[Dixielandjazz] The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records

[Robert Ringwald]

The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917-27). By
Scott Blackwood. Third Man Records/Revenant Records, $399.
by Doug Freeman
Austin Chronicle, October 25, 2013
Produced in conjunction with roots music pioneer John Fahey's
Revenant Records, the latest endeavor from Jack White's wondrous
Third Man Records may be the White Striped Raconteur's most
ambitious yet. Creating an experience as much as an archive, The
Rise and Fall of Paramount Records breathes life into a largely
forgotten imprint that helped transform 20th century music.
Included in the oak cabinet are six 180-gram LPs on
chestnut-colored vinyl, 800 remastered digital tracks, and two
books: a 360-page "field guide" to Paramount's discography, and a
250-page hardcover narrative tracing the unlikely success of the
label. As the latter's Scott Blackwood outlines, Paramount's
indelible contribution to early race records sprang from the
Wisconsin Chair Company's efforts to sell more phonograph
players. And yet, in the label's brief 15 years, it pressed the
first recordings by Jelly Roll Morton, discovered and brought to
prominence Blind Lemon Jefferson, and captured some of the most
transformational blues and jazz artists of the period, from Ma
Rainey and Blind Blake to Louis Armstrong. Novelist, former
Austinite, and onetime Chronicle contributor, Blackwood provides
less an exhaustive history than a poetic, character-driven
account that evokes a mood and context through which to
understand Paramount's impact and the tableau of Chicago amidst
the Great Migration. Building from the academic work of
co-producer Alex van der Tuuk's 2003 book Paramount's Rise and
Fall, Blackwood casts a scene and atmosphere, his lyrical
sketches of artists and settings inspiring more potential stories
to be further pursued than answers. Volume One begins at the end,
in December 1933 on the rooftop of the Grafton, Wis., factory as
Blackwood re-imagines the announcement of the company's
bankruptcy and white employees flinging boxes of black discs down
into the Milwaukee River below. The scene unfolds with a
poignancy that reveals the author's more novelistic intentions,
which also emerge in his portraits of the label's most
fascinating character, Mayo Williams, the first black executive
of a white-owned record company and complex figure who demands
his own biography. Like extensive liner notes, the text becomes a
threshold for entry into the music and the exhaustive catalog of
period artwork in the cabinet. An extraordinary project, Rise and
Fall eagerly anticipates Volume Two's release in November 2014.
(Scott and brother Dean Blackwood -- co-founder of Revenant --
appear at TBF on Sunday, 2:30pm, at Capitol Extension, Rm.
E2.014.)
-30-



-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

"If you don't know where you're going, you might end up some place else."
-Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra