Founded in 1917, Paramount Records incongruously was one of several
homegrown record labels of a Wisconsin chair-making company. The
company pinned no outsized hopes on Paramount. Its founders knew
nothing of the music business, and they had arrived at the scheme
of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive
phonograph cabinets they had recently begun manufacturing. Lacking
the resources and the interest to compete for top talent,
Paramount's earliest recordings gained little foothold with the
listening public. On the threshold of bankruptcy, the label
embarked on a new business plan: selling the music of Black artists
to Black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount
eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the
"race records" era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what
others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by
Black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a
deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong,
Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip
James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly
Roll Morton. Scott Blackwood's The Rise and Fall of Paramount
Records is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about
the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music
etched into the shellacked grooves of a 78 rpm record. With
Paramount Records, Black America found its voice. Through creative
nonfiction, Blackwood brings to life the gifted artists and record
producers who used Paramount to revolutionize American music.
Felled by the Great Depression, the label stopped recording in
1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is
among the most treasured and influential in American history.
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