1917 – 1932
Paramount
Terrible shellac, irreplaceable music
Wisconsin Chair Company · Port Washington and Grafton, Wisconsin
The house
Paramount was run by a furniture manufacturer that had started making phonograph cabinets and decided it might as well supply the records too. By any commercial measure it was a marginal operation in a small Wisconsin town, and by any historical measure it is one of the most important labels ever to exist.
From 1922 its race series recorded Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, Skip James, Blind Blake and Son House — a catalogue that amounts to the foundation document of recorded blues. Much of it was sold by mail order through advertisements in the Chicago Defender.
Paramount pressed on notoriously poor shellac with a high filler content, and it did not keep its metal parts. The company folded in 1932; some titles survive today in a single known copy, and a few are known only from the catalogue.
What it sounds like
Loud surface noise is intrinsic, not a fault of the transfer — the shellac was gritty when new. Listen through it: what is underneath is often the only recording that artist ever made.
On the shelf
Pulling sleeves…