Urbie Green

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. Paramount Records, founded in Grafton, Wisconsin, was founded in the 1910s as a subsidiary of... the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington, Wisconsin, Fred Dennett Key, director. The chair company had made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records. Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the "United Phonograph Corporation" at the end of 1915. It made phonographs under the "Vista" brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially. In 1918 a line of phonograph gramophone records was debuted with the "Paramount" label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary "The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated", which despite its name was located in the same Wisconsin factory complex as the parent concern .
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Vanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary label. In... 1953, under the direction of John Hammond, the company began the 'Jazz Showcase' series that concentrated on the mainstream jazz idiom, producing about two dozen recordings before it was wound down about 1958. Recordings made at the Spirituals to Swing concerts in 1938 and 1939 were finally released by Vanguard in 1959. The company only intermittently pursued recording jazz thereafter. Vanguard diversified in the mid-1950s by challenging the blacklist and signing blacklisted performers Paul Robeson and the Weavers. The company continued to issue folk music with newly signed artists Joan Baez, Hedy West, the Rooftop Singers, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Country Joe and the Fish, Ian and Sylvia, and Mimi and Richard Fariña. In the summer of 1965 Maynard Solomon hired Samuel Charters to edit the tapes of the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.
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Command Records was a record label founded by Enoch Light in 1959 and later associated with ABC-Paramount Records. The company focused on producing records targeted at audiophiles. When ABC Records issued quadraphonic records in the 1970s, they were issued on the Command label. The Command test... record was an LP album produced by Command Records in 1960. It contained recordings designed to allow users to test their stereo equipment.
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