Gennett Records

Gennett Records () was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana, United States, which flourished in the 1920s and produced the Gennett, Starr, Champion, Superior, and Van Speaking labels. The company also produced some Supertone, Silvertone, and Challenge records under contract. The firm also pressed, under contract, records for record labels such as Autograph, Rainbow, Hitch, Our Song, and Vaughn. Gennett produced some of the earliest recordings by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Hoagy Carmichael. Its roster also included Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Gene Autry.

History

Gennett Records was founded in Richmond, Indiana, by the Starr Piano Company in 1917. By the late 1930s, the label had produced more than 16,000 masters. The company had produced early recordings under the green or blue Starr Records label as early as 1915. The new Gennett label was named after Harry, Fred, and Clarence Gennett, brothers and joint managers, and was an attempt to distinguish the label from its parent company and widen distribution beyond Starr piano stores. Early record pressings were outsourced but by October 1917, Starr Valley - home to the Starr Piano manufacturing campus along the Whitewater River - had a six-story phonograph and manufacturing and record-pressing facility. The early issues were vertically cut in the phonograph record grooves, using the hill-and-dale method of a U-shaped groove and sapphire ball stylus, but they switched to the lateral cut method in April 1919. Gennett Records rarely paid artists upfront. Some were paid a flat fee, from $15–50 per session, while Black artists received even less. Most artists signed royalty contracts that promised one penny for each copy or side sold.

Gennett first set up a recording studio in Manhattan, New York City. Throughout the 1920s, the Manhattan studio saw artists such as Bailey's Lucky Seven, the Original Memphis Five under the pseudonym Ladd's Black Aces, and in November 1924, Louis Armstrong and the Red Onion Jazz Babies. In 1921, the label set up a second studio on the grounds of the piano factory in Richmond under the supervision of Ezra C.A. Wickemeyer, who would manage the studio from August 1921 to mid-1927. The bulk of the label's productions came out of the Richmond studio, which was long and wide with a control room separated by a double pane of glass. For sound proofing, a Mohawk rug was placed on the floor and drapes and towels were hung on the wall. Gennett was one of the few companies to have a recording facility outside of New York, a move which allowed the label to capture Midwestern and Southern artists. Their location also led to their recordings being appealing to Black individuals and other rural peoples who were largely neglected by the leading New York labels. Some have called the Richmond studio the "cradle of recorded jazz."

Gennett recorded early jazz musicians Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, The New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's band with Louis Armstrong, Lois Deppe's Serenaders with Earl Hines, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, The Red Onion Jazz Babies, The State Street Ramblers, Zack Whyte and his Chocolate Beau Brummels, Alphonse Trent and his Orchestra and many others. Many of these jazz artists, such as Morton, the Rhythm Kings, and Oliver's band were popular at the Lincoln Gardens and the Friar's Inn nightclubs and had been sent by train to rural Richmond by Chicago Starr Piano store manager and talent scout Fred Wiggins. Gennett notably was among the first to record people of color as well as racially integrated sessions, despite over twenty percent of Wayne County's white male population being members of the Ku Klux Klan. Other estimates suggest forty to fifty percent of non-Catholic white men were members of the Richmond klavern.

Throughout the 1920s, Gennett pressed vanity records for the Ku Klux Klan with red labels and gold KKK lettering, often listing performers such as the "100 percent Americans." Klan members politicized hymns with new lyrics, such as "Onward Christian Klansman" for "Onward Christian Soldiers" as well as custom songs such as "Daddy Swiped Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan." These private pressings never appeared in Gennett catalogs and were shipped directly to the Klan headquarters in Indianapolis after the Klan paid for the records. Some of D.C. Stephenson's speeches were recorded by the label. Ironically, Richmond held a large gathering of Ku Klux Klan members in Glen Miller Park followed by a parade on October 5, 1923, the same day King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, with Louis Armstrong, recorded a second series of discs at the Richmond studio. Approximately 30,000 people gathered with Richmond residents to view over 6,000 Klan members participate in a parade. Although the Gennett family was not involved in the Richmond klavern, historian Leonard Moore estimates one of every three native-born white Protestant males in Richmond was a member during this time.

Gennett also recorded early blues and gospel music artists such as Thomas A. Dorsey, Sam Collins, Jaybird Coleman, as well as early hillbilly and country music performers such as Vernon Dalhart, Bradley Kincaid