Port Washington's post office from Class 3 to Class 1 status, putting it on the same footing as post offices in big cities.

African-American music proved profitable for Paramount. In 1924 New York Recording Laboratory decided to expand its reach into that market by purchasing the Black Swan label. Founded in 1920 or 1921 by black entrepreneur Harry H. Pace, the pioneering company recorded everything from ragtime to grand opera, as long as it was sung by African-Americans. Black Swan's first blues record featured Ethel Waters singing "Down Home Blues." Blues singer Alberta Hunter recorded "Bring Back the Joys" for Black Swan with instrumental backing by Fletcher Henderson, the African-American who later penned arrangements for Benny Goodman, the "King of Swing." Paramount reissued discs from the Black Swan catalog, a practice still prevalent today among recording companies who own material originally made for other labels.

The scratchy old Paramount and Black Swan discs have become a vital primary source for historians reconstructing the history of black American music. Paramount's biggest star was Ma Rainey, a blues moaner who influenced the legendary singer Bessie Smith. Recordings were also issued by such women blues singers as Elzadie Robinson, Ida Cox, Irene Scruggs, and Edmonia Henderson. During the 1920s women rose to the forefront of the blues, a genre that has remained largely male-dominated ever since. The blues women mostly came out of the vaudeville circuit. They were entertainers rather than folk artists, but their lyrics and expressive delivery tell us much about the lives   [p. 20]   of African-American women in the rapidly changing times that followed World War I into the Jazz Age.

Paramount did not neglect male blues singers, who tended to be folk artists in the sense that their music was made initially for the entertainment of isolated rural communities. These included the singers and guitarists Charlie Patton (an influence on Robert Johnson, whose recordings have become the touchstone for the Mississippi Delta blues sound), Blind Lemon Jefferson (for whom the 1960s rock band Jefferson Airplane was named), Blind Blake, and Charlie Spand. Blues piano records were made for Paramount by Henry Brown, Will Ezell, Cow Cow Davenport, Jimmy Blythe, and Blind Leroy Garnett. The grelt pianist Meade Lux Lewis helped introduce the world to the rowdy, upbeat music known as boogie-woogie with a 1927 disc for Paramount, "Honky Tonk Train Blues." Some jazz recordings were issued by Paramount, including discs by King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators, Louie Austin's Blues Serenaders, Jimmie O'Bryant's Famous Original Washboard Band, and John Williams's Synco Jazzers. Apocryphal stories abound, including rumors that the great Louis Armstrong traveled to Grafton late in Paramount's existence to make a record under a pseudonym. As far as historians can determine, Armstrong's only Paramount recordings were made as a member of King Oliver's band, and those were recorded in Chicago or New York. There were also many Paramount gospel recordings, usually by unaccompanied vocal quartets.

Arthur Satherly, fellow British expatriate Art Laibley (Paramount's sales manager), and early African-American music executive J. Mayo Williams (manager of Paramount's "race series") scoured the South for black talent. They received tips from unusual sources, including traveling salesmen from Paramount's parent company, Wisconsin Chair, who discovered blues singers while calling on customers. The Paramount catalog included this solicitation for talent:

What does the Public want? What will you have? If your preferences are

Ida Cox of Knoxville, Tennessee, began to sing on the stage as a child and became known as "Queen of the Blues."

Elzadie Robinson was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was a popular entertainer at age twelve. As a chorus girl she played engagements in such major southern centers as Houston and Galveston and eventually came north to Chicago.

not listed in our catalog, we will make them for you, as Paramount must please the buying public. There is always room for more good material and more talented artists.

A number of singers were recorded by Paramount after hometown fans wrote the label, recommending them.

Such methods of artist development were in contrast to the more top-down direction of Victor, Columbia, and other larger labels. Paramount was more closely linked to a grassroots audience than its bigger, better-financed competitors. This would also prove to be a recurring theme in twentieth-century music with smaller independent labels, such as the Memphis-based Sun Records, which discovered Elvis Presley, blazing trails that the heavyweights of the industry would later claim as their own.

