A Label Paramount To Early Blues And Jazz

By Ed Ward

Published August 6, 2014 at 2:55 PM EDT

There's nothing a certain type of record collector likes better than finding a stack of 78s on the Paramount label. Between 1917 and 1932, the label, which was one of several run by a furniture company in Grafton, Wisc., released thousands of records, but its real accomplishment was recording some of the greatest early blues and jazz performers.

Jack White's Third Man Records has joined with the reissue label Revenant to release the first of two packages documenting the label, with 800 songs from the label's first ten years on a USB drive packed with several books and packages of graphics, in a hand-made, velvet-upholstered oak box. Fresh Air critic Ed Ward has the story.

Ed Ward

Ed Ward is the rock-and-roll historian on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

See stories by Ed Ward

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