Paramount

Label based in Grafton, Wisconsin, formed by a chair-making company, which knew nothing of the music business. Its founders had arrived at the scheme of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive phonograph cabinets the company had recently begun manufacturing. The label's business plan was to sell the music of black artists to black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the “race records” era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong, Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly Roll Morton.
It had a period of inactivity between 1932 and 1942 (approx.), and then closed permanently in the late 1950s.