Sas Rise Of The Black Swan Download

[Stephani Kapnick]

Despitethe rapid rise and fall of this unique company, many of its goals were achieved, at least for a time. Black Swan issued more than 180 recordings in a wide range of styles, sold hundreds of thousands of discs, and distributed them around the United States and abroad, finding favor among and beyond African-American consumers. Black Swan launched the recording careers of Fletcher Henderson, Ethel Waters, Trixie Smith, and Alberta Hunter, and put out records by a host of talented musicians unlikely to have found other recording opportunities. Meanwhile, the company emerged as a prominent and influential black-owned business, and, as a manufacturer, distinguished itself even from other black-owned companies by having rare control of its manufacturing capital.

Thanks to Waters, by the end of 1921 Black Swan had turned a small profit of $3,100 on revenues of over $104,000. By the spring of 1922, after twelve months in business, the company may have sold as many as four hundred thousand records. Along the way, it propelled the careers of not only Waters but also Alberta Hunter and Trixie Smith and became a leading force in the cultural and commercial development of the blues.

David Suisman is associate professor of history at the University of Delaware and the author of Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard University Press, 2010), which was researched with assistance from an NEH fellowship.

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Black Swan Event is a term I heard on NPR several weeks ago (actually longer, it was prior to 'the virus') and it stuck in my head. Europeans believed that swans had to be white. It wasn't until 1697 when Dutch explorers observed Black Swans in Australia that this belief was corrected. That's 1697! (The Americas had been "discovered" for 200 years).

Here we are at our Black Swan moment. Pandemics have occurred before but never with the spread speed and the immediate knowledge for all of us self-isolating. I heard the Governor of NY say the other day, "We will forever wonder if a sneeze in China today will make us sick tomorrow." It is so true.

The human loss is horrific. The stories of sacrifice and higher commitment to serve are humbling and inspiring. Our new found appreciation for how dependent we all are on each other for society to function is, in my opinion, overdo. We still control the ultimate outcome. We still can limit the human costs and protect ourselves from real tragedy.

There are "things" that will never be the same. Change is not always a bad thing and with change comes opportunity. I am not suggesting that we circle above like Vultures. First things first - Get through the fire so we can rise like the Phoenix from the ashes.

Technology has allowed us to stay informed, continued to educate, stay connected to loved ones, work remotely. The ability to virtually connect shrinks the very distances between us. It is different but no more different that then the introduction of the transcontinental railroad or the transatlantic telegraph - The tele vs. the cell - The mainframe to the smart phone.

Keep looking ahead with pragmatic optimism - Better days are coming. The tragedy would be not learning from experiences. That which is measured improves, that which is measured and reported improves greatly - Unquestionably there are metrics and reporting here to better not only our respected industries but society in its entirety.

Harry Pace started the first major Black-owned record label in the U.S., but his achievements went mostly unnoticed until recently, when his descendants uncovered his secret history." Courtesy of Peter Pace hide caption

A century ago, around the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance, New York City was brimming with music. Black artists like Eubie Blake, Florence Mills and Fats Waller were performing in dance halls and nightclubs including Edmond's Cellar and The Lincoln Theatre.

"Every block between 110th Street and 155th Street buzzed with creative energy," says journalist Paul Slade, author of Black Swan Blues: the hard rise and brutal fall of America's first black-owned record label.

Okeh Records was one of the first labels to break the mold. Perry "Mule" Bradford, a Black composer, pushed Okeh to record Mamie Smith and her song "Crazy Blues" in 1920. The record was a hit and entrepreneur Harry Pace took notice.

Pace had arrived in New York alongside his business partner, W.C. Handy, known as the "Father of the Blues" for writing the first commercially successful blues song, "Memphis Blues." The two owned Pace & Handy Music Co., which published sheet music by Black composers, including some of Handy's biggest numbers such as "St. Louis Blues" and "Beale St. Blues."

