Big Road Blues Show 8/12/18: Selling That Stuff – Blues Songs In Advertisement

Show Notes:

Chicago Defender Ad July 7, 1928

On today’s show we head to the 1920’s, playing a great stack of of blues records, all of which were advertised with lavish ads in the Chicago Defender. When blues finally broke out on record in the early 1920’s the record companies had to find a way to reach black audiences. Since broadcasting was still not generally available, record companies used newspapers and magazines as their principal advertising media. In this period the main vehicles for advertising jazz and blues records were the featured music and theater pages of black newspapers such as the New York Age, New York Amsterdam News, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Baltimore Afro-American and, most notably, the Chicago Defender. The earliest companies to issue Race records, such as OKeh, Columbia, and Victor, already had established forms of advertising, tending to show smiling, coquettish women artists turning to the camera and hence to the reader, with details of their new records given, often with a few glowing words. The first half of the decade was dominated by women; Mamie Smith, Ethel Waters, Clara Smith, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, and Alberta Hunter, who were joined shortly by Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey and her protégé Bessie Smith. The solo male artist took over the second half; Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Charley Patton, Papa Charlie Jackson and others. The ads persisted right up until the depression, occasionally arranging them in large, even full-page, advertisements. Isolated record ads on the page were comparatively rare; generally, two or three or even more might be included on one page, fighting each other for attention. So, for instance, the lower half of the page for Saturday, 4 December, 1928, was shared by three advertisements: One, with a drawn portrait of the singer, was for a spiritual, “Christians Fight On,” sung by guitarist Sam Butler on Vocalion, adjacent to this was an advertisement for “Wasn’t It Nice,” by Howell, Horsley, and Bradford on Columbia and largest, over four columns and higher than the others, was publicity for a Blind Lemon Jefferson blues, “That Black Snake Moan” on Paramount, with a cameo portrait of the singer. Not only did Paramount issue some of the best blues records of the 1920’s, they produced some of the most eye-catching ads, the artwork often telling a short story based on the the song with a few lines about the song and artist. Popular artists like Ida Cox, Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson Blind Blake, Jim Jackson, Lonnie Johnson, Papa Charlie Jackson, Barbecue Bob and Leroy Carr had dozens of their records advertised in the black press. Ads and artwork appeared in other places as well including newspaper supplements, magazines, mail order catalogs and record company catalogs. In addition promotional flyers, advertising banners and dealer’ list of best selling records were sent to record dealers often featuring artwork. For today’s program we keep the focus on the records and ads featured in the Chicago Defender.  I’ve put together a couple of pages where you can view hundreds of these ads. Just click the above links. More will be added in the future.

The record industry itself, under the influence of Ralph Peer of the OKeh company, began to segregate its record catalogs, differentiating between white hillbilly or old-time records and Race records, the “race” being the African Americans. Frequently they were marketed in separate Race record catalogs, or in series of issues under this name. But segregation went even further, with the number series being categorized by the color of the performers. (In 1921, for example, OKeh began to market blues records in its 8000 series; Columbia, with such artists as Bessie Smith and Clara Smith recording for them, introduced their 14000 series at the close of 1923.) There were also record companies that were solely for the African American market, like Black Swan some of whose records were re-released by Paramount. Some 25 percent of all blues and gospel recordings of the 1920s’ and early 1930’s were produced by Paramount, the discs being issued in the Paramount 12000 series for some ten years starting in 1922.

In 1924 the Chicago Defender, in an article reporting the merger of Black Swan with Paramount, noted that the former company had “adopted an extensive advertising program. At one time they were using space in forty colored periodicals. This caused the white companies to extend their advertising likewise into the Race papers.” In the mid-1920’s, Paramount began advertising in the now legendary Chicago Defender, carefully promoting each new Blues release with clever artwork and appropriate hype. The artwork and advertisements were produced in Wisconsin and then sent to Chicago for publication. Apparently, all the printing was done by the local newspaper in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin. The Chicago Defender, which was founded in 1905 and was by 1920 was the most widely circulated black newspaper in the country. The paper enthusiastically promoted Mamie Smith’s first recordings and was responsible for the huge sales of her second release, ‘Crazy Blues’, 75,000 copies of which sold within a month of its release in 1920. The industry accordingly rushed to record more vaudeville blues talent. This led to a flood of advertising in the black press for ‘Race’ artists, first from OKeh, then from Columbia, Vocalion and new labels Black Swan and Paramount, and later Victor. In May 1923, OKeh advertised ‘The World’s Greatest Race Artists on the World’s Greatest Race Records’ which gave these catalogs the name.

