Black Swan Records
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Black Swan Records | |
---|---|
Parent company | Jazzology |
Founded | 1921 |
Founder | Harry Pace |
Defunct | 1924 |
Distributor(s) | George H. Buck Jr. Jazz Foundation |
Genre | Jazz, blues |
Country of origin | U.S. |
Location | New Orleans, Louisiana |
Official website | www |
Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans. Founded by Harry Pace with W.C. Handy, Black Swan Records was established to give African Americans more creative liberties.[1] Eighteen months earlier, in 1919, the Broome Special Phonograph Records was the earliest label owned and operated by African American George W. Broome in Medford, Massachusetts, featuring Black classical musicians including Harry T. Burleigh and Edward Boatner.[2][3][4] Black Swan was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of its historic jazz and blues recordings.[citation needed]
History
Black Swan's parent company, Pace Phonograph Corporation, was founded in March 1921 by
Bert Williams was an early investor in Pace Phonograph. Williams also promised to record for the company once his exclusive contract with Columbia Records ended, but he died before that could occur.
Pace Phonograph Corporation was renamed Black Swan Phonograph Company in the fall of 1922. Both the record label and production company were named after 19th century opera star Elizabeth Greenfield, who was known as the Black Swan.[7]
Former employees of Pace & Handy staffed the new company: Fletcher Henderson, who functioned as the recording manager, provided piano accompaniment for singers and led a small band for recording sessions. William Grant Still was named arranger and later musical director.[7] Ads for Black Swan often ran in The Crisis.[8]
Black Swan proved moderately successful. It recorded African American musicians, but as the label grew in popularity, Pace believed competing white-owned labels such as Columbia Records sought to "obstruct the progress and curtail the popularity of Black Swan Records".[9] Although advertising for Black Swan Records claimed all its musicians and employees were African American, it sometimes used white musicians to back some of its singers.
The production company declared bankruptcy in December 1923, and in March 1924 Paramount Records bought the Black Swan label. The Chicago Defender reported the event by detailing important accomplishments of Black Swan in a short career span, including: pointed out—to the major, all white-owned, record companies—the significant market demand for black artists; prompted several major companies to begin publishing music by these performers. In addition, the Defender credited Pace with showing the majors how to target black audiences and to advertise in black newspapers. Paramount discontinued the Black Swan label a short time later.
The Black Swan label was revived in the 1990s for a series of CD reissues of historic jazz and blues recordings originally issued on Black Swan and Paramount. These CDs were issued by George H. Buck Jr's Jazzology and GHB labels under the control of the George H. Buck Jr. Jazz Foundation, which gained rights to the Paramount back-catalogue but not the Paramount name. Rights to the name "Black Swan Records" were also transferred to GHB.
Artists
- Bessie Allison, original member of the Shuffle Along cast
- C. Carroll Clark, baritone who was the first artist recorded by the label[10]
- Four Harmony Kings, vocal quartet
- Henry Creamer and J. Turner Layton, vaudeville duo
- Katie Crippen, vaudeville singer
- Kemper Harreld, violinist
- Lucille Hegamin, jazz and blues singer
- Revella Hughes, soprano featured on one of the label's first releases[5]
- Alberta Hunter, blues singer
- James P. Johnson, jazz pianist
- Hattie King Reavis, soprano singer
- Trixie Smith, blues singer, second only to Ethel Waters in Black Swan sales.
- Florence Cole Talbert, first classical artist to record with Black Swan,[13] soprano, music educator
- "Mamie Jones", pseudonym for singer Aileen Stanley who was one of many white artists to record for Black Swan. These artists were "passing for colored" since the label was advertised as featuring only black artists.[14]
- Eva Taylor, blues singer
- Ethel Waters, jazz, gospel, blues singer. She had the label's first commercially successful records, and remained their best seller.
- Essie Whitman, vaudeville singer[5][10][14][15]
See also
- List of record labels
Bibliography
Notes
- ^ Suisman 2004.
- ^ Sutton & Nauck, 2000, pp. 21, 27.
- ProQuest 1288021302.
- ^ "Broome Special Phonograph Records". www.vialibri.net. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
- ^ a b c d Weusi, 1996.
- ^ Brothers, 2014, pp. 127–129.
- ^ a b Brooks, 2004, pp. 168–169.
- ^ Crisis, November 1922, p. 44.
- ^ Dallas Express, January 14, 1922, p. 1.
- ^ a b Settlemier, "2000 Series".
- ^ Crisis, July 1922, p. 139.
- ^ Gibbs, December 12, 2012, p. 105.
- ^ Smith, 1996, pp. 130–133.
- ^ a b "White Performers," 2005.
- ^ Settlemier, "Miscellaneous Series".
References
- Brooks, Tim (2004). Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919. Urbana: ).
- ISSN 0011-1422 – via Google Books (Harvard) .)
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- ISSN 0011-1422. Retrieved January 27, 2010 – via Google Books .)
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- Dallas Express (The). "Black Swan Company to Sue Columbia Record Company – Pace Company Alleges That New Singer Under Contract Is Being Featured by Columbia Company as Its Exclusive Artist, Will Sue". Vol. 41, no. 18. p. 1 (cols. 6–7, top).
- Access option 1 (PDF) – via Fultonhistory.com .
- Access option 2 – via .
- Access option 3 – via Newspapers.com.
- Gibbs, Craig Martin (December 18, 2012). Black Recording Artists, 1877–1926: An Annotated Discography. McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 105 – via .
- Settlemier, Tyrone (November 30, 2006). "Black Swan Miscellaneous Series". The Online Discographical Project (discography). Retrieved February 2, 2010.
- Settlemier, Tyrone (September 19, 2008). "Black Swan 2000 Series Numerical Listing". The Online Discographical Project (discography). Retrieved February 2, 2010.
- .
- Via Internet Archive.
- Via Google Books (limited preview).
- .
- 1st ed.. 1971 – via ISBN 0-3930-2156-4.
- Southern, Eileen; Southerland, William M. (1983). 2nd ed.. ISBN 0-3939-5279-7.
- Suisman, David (2004). "Co-Workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music". The Journal of American History. 90 (4): 1295–1324. OCLC 5322045005.
- Sutton, Allan; Nauck, Kurt (2000). American Record Labels and Companies – An Encyclopedia (1891–1943) (1st ed.). Denver: Mainspring Press. p. 417. ISBN 0-9671819-0-9.
- Sutton, Allan (August 29, 2007). "Black Swan's Other Stars". Mainspring Press. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved February 2, 2010 – via Wayback Machine.
- Thygesen, Helge; Berresford, Mark; Shor, Russ (1996). Black Swan: The Record Label of the Harlem Renaissance – A History and Catalogue Listing Including Olympic Records and Associated Labels. .
- Weusi, Jitu K. (né Leslie R. Campbell; 1939–2013) (1996). "The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records". A History of Jazz Before 1930 (Spring 1996 term paper for a graduate course in music "Black Music in New York City 1900–1935", Brooklyn College; unpublished). The Red Hot Jazz Archive. Archived from the original on April 27, 2016. Retrieved February 2, 2010 – via Wayback Machine.
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- "White Performers on Black Swan" (discography). Mainspring Press (blog). 2005. Archived from the original on September 24, 2010. Retrieved February 3, 2010.