$475
Paramount Records was formed in 1917 with little fanfare and few prospects its founders ran a Wisconsin furniture company and knew nothing of the record business. Its mission was modest: produce records as cheaply as possible with whatever talent was available. The results were unequivocal: the records sounded bad and sold poorly. Paramount was soon on the threshold of bankruptcy.
In 1922 Paramounts white owners embarked on a radical new business plan: selling the music of black artists to black audiences ( the music of the Race, or Race Records ). This move, paired with equal parts dumb luck, opportunism, chicanery and a willingness to try anything, paid dramatic dividends.
By 1927, Paramount was the most important label in the Race Records field, selling hundreds of thousands of records. And by the time it ceased operations in 1932, it had compiled a dizzying roster of performers still unrivaled to this day by any other assemblage of talent ever housed under one roof spanning early jazz titans (Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton), vaudeville songsters (Papa Charlie Jackson), the first solo guitar bluesmen (Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake), theater blues divas (Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters), gospel (Norfolk Jubilee Quartette), masters of Mississippi blues (Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James) and the indefinable other (Geeshie Wiley, Elvie Thomas).
The Rise & Fall narrative takes the form of a curated exhibit of words, images and music with Paramount at its fulcrum, all housed in a lush handcrafted cabinet that harkens back to the wunderkammern, precursors to the modern museum. Crafted as an object to keep and cherish for a lifetime, its form is designed to reveal evidence of the hand at work, to bring out the tactile richness of hand-sculpted woods and metals, and to meld the rough-hewn with the earliest burblings of American modernism in the 1920s
Each amazing handcrafted set contains:
800 newly-remastered digital tracks on a USB drive shaped like a victorola key
200+ fully-restored original ads and images
6 x 180g LPs w/ hand-engraved metal leaf center labels on burled vinyl
Deluxe large-format hardcover art book: 250 pages, narrative with full-color plates
Encyclopedia-style reference manual: 360 pages, field guide to artists & repertoire
Handcrafted elements: rich woods, lush upholstery, and custom-forged metal hardware
Track & Image App: First-of-its-kind music and image player app, allows user management of 800 tracks and 200+ original ads; housed on custom-designed USB