What an incredible blues 78 discovery from 

JOE SMITH & ETHEL FINNIE

MUSEUM QUALITY!

On the very desirable PARAMOUNT record label. 

The PARAMOUNT record # is: 14004 and features the songs:

1.) Heart Breakin' Joe - Joe Smith and Orchestra with Ethel Finnie on vocals

2.) African Rag - Unknown Pianist

It grades out at E+ (visually 

graded)... 

old PARAMOUNT store stock that has never been played

The surface is bright and shiny with a high full luster. 

The labels are in excellent condition, with no stickers, writing or any unusual wear... zero spindle wear.

This record came directly from a close friend & neighbor of PARAMOUNT owner John Steiner.

The records were from John Steiners home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin... given to his friend by John, and since, sold to me.

According to his friend & neighbor, John Steiner was not a people person. He was constantly being hounded by record collectors

who would bother him at all hours of the day and night... all of course, looking for his PARAMOUNT records.

Reviving an old label

In the early 1940s, collector John Steiner formed a partnership with a friend, Hugh Davis, and reissued Paramount titles on their S-D label. To avoid copyright infringements, Steiner contacted Otto Moeser of the WCC to get permission to issue these titles against a percentage of royalties.

By October 1947 John Steiner was discussing reviving the old Paramount label. Moeser explained that apart from the legitimate concerns that issued Paramount material, only that year infringers reissued 40 of their sides. Investigating the financial status of these concerns proved that taking legal action against these companies would not be worthwhile. Moeser then suggested going back in business with old Paramount label. Fred Boerner, of F.W. Boerner Company, said that he would again manage direct sales, as he had in the label’s heyday. Chuck Kimball with the Ashcraft office was available for legal services (his father had served on WCC’s board of directors for years). Steiner was asked to set up a program.

For the Paramount reissue program, a 14000 series was started, succeeding the original 12000/13000 series. It used the same Paramount logo and credits on the label, but in silver characters instead of gold. Steiner recalled in March 1997,

“I had no trouble with the [Port Washington] post office. They gave me a postal box for the NYRL, because they were still familiar with that. They built a postal business on the activities of the original Paramount company.”

“Just as the original label used “New York” to impress people, we used the original address for the same reason. They would think we were making records from the original masters, think that the original company was back in business.” Steiner’s subterfuge worked, as the label’s announcement in the March 1948 issue of Jazz Finder makes clear:

“The old Paramount label will soon be back on the market. This has just been announced by the NYRL of Port Washington, Wisconsin, the original manufacturer of the Paramount record. New records will be pressed as far as possible from original masters, the company announced.”

In the Jazz Finder of June 1948, Steiner continued that “as far as original masters are available and suitable, they will be used.” At that time they were inspecting 135 plates that had been withheld from the mass scrapping of fifteen years earlier. (When the Grafton plant was cleared out, a lot of the masters were sold as scrap because of the exposure to the plant’s atmosphere, which frequently caused visible oxidation or sulfurization to the surfaces. The rest went to Chair Factory # 2.) In addition, over 100 sides on loan to Decca were presumed to be intact at the Gennett plant in Richmond, Indiana, which Decca used for its pressing facilities.

The first 16 of the new Paramount records were made in conjunction with the WCC. In 1949 Steiner bought Paramount’s remaining assets and produced another 16 issues.

A Steiner Paramount reissue from the late 1940s, using the original logo and NYRL credits, but printed in silver rather than the original gold. Despite some press reports, original stampers were not used.
(Adapted from Kurt Nauck's  CD)

John Steiner buys Paramount’s assets

Bob Koester, of Delmark Records, came to Chicago in September 1958, and received financial help from Steiner to set up a store. Koester, in an August 2001 telephone conversation, recalled:

“Steiner said that when he bought Paramount, all he got right away in terms of resource material was a stock of Black Swan records which they still had [the merger between Black Swan and the New York Recording Laboratories was announced in local newspapers in April 1924]. They were not in very good shape, but they existed, and he got them and he was hoping he would get some Q-R-S records. They [WCC] got Q-R-S the same way like Black Swan. One sad thing on the deal is that Steiner was offered the Grafton [recording] apparatus and he said it was SO old-fashioned.”

John Steiner recalled the recording equipment in March 1997:

“Moeser was a quiet fellow who didn’t seem to know anything about the record business at all. He was just amazed that anybody was still interested in old Paramount. There wasn’t much left though. The equipment was so old that it was of no interest to me. The equipment was sold to a Milwaukee dealer, an Italian who was located on the way from here [on South Superior St. in Milwaukee] to downtown, the street we used to take before the new bridge was there. I knew just where the yard was. The fellow bought even the old building for the lumber that was there. The recording equipment was still there [in Chair Factory # 2, in Port Washington] when I came to visit Moeser. The equipment was as big as most portables except on larger tables. It was very crude. It was on a table and it was a large platter, I think it was a 16-inch with a motor underneath it and there were other things that were with it that apparently had been used in the studio.

