In the 2001 movie “Ghost World,” 18-year-old Enid picks up the arm on her turntable, drops the needle in the groove, and plays a song yet another time. She can’t get over the emotional power of bluesman Skip James’ 1931 recording of “Devil Got My Woman.” If you know anything about 78 records, it only makes sense that a nerdy 40-something 78 collector named Seymour would have introduced her to this tune. As played by Steve Buscemi, Seymour is an awkward, introverted sadsack based on the film’s director, Terry Zwigoff, who—along with his comic-artist pal, Robert Crumb—is an avid collector of 78s, a medium whose most haunting and rarest tracks are the blues songs recorded in the 1920s and ’30s.
Nearly a decade later, music critic and reporter Amanda Petrusich had the same intoxicating experience Enid (Thora Birch) did, listening to very same song, although she got to hear “Devil Got My Woman” played on its original 78, courtesy of a real-life collector, who owns this prohibitively expensive shellac record pressed by Paramount. Only three or four copies are known to exist.
The gramophone, a type of phonograph that played 10-inch shellac discs at 78 rpm, was developed in the late 19th century. But it wasn’t until the 1910s and ’20s that the technology became more affordable and less cumbersome so that an average family could have one at home. The records, which could only play 2 to 3 minutes of sound per side, had their heyday in the ’20s and ’30s. They lost their cachet in the ’40s, when radio became the most popular format for music lovers. Then in the ’50s and ’60s, 78 records were phased out in favor of long-playing vinyl records.
Paramount blues records, in particular, seem to get under the skin of modern 78 collectors. From 1922 to 1932, the label, founded by a furniture company in suburban Wisconsin, discovered some of the most legendary blues icons of the 20th century—Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Blake, Ma Rainey, and Blind Lemon Jefferson—thanks to African American producer J. Mayo Williams, who recruited talent scouts to find these impoverished artists in the South, and then paid the artists a pittance to record for Paramount. These “race records,” meant exclusively for black audiences, were made in limited runs from a cheap, low-quality mixture of shellac that gives them a ghostly, crackling sound. Their rarity, the strange sounds they make, and the brilliance of these artists (who mostly remained obscure at the time) has led to a full-blown fervor in the 78 world. Even rock star Jack White, who founded Third Man Records, is obsessed with Paramount. Last year, White teamed up with Revenant Records’ Dean Blackwood to release a box set of vinyl albums featuring 800 known Paramount tracks. (Yours for a paltry $400.)
Petrusich, who spent years immersing herself in the world of 78 collectors as a reporter, got so obsessed with Paramount Records, she went diving into the murky waters of the Milwaukee River to look for discarded shellac. Now, she’s released a book on her experience about getting swept up in this mania, Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records. We talked to Petrusich about the characters she met, the important preservationist work they’re doing, and how white men ended up writing the narrative of a music genre created by impoverished African Americans. (...)
Collectors Weekly: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of Paramount Records?
Petrusich: Paramount is this incredible label that was born from a company called the Wisconsin Chair Company, which was making chairs, obviously. The company had started building phonograph cabinets to contain turntables, which they also were licensing. And they developed, like many furniture companies, an arm that was a record label so that they could make records to sell with the cabinets. This was before a time in which record stores existed. People bought their records at the furniture store, because they were things you needed to make your furniture work.
So the Wisconsin Chair Company, based in the Grafton-Port Washington area of Wisconsin, started the Paramount label. And they accidentally ended up recording whom I believe to be some of the most incredible performers in American musical history. Paramount started a “race record” series in the late 1920s after a few other labels had success doing that model, by which African American artists recorded music for African American audiences. Through a complex series of talent scouts, they would bring artists mostly from the Southeast up to Wisconsin to record, which in and of itself was just insane and miraculous. These are Mississippi bluesmen, being brought to this white rural town in Wisconsin, and you can’t imagine how foreign it must have been to them to see that landscape. Sometimes the performers would record for Paramount in Chicago, but later in Paramount’s history, the company built a studio right in Grafton, and it was a notoriously bad studio. It had shoddy, handmade equipment, and then the records that Paramount was pressing were really cheap. It was a very bad mixture of shellac, and Paramount records are infamous for having a lot of surface noise.