In 1926 the New York Recording Laboratories closed its New York City studio. The following year J. Mayo Williams resigned from Paramount. He formed his own Chicago-based label, Black Patti Records, and remained active in the African-American segment of the music industry through the 1950s. In 1928 Arthur Satherly resigned and went on to discover some of the most popular singers in country music, including Gene Autry, Bob Wills, and Roy Acuff. Satherly was recognized for his accomplishments by his election to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1971.

In 1929 Paramount's recording sessions ceased in Chicago. From then on all recording was done under the direction of Art Laibley on the second floor of what had once been a Wisconsin Chair Company factory in Grafton. To avoid noise from nearby plants, most of the recording was done at night.

Black and white musicians traveled by the inter-urban train line or by car from Chicago through Milwaukee to record in Grafton. Some of the artists may have slept in apartment houses near the recording studio where many of Wisconsin Chair's employees lived, or even on cots in the studio. According to some reports, the presence of black musicians in all-   [p. 21]   white Grafton was kept secret, and blacks were shuttled back and forth to Milwaukee between sessions. Other black performers remember staying without incident at the Grafton Hotel.

The process of recording a blues musician from the rural South is illustrated by the fruits of Art Laibley's May 1930 trip through Mississippi and Texas. Laibley contacted Charlie Patton, already a familiar name on Paramount's roster, and asked him to recommend some new talent. Patton suggested Willie Brown, Louise Johnson, and Son House, who would become a legendary figure after his "rediscovery" by blues enthusiasts in the late 1960s. Laibley entrusted Patton with $100 to cover traveling expenses and arranged for singer Wheeler Ford of the Delta Big Four gospel quartet to drive the musicians to Grafton. A day after their arrival in Grafton, the musicians sang and played with each other for a Paramount session that resulted in a lascivious recording of "On the Wall" and a pair of darker-hued blues pieces, "Moon Going Down" and "Bird Nest Bound."

White southerners also trekked to Grafton to record their own folk music, including the 1929 recording of the ancient Anglo-Celtic ballad "Black Jack Davy" by a duo who called themselves Professor and Mrs. I.G. Greer. Wisconsin performers also recorded for Paramount, including the dance orchestra of Bill Carlson, still remembered in the Milwaukee area as the weather forecaster for WTMJ radio and television in the 1950s and 1960s.

The onset of the Great Depression devastated the recording industry, especially the smaller companies. The last blues recording for the label was made by Skip James, a legendary figure whose song "I'm so Glad" was the basis for a hit in the 1960s by Eric Clapton's group Cream. In 1932 or 1933 Paramount and its sister labels ceased operations.

Although the Great Depression ended the golden era of Paramount, there would be a postscript to the record label's story. In the early 1940s jazz enthusiast and University of Chicago chemistry professor John Steiner purchased Paramount and its siblings from Wisconsin Chair Company. He reissued many of the company's jazz records, as well as a few of its blues discs, and made some new jazz recordings for

Blind Blake was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and developed an inner vision which allowed him to see things in a positive way. He listened to talented musicians and taught himself to play the guitar.

Paramount. During the 1950s Steiner sold the Paramount name to the entertainment giant ABC, which released new recordings under the ABC Paramount label for several decades. In the early 1970s Steiner sold the rights to Paramount's back catalog to a New Orleans enthusiast, George Buck, who has since released a half dozen CDs of Paramount blues on his GBH Jazz Foundation label. Only a small percentage of Paramount's recordings have ever been reissued on LP or CD, most of them by blues specialty labels like Biograph or Yazoo.

While most of Paramount's music is not heard today, the greatest of its blues recordings haven't lost their ability to inspire recording artists of our own time. The company's management may have marketed Paramount's "race music" along strictly segregated lines, but the power of blues and other African-American music contributed eventually to breaking down some of the social barriers taken for granted in early twentieth-century America.