Below is a list of the record companies who issued Race Records between 1923 and 1924. Not all companies used the term Race Records, not all companies created a separate Race series, but these companies all issued discs of performances by Black artists that were aimed at the Black record-buying public.
The date in brackets after the name is the probable year of the first Race Music release.
Victor (1923)
Victor was the main label of the Victor Talking Machine Company, incorporated in 1901, which manufactured gramophones and discs. It was set up by Eldridge R. Johnson, a mechanical engineer from Camden, New Jersey. Its two subsidiary labels were Monarch and De Luxe. Each label used a different sized disc. These variations were abandoned in 1905, when Victor became the only label used by the company, bearing the famous trademark image of Nipper the dog listening to his master’s voice. Victor quickly grew in importance. The company opened a major pressing plant in Camden, New Jersey, and continued to improve its technology.
The year 1908 marked the introduction of double-sided Victor discs and the also of a new label Victrola, used for the highest quality Classical recordings only. The name Victrola was taken from the record player that Victor had introduced in 1906, which became extremely successful, helping Victor become the market leader.
In the twenties, that pattern continued. Franchises were set up in Argentina and Japan, a branch was established in Canada, and another pressing plant was opened in Oakland, California. In 1925, the company began using electric recording technology and brought out a new version of the Victrola player. In typical style, the changes were kept secret until the launch date, November 2nd 1925, called “Victor Day” by the company. The electrically-recorded discs are marketed as “orthophonic” recordings and bear a VE code at the top of the label.
The success of Victor could hardly go unnoticed! In 1929, the company was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America. The Victor company became a division of RCA, known as the RCA Victor division, but RCA kept the Victor label until 1946, when it was replaced by RCA Victor. The Victor name was finally dropped from the division’s title in 1968, when it was re-named RCA Records. As part of the purchase, RCA gained a controlling interest in the Gramophone Company Ltd. in the UK, which later became part of EMI.
The new RCA Victor division continued up-grading its discs and record-players during the thirties. A new turntable was introduced in 1934, the Duo Jr. It was sold at virtually cost-price and was clearly meant to enhance disc sales. A year later, an iconic new player appeared, the RCA Victor M Special, designed by John Vassos.
The RCA Victor M Special Portable Record-Player from 1935
Vassos also designed a beautiful microphone.
During the next decade, RCA Victor developed the 45 rpm single to replace the shellac 10 or 12 inch single. The first issue was in 1949, a year after Columbia’s introduction of the 12 inch 331⁄3 rpm Long Playing disc. Together, the two companies had brought the recording industry into a new phase.
For almost fifty years Victor had been the foremost record brand in America. It was Victor that recorded the first-ever Blues, “The Memphis Blues”, played by the Victor Military Band. It was recorded in Camden, NJ, in 1914. And it was Victor that recorded the first-ever Jazz track, “Livery Stable Blues”, played by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, in 1917.
Unsurprisingly, Victor also played a significant part in the production of Race Records, despite being slow to see the opportunities offered by music of Black origin. Up to 1929, Race recordings were not differentiated. They were included in the general series. The earliest recordings by Black artists that could be seen as Race Records probably date from 1923, when the advert below appeared.
Listed on the advert above is a Vaudeville Blues track by Rosa Henderson, with Black multi-instrumentalist Wendell P. Talbert at the piano. “Good Woman’s Blues” was Victor’s “clean” answer to “Crazy Blues”, no doubt. It is interesting to note the move from Jazz group to solo piano for the backing.
In January 1929, Victor was taken over by RCA, who decided to launch a V-38000 series which covered Jazz and other genres. That series was soon split into two with Jazz continuing in the V-38000 series, while Blues and Gospel were now released on a V-38500 series, starting in April.
After an initial reluctance to get involved in the recording of Country Blues, Victor had employed talent scout Ralph Peer and sent him to Memphis and New Orleans with a field recording unit. By 1929, Peers had found Victoria Spivey, Blind Willie McTell, Frank Stokes, Jim Jackson, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes, Tommy Johnson, plus a number of Bands, including the Memphis Jug Band and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. In the Gospel field, he had recorded Rev. F. W. McGee, the Pace Jubilee Singers and the Taskiana Four. RCA had a good foundation for their decision to run a separate Blues and Gospel series.
In their book “Recording the Blues”, Robert Dixon and John Godrich have described the positive state of Victor Records towards the end of the nineteen twenties:
“1927 had been a glorious year for all types of recording, with industry sales exceeding 100 million for the first time since 1921. Victor’s receipts had climbed back to $48 million, more than double what they had been in 1925. Exact figures are not available, but it seems probable that race records were making up 5%, or a little more, of total industry sales. The average blues or gospel record had sales in the region of ten thousand.”
Then disaster struck with the Wall Street Crash in 1929, followed by the Great Depression. Sales of recorded music fell dramatically. Victor tried to stimulate sales by advertising. A campaign was launched in the Chicago Defender from March to December 1930 but with no effect. The following year Blues and Gospel releases were cut by around thirty percent and a new 23250 series begun. RCA just managed to survive.