But as I said, they captured some of the best performers in American history, folks like Skip James, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Geeshie Wiley—all these really incredible singers. At the time, Paramount didn’t know what it was doing. It hasn’t been until now that people are like, “Oh my God, this label rewrote American history.” I don’t think Paramount was remotely cognizant of the significance of the work that was being recorded in their studio.
Nearly a decade later, music critic and reporter Amanda Petrusich had the same intoxicating experience Enid (Thora Birch) did, listening to very same song, although she got to hear “Devil Got My Woman” played on its original 78, courtesy of a real-life collector, who owns this prohibitively expensive shellac record pressed by Paramount. Only three or four copies are known to exist.The gramophone, a type of phonograph that played 10-inch shellac discs at 78 rpm, was developed in the late 19th century. But it wasn’t until the 1910s and ’20s that the technology became more affordable and less cumbersome so that an average family could have one at home. The records, which could only play 2 to 3 minutes of sound per side, had their heyday in the ’20s and ’30s. They lost their cachet in the ’40s, when radio became the most popular format for music lovers. Then in the ’50s and ’60s, 78 records were phased out in favor of long-playing vinyl records.
Paramount blues records, in particular, seem to get under the skin of modern 78 collectors. From 1922 to 1932, the label, founded by a furniture company in suburban Wisconsin, discovered some of the most legendary blues icons of the 20th century—Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Blake, Ma Rainey, and Blind Lemon Jefferson—thanks to African American producer J. Mayo Williams, who recruited talent scouts to find these impoverished artists in the South, and then paid the artists a pittance to record for Paramount. These “race records,” meant exclusively for black audiences, were made in limited runs from a cheap, low-quality mixture of shellac that gives them a ghostly, crackling sound. Their rarity, the strange sounds they make, and the brilliance of these artists (who mostly remained obscure at the time) has led to a full-blown fervor in the 78 world. Even rock star Jack White, who founded Third Man Records, is obsessed with Paramount. Last year, White teamed up with Revenant Records’ Dean Blackwood to release a box set of vinyl albums featuring 800 known Paramount tracks. (Yours for a paltry $400.)
Petrusich, who spent years immersing herself in the world of 78 collectors as a reporter, got so obsessed with Paramount Records, she went diving into the murky waters of the Milwaukee River to look for discarded shellac. Now, she’s released a book on her experience about getting swept up in this mania, Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records. We talked to Petrusich about the characters she met, the important preservationist work they’re doing, and how white men ended up writing the narrative of a music genre created by impoverished African Americans. (...)
Collectors Weekly: Can you tell me a little bit about the history of Paramount Records?
Petrusich: Paramount is this incredible label that was born from a company called the Wisconsin Chair Company, which was making chairs, obviously. The company had started building phonograph cabinets to contain turntables, which they also were licensing. And they developed, like many furniture companies, an arm that was a record label so that they could make records to sell with the cabinets. This was before a time in which record stores existed. People bought their records at the furniture store, because they were things you needed to make your furniture work.
So the Wisconsin Chair Company, based in the Grafton-Port Washington area of Wisconsin, started the Paramount label. And they accidentally ended up recording whom I believe to be some of the most incredible performers in American musical history. Paramount started a “race record” series in the late 1920s after a few other labels had success doing that model, by which African American artists recorded music for African American audiences. Through a complex series of talent scouts, they would bring artists mostly from the Southeast up to Wisconsin to record, which in and of itself was just insane and miraculous. These are Mississippi bluesmen, being brought to this white rural town in Wisconsin, and you can’t imagine how foreign it must have been to them to see that landscape. Sometimes the performers would record for Paramount in Chicago, but later in Paramount’s history, the company built a studio right in Grafton, and it was a notoriously bad studio. It had shoddy, handmade equipment, and then the records that Paramount was pressing were really cheap. It was a very bad mixture of shellac, and Paramount records are infamous for having a lot of surface noise.
But as I said, they captured some of the best performers in American history, folks like Skip James, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Geeshie Wiley—all these really incredible singers. At the time, Paramount didn’t know what it was doing. It hasn’t been until now that people are like, “Oh my God, this label rewrote American history.” I don’t think Paramount was remotely cognizant of the significance of the work that was being recorded in their studio.
by Lisa Hix, Collectors Weekly | Read more:
Image: Robert Crumb