Chicago Defender Ad May 21, 1927

After a period of several months during which they attempted several strategies, including long, column-width lists of their issued records—“Hot Stuff! Real Hits”—the record companies began to use portraits of the singers, with a commentary and shorter list. Competition was accelerating, and each record company endeavored to assert its preeminence in the field: OKeh reiterated its claim to having produced “The Original Race Records,” while Paramount was confidently asserting that it was “The Popular Race Record.” OKeh Records was the first label with a Race Records catalog. Prior to this, OKeh had released Mamie Smith in its general catalog as ‘Mamie Smith, Contralto’ and had not marketed her specifically at black consumers. When the Defender celebrated the release however and imbued the occasion with racial pride (‘Mamie made a recording!’) the industry awoke to this new market among black consumers. The black press had of course been covering these artists for some time before the appearance of Race Records advertisements in their pages. Many of the early Race Records stars were featured in the notices for the traveling tent and minstrel shows, and the programs for the vaudeville theaters in Chicago, New York, and Baltimore.

Sometimes an advertisement for a record would be without a rival, like the one for Charley Patton’s “High Water Everywhere,” the singer’s eyewitness account of the 1927 Mississippi floods, which was issued three years after the event. Big selling artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Blake often had more interesting artwork such as the wonderful images in ads for Lemon’s “Lemon’s Cannon Ball”, “Rabbit Foot Blues”, “That Black Snake Moan” or Blind Blake’s “Hard Road Blues, “Police Dog Blues” and “Wabash Rag.” Sometimes a lone advertisement for a record had other rivals for the reader’s attention: OKeh’s publicity for “New Two-Sixteen Blues” by Little Hat Jones shared the news page with other advertisements inviting the reader to get “Straight Black Hair. Yours in minutes,” or to “Have Luck in Love. Gain your sweetheart’s love and affection.” But single record ads on the page were not the norm, with several on one page vying for the readers attention. When a cameo portrait of the singer was used it was frequently a photograph printed in halftone, but sometimes a line drawing, copied from a photograph, was used instead. In view of the limitations of reproduction in newspapers of the period, a line drawing could be clearer than a halftone photograph. As the composition of the advertisements progressed from simple portraiture, or groups of portraits, to illustrations with recognizable visual themes and contexts, they became increasingly spatial, in that the scenes depicted became progressively more three-dimensional.

Paramount and OKeh collapsed with the Depression, but Vocalion, Columbia, Brunswick, and several dime-store labels continued until the United States entered World War II, when shellac, used for 78 rpm records, was reserved for military use only. F. W. Boerner, who had continued his mail order record service for several years after Paramount folded, adapted several former Paramount advertisements to later issues from other companies. For example, the drawing for pianist Lee (Leothus) Green’s “Death Alley Blues,”* which depicted a gunman lurking in a garbage-strewn back street, was re-used to sell Peetie Wheatstraw’s “Kidnapper’s Blues,” also made for Vocalion in 1936. Back in the late 1920’s, the F.W. Boerner Company billed itself as the “World’s Largest Distributor of Race Records.” The Boerner company was headquartered in Port Washington, Wisconsin and its owners were indirectly connected with Paramount. It was Fred Boerner and his friends at Paramount who made a huge impact on the world of Blues music by operating a mail order company directed at African American record buyers throughout the country. As the Great Depression took its toll, Paramount stopped advertising in the Defender (though they continued to produce artwork and promotional materials they sent directly to record stores) and eventually folded in 1933. The Boerner company continued to limp along until the 1940’s when it finally succumbed.

Chicago Defender Ad Dec. 5, 1925

In the 1960’s, Dutch Blues researcher and Paramount label collector Max Vreede first discovered some of the advertisements while doing research for his Paramount Records Discography (Paramount 12000-13000). He found, on microfilm, some ancient issues of the Chicago Defender, which contained some of the artwork. His book (long out of print) reproduced many images for the first time. There has been no comprehensive book of these ads although collector John Tefteller had at one time been planning such a book, even buying all the microfilm that contained the Chicago Defender archives.

A major discovery in the 1980’s, of what has been described as “a huge stash” of promotional material, was made by a couple of newspaper reporters from Wisconsin. It included the original Paramount artwork for many of its blues issues, some of which has been reproduced in calendar form by their eventual purchaser, John Tefteller. They reveal that the draftsmanship was often more crisp and confident in the use of line than had been evident in their reproductions in the Chicago Defender. They also show with greater clarity the photographic portraits of many of the singers. With regard to the Paramount advertisements in the African American newspapers, these were the outcome of an initiative by British-born salesman Art Satherley, who convinced the executives at Port Washington that they should advertise in the Defender, which had a circulation figure of 200,000 per issue. Blues researchers and historians Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow noted that a young employee, Henry Stephany, prepared the material and an unspecified Milwaukee company did the layouts. Photographs were taken of some of the artists by Dan Burley, a black employee of the newspaper, by arrangement with Mayo Williams, a prominent black talent scout, recording salesman, and session manager, whom Calt and Wardlow interviewed. With regard to the illustrators, John Tefteller conducted “an exhaustive research” to ascertain who the artists were, or to trace their descendants, but he was unsuccessful in this. Consequently, it is not known whether the artists were African American or not. For the past fifteen years Tefteller has been issuing the artwork in his annual Blues Calendars.