Columbia Records (1923)
The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded in 1889, named after the location of its head office in Washington DC. Its original function was selling and servicing Edison phonographs but the manufacture of cylinders was soon added to its business model. By 1901, it had introduced single-sided discs alongside cylinders, perfecting double-sided recordings in 1908. Four years later, Columbia abandoned cylinders, splitting the business into two separate companies. One made disc players and the other made the discs, now operating in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Their main competitor was the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose Victrola player was highly successful.
After a run of successful years, Columbia hit problems in the early twenties that took the company into receivership. Eventually, it was taken over by its UK subsidiary in 1925, with the launch of a new electric recording system that had been developed by Western Electric. The quality of the electric recordings was significantly better, giving Columbia an edge over some of its competitors that enhanced its new-found financial stability and facilitated the acquisition of OKeh Records in 1926. With that take-over, Columbia inherited some talented artists from OKeh’s Race Series, notably Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams. During the remaining years of the decade, Columbia built a strong roster of Jazz and Country artists, with existing Columbia artist Bessie Smith heading the Blues singers that included Blind Willie Johnson and Barbecue Bob.
Bessie Smith had been signed by Columbia at the start of 1923 by talent scout Frank Walker and made her first recording in February of that year. “Downhearted Blues” had already been recorded by its co-writer Alberta Hunter for Paramount Records, but Bessie Smith turned it into a big hit. Her early releases were on Columbia’s A-series, alongside a variety of genres, but Columbia decided later in the year to set up a Race Records series, with Bessie Smith given the honour of launching it with her rendition of “Cemetery Blues”, issued in September 1923.
Columbia also set up a number of budget labels, using the old acoustic recording process to keep costs down. Harmony and Velvet Tone were the two main low-price labels, with Diva Records produced for sale in W. T. Grant department stores.
Following the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression, Columbia UK merged with the Gramophone Company, forming Electric and Musical Industries, generally known as EMI. The American side of the business was then sold, to avoid problems with anti-trust legislation, to the Grigsby-Grunow Company in 1931. When that company declared bankruptcy two years later, Columbia was acquired by Sacro Enterprises Inc, which was probably a shell company set up by Consolidated Films Industries. The CFI subsidiary ARC took over operational control of the Columbia assets and, in a bid to draw attention to the ailing label, introduced a new line of Columbia Royal Blue Records that were pressed using blue shellac. It was an echo of the red-brown Vocalion coloured discs, but the innovation only lasted a few years.
A significant development came in the mid-thirties, when Columbia recorded a number of Southern Gospel artists, including Charles David Tillman and then the Chuck Wagon Gang, who went on to achieve sales of thirty-seven million copies for their series of Gospel songs issued from 1936.
In 1937, Columbia also had the good fortune to sign writer, producer and talent-scout John Hammond. Hammond built up a strong Jazz roster that included Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, and Joe Venuti. He took Columbia into the forties on a tidal wave of Swing. After World War ll, he continued adding considerable value to the company via his key signings across a range of genres. It was Hammond who later brought Aretha Franklin and Stevie Ray Vaughan to Columbia, while also pushing hard for the music of Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith to be re-issued.
In 1938, ARC was taken over by the Columbia Broadcasting System, which Columbia Records had helped to set up in 1927 before quickly selling its shares. The two companies that bore the Columbia name had been completely separate for ten years; now they were re-united. By 1939, the ARC name had gone and Columbia had re-emerged as the Columbia Recording Corporation Inc. registered in Delaware. John Hammond was promoted to Associate Director Popular Music and ARC executive Art Satherley continued to run Columbia’s Hillbilly and Country music operations.
Further changes in 1939 saw the Brunswick label being phased out in favour of a Columbia series that was sold for fifty cents per disc. The Vocalion label went too, in 1940, replaced by a new OKeh series. The Race Records of the twenties and thirties were ready to evolve into Rhythm & Blues.
Ajax Records (1923)
Ajax Records was established in 1921 as a subsidiary of Compo Company in Lachine, Quebec Province, in Canada. The Head of the company was H.S. Berliner, whose father Emile played a key role in the invention of the disc recording system at the end of the nineteenth century. Given that link, it isn’t surprising that Ajax achieved high-quality recordings, charging seventy-five cents per disc.
The company’s operation was unusual. The discs were produced in New York City and in Montreal, but the main office was in Chicago. Most of the output was recorded at Compo’s studios in New York and Montreal, but Ajax also leased master discs from the New York Recording Laboratories and the Regal Record Company. The first recordings were not issued until 1923 and were only sold in the United States. Production was shut down in 1925. Most of Ajax’s output was acoustically recorded, with only a few later issues able to take advantage of new electronic microphones.
Ajax Records disc (Source: 78.26, Wikimedia Commons)
Ajax concentrated on Jazz and Blues, using marketing slogans such as “the superior race records”, but a few mainstream Pop and Classical singles were also released. Distribution was limited in the main to the North Eastern States.
