The Black Patti Label and the Rise & Fall of

Paramount Records

Black Patti Records was an 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.

At Paramount, Mayo Williams was a successful producer of race records, i.e., records made by black musicians to be sold to black customers. When he left Paramount to start Black Patti. he had no equipment, only his Chicago office space. The records were pressed at Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana. The catalog included jazz, blues, sermons, spirituals, and vaudeville skits, most but not all by black entertainers. Willie Hightower was among the musicians who recorded for the label. Williams closed the label before the end of 1927.

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.

In 1924 Paramount Records had also controversially bought out Harry Pace's Black Swan Record label after he had declared bankruptcy.

Though Paramount were not a black owned label they still have an undeniable place in black music releasing some of the most important recordings to a mass audience and seemed to strongly believe in African American music, they were well known for signing some of the greatest African American musicians and performers, however aspects of their practices were highly questionable such as their decision to buy out Black Swan Records only to discontinue the label a short time later.

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 revolutionise American music. Ironically the label was felled by the Great Depression a fate that befell many other labels of that era, Paramount Records stopped recording in 1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is among the most treasured and influential in American history.

'The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records, Volumes 1 and 2' are published and owned by 'Third Man Records.'

Official Site: Third Man Records

The Black Patti Numerical Index

There are 2 featured collections on this page:

The Black Patti Collection

Compiled from the original Black Patti shellac discs

(MP3 128kbps Googledrive Access)

106 Tracks

The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records Collection

Volumes 1 and 2

Label: Third Man Records

Vinyl record box set, compiled from the original shellac 78s.

(MP3 320kbps Googledrive Access)

902 Tracks