The Rise and Fall of Paramount - a second tranche

Serendipity.

The Wisconsin Chair Company only stumbled into the phonograph-cabinet business after fire destroyed the Edison Phonograph Works in New York, and they got the sub-contract. Somehow as part of the deal they were also outfitted with disc manufacturing equipment.  The phonograph furniture they were now making was pretty expensive. They saw making records as a novelty device for driving cabinet sales.  That’s all.

Paramount Records and New York Recording Laboratories were incorporated by the parent furniture company in 1917.  But quality was never a prime consideration. The priority instead was low cost.  Their cheap shellac used filler materials such as pipe-clay, crushed limestone, silica, cotton flock, lamp black and various odds and ends.   These records weren't made to last.  Not like their furniture. They became notorious for poor sound and a sad lack of durability.

Those first five years of not really knowing what they were doing, and not really caring much about it, brought Paramount to the brink of bankruptcy.

Their second five years, 1923-27, is the period for which Paramount seems most remembered. Here's where they constructed the country blues and made "the Delta" into its heartland.

Of course, they had no idea at the time just how significant their catalogue would become to us guys inhabiting the future.  If they had, perhaps their legacy would have been preserved on better quality shellac.

Here's our second part of Volume 1.
1.79 MegaBytes
https://mega.co.nz/#!TUIz3Jhb!e4DwBeAdem6Cavmu5zDIreBuxRNbIzPbbhwRH438Qp0
The Paramount Track List Vol 1.pdf:
https://mega.co.nz/#!TNY2BSYJ!bxTm_WSSyiaIfVwzCnUbvgmNNczSZ_cBbKVlAEByQas