Ajax managed to prise Mamie Smith away from OKeh in 1924, adding to an interesting roster of female Vaudeville Blues singers that included Ethel Finnie, Monette Moore, Helen Gross, Rosa Henderson, Viola McCoy and Edna Hicks. Ajax also hired outstanding Black pianist and bandleader Fletcher Henderson, following Henderson’s departure from Black Swan Records in 1923. It was a strong line-up, but only lasted a short time.
Broadway Records (circa 1923)
Broadway was set up in the early 1920s by the Bridgeport Die and Machine Company in Connecticut, using masters from Paramount. In 1924, the company added masters from Emerson and Banner. When Bridgeport declared bankruptcy in 1925, the Broadway label was bought by New York Recording Laboratories, based in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
NYRL had been established by the Wisconsin Chair Company, who also owned Paramount. It was not unusual to find furniture manufacturers involving themselves in record manufacture, as many of them would have making cabinets for record players and their outlets were selling them. It was an obvious next step for them to produce discs too. Between 1925 and 1930, Broadway releases were pressed from Plaza masters and sold in Montgomery Ward stores. When NYRL ceased trading in 1932, the label was sold to ARC and used for a short time before being discontinued. Decca later resurrected the label for a short-lived series.
Sunshine Records (1923)
Sunshine Records was a small private record label set up by Black business partners John Spikes and his brother Reb Spikes, who were the owners of a music store in Los Angeles. The brothers were also song-writers, publishing sheet music of their songs and of some other writers too. They co-wrote several of the tracks that appeared on their label and also on Nordskog recordings.
They arranged a deal with Nordskog Records that gave them the rights to certain recordings by Nordskog of Jazz and Blues performances. The discs were recorded by Nordskog, then pressed by Arto Records. Finally, a Sunshine label was stuck onto the discs, which were then sold in the Spikes’ music store.
The deal with Nordskog resulted in the issue of six double-sided recordings of Jazz and Blues performances. All of them featured Kid Ory’s New Orleans Jazz band (billed as Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra), with Roberta Dudley or theatre and film actress Ruth Lee singing on four of them. Several of the Sunshine releases were also released by Nordskog.
Gennett Records (1924)
Gennett Records was founded in 1917 in Richmond, Indiana, by the Starr Piano Company. Gennett was the main label, with four subsidiaries, Starr (founded in 1915), Champion, Superior and Van Speaking. The company also produced some discs for Silvertone, Challenge and Supertone, as well as pressing discs for several more small companies. Many of the early artists recording for Gennett were paid between fifteen and fifty dollars for each session, with a one penny royalty per disc.
The company’s first studio was set up in New York City, with a second added at the Richmond site in 1921. The location in Indiana facilitated access to artists from the mid-western and southern states, which allowed Gennett to build up a strong roster of Black artists, with a focus on Jazz and Blues, despite the company’s setting in an area that had a significant number of Ku Klan Klan sympathisers.
Around 1925, Jelly Roll Morton made a recording at Gennett as a featured soloist with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, a White Jazz Band..
The names on the Gennett discography make impressive reading. In the field of Jazz there were Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, and Duke Ellington. For Blues fans, Gennett offered Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Georgia Tom Dorsey, Scrapper Blackwell and Big Bill Broonzy.
On the Gospel front, Thomas A. Dorsey came to Richmond to record, as did Homer Rodeheaver. There were also many Hillbilly recordings made at Gennett, including those of hundreds of performers from Kentucky thanks to talent scouts Dennis Taylor and Fiddlin’ Doc Roberts.
One advantage that Gennett had over many of its rivals was the chain of stores that Starr owned in several big cities. Temporary studios were set up in Starr’s stores in cities such as Cincinnati, Birmingham and Chicago, in order to record specific artists. Delta Blues singer William Harris and Country Blues singer Jaybird Coleman were both recorded in the Starr Piano store in Birmingham, Alabama.
Champion Records was established in 1926 as a low-price subsidiary, which enabled Gennett to re-issue some of their library of recordings. Often, the original artist’s name was modified! The use of pseudonyms may have helped to reduce the payment of royalties, but it must have confused some of those who bought the Champion releases, only to find that they had the original too.
The quality of Gennett’s recordings during the early years was not very good. Most companies were able to switch from acoustic recording to electric microphones in the mid-twenties, with a significant jump in sound quality. Gennett did make the switch, using a system leased from General Electric, but it was not until they changed to the RCA Photophone process in 1927 that things really improved. Around the same time, the materials used to make the discs was also changed, so that the wear-and-tear from frequent playing was reduced.
To mark these improvements, a new label design was used, with the description “new electrobeam” over the company name.
When the General Depression came, Gennett was forced to cut back until only the Champion label was in operation. Production ceased completely in 1934 and the Gennett and Champion labels were sold to Decca Records, along with some of the masters. For a while, the Richmond factory was used by Decca, until the latter acquired the Newaygo site in Michigan.
There is now a Gennett Walk of Fame , starting in South 1st Street in Richmond at the site of the Starr Piano Company, which forms part of the American Discovery Trail. All the famous names are marked, including Fats Waller, Sidney Bechet, Fletcher Henderson, Alberta Hunter, Lonnie Johnson, and Roosevelt Sykes.