All this was involved, package and some place to put it. Moeser asked if I was interested in it, I said no. I took some of the cutting needles and so forth, so we know the shape of the groove very accurate. That was all that was of interest for me, to know the dimensions of the groove.”

Bob Koester:
“John Steiner showed me a bunch of label order information that he got from the printer. They were still using these vinyl type, metal type labels, even though off-set printing had happened by then, although I guess it was at very primitive stage, so they would have to make these plates for the A and the B sides of these labels and then they would order 10 or 20 accepted labels. Very small quantities, and these were 13100s. It’s really shameful that they let all that stuff go consoled as scrap metal. I would imagine it would be quite a bit of space but for them to just shut down the whole thing.

“Steiner bought Chicago Music Publishing Co., that was part of his acquisition, and he spent some time trying to chase down the copyrights so they could be renewed and was not very successful. He did manage to renew a few of them. He tells a story when he calls up the Axel Christianson [sic] Piano School to speak to Mr. Christianson because Mr. Christianson had recorded for Paramount and wanted to talk to him about renewing copyrights. They told Mr. Christianson is dead and what John didn’t realize was there were some ridiculous number of Axel Christianson Piano Studios around this part of the country.”

Bob Eagle, 2005: 
“One potential problem with Paramount copyrights is whether Steiner had the right to extend [or “renew”) each copyright claim for the extended term.

“He certainly purported to do so - there are numerous copyrights of works by Lemon, Blake, etc., where the claims were extended in the 1950s. However, the Blake copyrights were claimed as by Blake Higgs, the Bahamian guitarist, which leads one to wonder if Steiner had access to the original contracts. If he did not, then how could he prove that the composer had granted the publisher rights for the extended term? Also, if the composer had died in the interim, had the rights for the renewed term reverted to the composer's estate?”

David Evans, 2005: 
“Steiner also acquired some of the actual recordings, apparently from Mayo Williams, and renewed selected items. I'm told he didn't have enough cash to renew them all. But one would have to question on what basis he could have done this, as renewal rights normally reverted to the author, after the initial 28-year period. Steiner may have believed that the Bahamian Blake Higgs was the Paramount Blind Blake. There was some speculation to this effect in the early days. Maybe he even went to Nassau and got Higgs to sign something.”

Bob Koester, on Steiner acquiring the metal mothers back from Decca, 2001: 
“Steiner obtained the fifty metal mothers via Decca who used [them] for their Champion label. Probably within a year or two after Steiner got all the papers the WCC had regarding the record business, he asked Decca to return the metal masters [sic].

Steiner: 
“Amongst the papers was this lease of masters, and eventually I decided that I better keep them myself rather than leave them in Richmond, Indiana [where Decca leased floor space from the Starr Piano company, which had produced Gennett Records, among others], where they had been sent and sure enough they had them. I was surprised at that; they released them to me, sent them back.”

Koester: 
“Bumble Bee Slim told me shortly after the issue of his World Pacific record, a year later [1962], that Aletha Dickerson paid him out of her own pocket for his sessions for Paramount session in Grafton. Part of the fifty metals were the two titles by him which were used by Decca to issue on the Champion label. By 1934 Bumble Bee Slim recorded for Vocalion, and so Decca had recordings of a popular artist. Shortly afterwards Bumble Bee Slim went to record for Decca.

“There’s no other metal than those fifty titles. None of the other metal survived. Steiner thought possibly someone like Eli Oberstein, who is a very minor player in the record business in those days, that some one like Eli Oberstein might have bought it, but it might have been someone in the record business who bought them as scrap.”

Koester based his information on the fifty metal mothers returned by Decca on his recollection that he had published a list in Jazz Report magazine in October 1958. He saw 51 metal mothers at Steiner’s Ashland address and published a partial list in the magazine, covering 40 titles. The remains of the list were intended for the next issue, due to lack of space. However, the list went astray and was never reproduced. The mothers included all the Mississippi Sheiks titles.

Steiner’s report in Jazz Finder for June 1948 alleging “over 100 sides on loan to Decca” is reinforced by the fact that 94 cards were found in the ARC/Columbia files in 1954. These cards contained details of Paramount masters and the production of metal mothers (including some 
Q-R-S and Gennett titles) that were processed in November 1933 for Jack Kapp to issue on his revived Champion label, which he had obtained from the Starr Piano Company.

