Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Paramount records recorded some of the greatest blues artists of the 20′s and early 30′s and today we kick off the second of a multi-part feature on the label. In addition we’ll also be airing and interview I did with Alex van der Tuuk the author of Paramount’s Rise And Fall. Paramount Records was founded in 1917 as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin. 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 1917 a line of phonograph records was debuted with the “Paramount” label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary “The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated.” In its initial years, the Paramount label offered recordings of standard pop-music fare, on records recorded with below-average audio fidelity pressed in below-average quality shellac. In the early 1920′s, 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 its 1200 “race” series exclusively devoted to black music. The early catalog was dominated by female blues singers such as Lucille Hegamin, Alberta Hunter and Monette Moore and a bit later with records by stars Ida Cox and Ma Rainey. A large mail-order operation and weekly advertisements in black owned newspapers like the Chicago Defender were keys to the label’s early success. The label’s successful recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake shifted the focus from women singers to male. The label went on to record some of the era’s most celebrated male blues artists such as delta legends Charlie Patton, skip James, Tommy Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown plus diverse artists such as Buddy Boy Hawkins, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charlie Spand, Papa Charlie Jackson among many others. The onset of the depression crippled the recording industry and Paramount was eventually discontinued in 1932.

We open part two of our Paramount feature as we did our first, with some of the women who dominated the label’s catalog in the early years before being eclipsed by the popularity of the solo male blues artists. Today we spin tracks by Edna Hicks, Ida Cox, Edna Taylor, Edmonia Henderson, Lena Wilson Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters and others.

Blues singer Edna Hicks was born in New Orleans and was the half-sister of Lizzie Miles and her brother was the trumpet player Herb Morand. Edna left New Orleans sometime around 1916 and worked in a variety of vaudeville and musical comedy shows. She began recording in 1923 with Victor and went on to make records with Brunswick, Gennett, Vocalion, Ajax, Columbia and Paramount. In 1925 she died due to burns that she suffered in an accident involving gasoline in her home in Chicago.

Ida Cox sang in church choirs as a child in Georgia. She ran away from home in 1910 when she was a teenager and performed in minstrel and tent shows as a comedienne and singer. She toured the country throughout the Teens and 1920s sometimes singing with Jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton and with King Oliver at the Plantation Cafe in Chicago. In 1923 she began her recording contract with the Paramount label, who billed her as the Uncrowned Queen of the Blues. She cut around ninety sides for the label through 1929.

Alongside Bessie Smith, who recorded for Columbia, Ma Rainey is one of the most celebrated woman blues singers of the era. Rainey first appeared onstage in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel and vaudeville stage revues. In 1902 she married the song and dance man William “Pa” Rainey and from then on became known as Ma Rainey. The couple formed a song and dance act that included blues and popular songs. They toured the country, but primarily the South and became a popular attraction as part of Tolliver’s Circus, The Musical Extravaganza and The Rabbit Foot Minstrels, where Rainey befriended a young Bessie Smith. It was not until 1923 that Ma Rainey signed a recording contract with Paramount. She was billed as the “Mother of the Blues”, recording 100 songs between 1923 and 1928 for the label.

Ethel Waters was one of the most popular African-American singers and actresses of the 1920s. She moved to New York in 1919 after touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer. She made her recording debut in 1921 on Cardinal records but switched over to the Black Swan label, and recorded “Down Home Blues” and “Oh Daddy” the first Blues numbers for that company. In 1924 she cut five sides for Paramount. She frequently sang with Fletcher Henderson during the early 1920s, but by the mid-1920s Waters had became more of a pop singer.

The heyday of woman blues singers started to fade toward the mid to late 20′s. Paramount’s earliest male blues star was Papa Charlie Jackson who made his debut in 1924 followed by in 1926 by big selling artists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake. In addition to those artists, who we profiled in part one,  we spin tracks by Frank Stokes and several fine piano players including Charlie Span and Will Ezell. Frank Stokes and partner Dan Sane recorded as The Beale Street Shieks, a Memphis answer to the musical Chatmon family string band, the Mississippi Shieks. Stokes was already playing the streets of Memphis by the turn of the century, about the same time the blues began to flourish. A medicine show and house party favorite, Stokes was remembered as a consummate entertainer who drew on songs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Solo or with Sane and sometimes fiddler Will Batts, Stokes recorded 38 sides for Paramount and Victor.

Next to nothing is known about barrelhouse pianist Charlie Spand (PDF). He waxed 22 sides for Paramount between 1929 and 1931 and two final sessions for Okeh in 1940. Spand first made a name for himself on the Detroit scene of the 1920′s.

Ezell’s early career was spent as an itinerant musician playing dances, labor camps and logging mills in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Ezell had a recording career that lasted for four years beginning in 1927 and he produced total of 17 tracks (including alternative takes) for Paramount Records. It was in his role as “house pianist” for Paramount that he supported artists such as Blind Roosevelt Graves, Bertha Henderson and was rumored to have worked for Bessie Smith. His success disappeared during the Depression and nothing is known of him after his last recording session in 1931.