Black Patti Records
Encyclopedia
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
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The label was owned by The Chicago Record Company, which in turn was owned by promoter Mayo ‘Ink’ Williams. The label was named after 19th century African-American singer Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, known as Sissieretta Jones, was an African-American soprano. She sometimes was called "The Black Patti" in reference to Italian opera singer Adelina Patti...
, who was nicknamed The Black Patti after famous opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
star Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
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Mayo Williams had enjoyed a profitable career as de-facto manager of "Race Records" (recordings by African American artists intended for African American customers) for Paramount Records
Paramount Records
Paramount Records was an American record label, best known for its recordings of African-American jazz and blues in the 1920s and early 1930s, including such artists as Ma Rainey and Blind Lemon Jefferson.-Early years:...
. He decided to go into the record business for himself. He had no equipment, only his Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
office. The actual recording and pressing of the record
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
s was contracted out, mostly to Gennett Records
Gennett Records
Gennett was a United States based record label which flourished in the 1920s.-Label history:Gennett records was founded in Richmond, Indiana by the Starr Piano Company, and released its first records in October 1917. The company took its name from its top managers: Harry, Fred and Clarence Gennett....
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Black Patti Records debuted with advertisements in May 1927, with some two dozen discs said to already be available. The repertory included jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, sermons, spirituals, and vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
skits, most (but not quite all) by African American entertainers. A total of 55 different discs were manufactured. Williams found running his own label not as lucrative and easy as he had hoped and closed up operations before the end of 1927.
Perhaps the most famous of the sides recorded for Black Patti are those by Willie Hightower's jazz band.
The Black Patti logo
Logo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...
(an art deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
peacock) in the late 1960s has been adapted by Nick Perls
Nick Perls
J. Nicholas Perls was the founder and owner of Yazoo Records and Blue Goose Records."Nick" Perls was one of a handful of serious east coast collectors of 78-rpm country blues recordings during the 1960s. As a young man, he made two trips through the deep south, knocking on doors and acquiring old...
for his Belzona, later Yazoo
Yazoo Records
Yazoo Records is an American record label, founded in the late 1960s by Nick Perls. It specializes in early American blues, country, jazz, and other rural American genres ....
label.