Bob Koester, 2001: 
“John Steiner was trying to find source for all kinds of Paramount material so he could utilize that. I think that perhaps it was his perception that most of the good pressings had floated to New York collections, so he decided it would be better for Bill Grauer to reissue it on Riverside. I think it really is kind of sad he did that. He would have had a going side line business.

“By the late 1940s or early 1950s Steiner had started producing 10 inch LPs, but these lasted only a few years. He had pretty much stopped 10” LPs. I’m not sure when he did his last batch of 10” LPs, but I believe he stopped around 1955. Not much activity on 10” Paramount LPs. They stopped in 1955 when literally over a weekend the 10” LPs were obsolete and transition was made to 12”.

“I believe Steiner issued five in 1949, five in 1950 and another five in 1951 and then quit. Then the 10” crash came and he was pretty much out of business.”

Finding the tests and metal parts

Over the last few decades, many test pressings (some of major importance, but most useless) have been found scattered over the area around Port Washington and Grafton. A collector says about his “finds”:

“The NYRL had so many people working there [in Grafton], when they closed the place up they just helped themselves through test pressings and what-not and some of that stuff looked like it was stored in the Boerner store. He got some (after the close of the factory) and so many were SO warped that you could not even play them. I traced the numbers down ’cause once you gonna trace these dance bands, it’s almost impossible. There was a lot of Marsh Laboratories tests there with the ‘Amos and Andy’ radio show.

“We got another batch of stuff involved with pretty much early stuff and there would be Marsh test pressings for Paramount. That came from a family at West Bend of Wisconsin. The guy just worked there. He was no officer in the company. We got…metal masters from some guy in Grafton. His uncle worked there. He just took all the metal masters. None of these batches we picked up had 
L-matrix numbers [the L-matrix series numbers refers to recordings recorded in Grafton].

“They always took records home, there were so many bad ones, that were pressed there, with the matrix numbers in the middle of the record, because I would find a lot of untrimmed stuff and matrix numbers pressed in the middle of the record. They were taking all the rejects home, but I heard when they closed up there was a free-for-all and they were taking all kinds of stuff with them but the way this guy was talking, this guy like secretively [took] the metal masters out of the building. He was still worried about telling who his uncle was. There was no L-matrix in the dead wax.

“I found a farmer, named Anderson, in a nursing home who used metal parts for cover up of a rat hole. He used to take out and flatten out tin cans and tag it to the wall where the mice and the rats came through in the barn. This indeed was the farmer that ended up in the famous John Steiner chicken co-op legend. The farm was located one mile out of the Port Washington city limits. Today an antique shop uses this location.”

Alex van der Tuuk is the author of the highly acclaimed book , published by Mainspring Press. He has written for many jazz publications in the U.S. and Europe, and is currently completing a book on Midwestern jazz and dance bands that recorded for NYRL.

PLEASE NOTE: EBAY Has no idea of the cost involved to package 78's for safe shipping... we will add on a handling charge of 3.00 for shipping supplies from U-LINE

GRADING: STANDARD 78 RPM GRADING IS USED

N- NEW MINUS: Full Original Luster. Appears Unplayed With No Signs Of Use. Highest Grade Used. Possible Slight Sleeve Or Storage Marks.

E+ EXCELLENT PLUS: Full Luster, Very Few Careful Plays. Slightest Indication Of Use Or Handling. Condition Is Just Slightly Below New Minus.

E EXCELLENT: Almost Full Luster. Mild Signs Of Careful Play But No Serious Scratches Or Scuffs. Highly Desirable Condition.

E- EXCELLENT MINUS: Some Luster Remains. Surface Shows Some Light Groove Wear, Light Scuffs And/Or Light Scratches. Still Pretty Clean. Acceptable To Most Collectors.

V+ VERY GOOD PLUS: Groove Wear, Scuffs And Scratches Are More Pronounced. Moderate Gray. Still A Decent Used Record With Moderate Surface Noise.

V VERY GOOD: Grooves Are Mostly Or Fully Gray Showing Deeper Wear. Obvious Surface Noise. Getting Rough Looking And Playing. An “Average Used 78” Is In The V To V+ Range.

V- VERY GOOD MINUS: Further Deterioration. Fully Gray With Deeper Groove Wear Causing Heavier Surface Noise.

G GOOD: Very Rough. Heavy Use. Deeply Gray. Surface Noise About Equals Music Level.

F FAIR: Really Beat. May Skip. Surface Noise Probably Exceeds Music Level.

P POOR: Barely Playable To Unplayable. Mostly Useful For The Label Or As A Filler Until A Better Copy Comes Along. Depending On The Rarity Of The Record, This Can Be An Acceptable Grade To A Serious Collector.