In the spring of 1921, Pace officially launched Black Swan Records, announcing the new label with ads in Black newspapers across the country with the slogan "The Only Records Using Exclusively Negro Voices and Musicians."

At the time, Ethel Waters was making a name for herself on the cabaret circuit in Harlem. Nicknamed "Sweet Mama Stringbean," Waters was tall and thin, an elegant dancer with a smooth, sophisticated voice.

Pace invited Waters to his basement office on 138th Street in Harlem to record for his brand new record label. She sang "Down Home Blues" into a large horn with a highly sensitive recording needle at the other end; these were still the days of acoustic recording technology.

Pace built a strong team to run the label: jazz musician Fletcher Henderson was his musical director and band leader, and classical composer William Grant Still was his arranger. The Black Swan roster included renowned blues singers Alberta Hunter and Trixie Smith, and the highly influential pianist James P. Johnson.

News of the completion of the first list of Black Swan records will be received with great interest and enthusiasm by our people all over the United States ... A great uproar was caused among white phonograph record companies who resent the idea of having a race company enter what they felt was an exclusive field.

Black arts, culture and business were booming across the country in urban centers like Tulsa, Memphis, and New York, but that success was often met with violence. The same month that Harry Pace launched Black Swan in Harlem, white mobs destroyed the Greenwood district of Tulsa, killing an estimated 300 people in what's now called the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Bill Doggett, who is working on a project on race at the dawn of the recording industry for the Library of Congress, says Black Swan's success "was a statement of defiance to systematic racism and Jim Crow."

"This was not just about making money," says musician Rhiannon Giddens, who seeks to recontextualize Americana as a historically Black artform. "This is also about, two generations out of slavery, that we are taking up our rightful mantle and uplifting the race."

Harry Pace was strongly influenced by his mentor, the activist and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. While at Atlanta University, Pace studied under Du Bois and learned the concept of the "Talented Tenth," the idea that if society were to invest in the most gifted individuals, their success would lead and inspire the larger Black community.

Uplifting his community was a pivotal part of Pace's mission. After college, he helped form the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP and served as its first president, and he remained close with Du Bois throughout his life; Du Bois even served on Black Swan's board of directors.

A postcard from Harry Pace to W.E.B. Du Bois dated June 24, 1921. "Please note for the Crisis that we sold during our first 30 days 10,300 Black Swan records and that we plan to market a phonograph this fall and winter," he writes. Courtesy Department of Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst hide caption

Black Swan also recorded Broadway tunes from the new hit show Shuffle Along, along with spirituals and sacred songs. In the summer of 1923, Pace created the first recording of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," composed by brothers John and James Weldon Johnson, and commonly known as the "Black national anthem."

Despite success in his personal mission, Pace quickly faced setbacks as he tried to grow the Black Swan label. He bought his own recording and pressing company so he wouldn't have to rely on white-owned pressing facilities, but it only landed Black Swan in massive debt. Meanwhile, wealthier, white recording companies like Columbia and Paramount were beginning to record more blues tracks, increasing the competition.

There were additional factors that contributed to Black Swan's troubles. "Broadcast radio was becoming increasingly popular," says historian David Suisman, author of Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music. "Radio sent shockwaves through the whole record industry; record sales dropped sharply in the early '20s as a result."

Pace took desperate measures to save his record company. With the purchase of the printing plant, he had access to a cache of recordings by white artists which he could reissue, basically for free. In an attempt to keep Black Swan on its feet, he began releasing these recordings by white artists under pseudonyms, passing them off as Black artists: the white stage singer Aileen Stanley became "Mamie Jones" and the Palm Beach Society Orchestra became "Fred Smith's Society Orchestra."

Nonetheless, the ploy didn't help sales. Black Swan artists were being pulled away by white companies left and right. Fletcher Henderson, William Grant Still, and Alberta Hunter left the label, and eventually, so did the label's original star, Ethel Waters. Black Swan released its last record in 1923 before Pace sold its catalog to Paramount Records, a white-owned company.

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