1918 – 1934
OKeh
The label that opened the race series
General Phonograph Corporation · New York
The house
OKeh was founded by Otto Heinemann, a German-American businessman whose General Phonograph Corporation had been making needles and motors. In 1920 the label recorded Mamie Smith singing Crazy Blues — a blues sung by a Black woman, aimed at Black record buyers — and it sold in numbers that startled the whole industry.
What followed was the race series: a decade in which the record companies, OKeh at the front, recorded blues, gospel, jazz and string band music that no other medium was preserving. Ralph Peer ran much of OKeh's field recording, travelling to Atlanta, New Orleans and St Louis with portable equipment.
Columbia acquired OKeh in 1926 and kept the name for its blues and jazz catalogue. Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven sides are OKeh records.
What it sounds like
Field-recorded sides vary enormously — hotel rooms and warehouses, not studios — but the performances are irreplaceable. The New York studio work of 1926 onwards is clean and well balanced.
On the shelf
Pulling sleeves…