By Andrew Scott

Black Swan Records was a recording company based in Harlem, New York in operation from 1921 to 1923. Although issuing recordings in a number of genres, including jazz, opera and symphonic works, Black Swan was primarily engaged in the recording of blues music. Black Swan was the first African-American owned and operated recording company, and the brainchild of Harry Herbert Pace. The company achieved initial success in October 1921 with Ethel Waters’ single “Down Home Blues/Oh Daddy,” selling 500,000 copies in the first six months of its release. By December 1923, Black Swan Records declared bankruptcy, eventually leasing its entire catalogue to Paramount Records. In this article I examine the swift demise of a record company of such promising beginnings. I begin the paper with a historical narrative of the Black Swan Record Company. Then I argue that internal feuding regarding Black Swan’s musical direction, the African-American communities’ increasing lack of trust for Pace, and overwhelming competition from financially solvent white-owned record companies provide three possible explanations to perhaps account for the rapid decline of Black Swan Records.

History of Black Swan Records

In January 1921, Harry Herbert Pace incorporated the Pace Phonograph Corporation Inc. (he later changed the name to Black Swan Records) using $30,000 of borrowed capital. According to Pace, it was a company built out of necessity.

"Companies would not entertain any thought of recording a colored musician or colored voice, I therefore decided to form my own company and make such recordings as I believed would sell."

Black Swan Records was so named to honor Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (1809-1876), America’s pre-eminent African-American opera singer. The company was originally run from Pace’s Harlem home, then later from a company owned building on New York’s 135th Street. It boasted a board of directors with such prominent members of the African-American community as sociologist Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, businessman John E. Nail and Dr. Matthew V. Boutte. Fletcher Henderson and New England Conservatory graduate William Grant Still were employed as Black Swan’s recording manager and musical director respectively. The company produced over 180 recording during its two-year existence, including singles by Fletcher Henderson (jazz), Ethel Waters (blues), and Revella Hughes (a classical soprano). Ethel Waters was the most recorded singer on The Black Swan label, and her single “Down Home Blues/Oh Daddy” earned the label its first and biggest success.0 At its financial peak in 1922, Black Swan Records employed between fifteen and thirty people in its offices and shipping rooms, an eight man orchestra, seven managers and over one thousand dealers and agents.1 On January 24th 1922, Pace issued his first financial statement (relating to the first year of Black Swan’s existence), citing a first year income of $104,628.74.2 Just over a year later, in December 1923, Black Swan Records declared bankruptcy.3

Internal Feuding

The demise of Black Swan Records can be attributed partially to internal feuding over musical direction amongst the company’s board of directors. With the exception of Pace, who had co-written jazz, and blues music with W.C. Handy in Memphis, Tenn., no member of Black Swan’s advisory board had experience with popular music.4 Moreover, board members were not merely inexperienced with African-American popular music; towards it they were openly hostile. 5 The sentiment amongst the majority of board members, many of whom were affiliated with the newly formed National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM), was that advancement for the African-American came through an understanding of Western classical music, rather than through an appreciation of such indigenous American forms as jazz or blues.6 Accordingly, Pace felt pressured by his board of directors to change the focus of Black Swan’s output from blues to more classical pursuits. Amiri Baraka argues Black Swan's board of directors supposed, "the job of a Negro recording company would be to show how dignified Negroes really were…and, of course, blues were not dignified.7 Possibly, this line of thought is reflected in Black Swan’s choice of Fletcher Henderson: a university educated chemistry student who also played piano, as the label’s first musical director and house pianist, and the choice of Lester A. Walton (journalist and future United States minister to Liberia) as Black Swan’s road manager. Both men were involved in blues music, but were also educated, business-minded African-Americans. The ideological split between celebrating African-American artistic contributions and pursuing “high-minded” European models is representative of an overarching class distinction within the 1920s African-American community, suggests Vincent.8 One way that this ideological split was made manifest in music was in the 1920s interest amongst “black intellectuals and the black upper and middle classes” in hearing African-Americans perform European classical music, writ Advertisements in such “black” publications as the Chicago Defender and The Messenger provide another materialization of Black Swan Records’ ideological differences. Specifically, although the company’s blues and jazz releases sold well, while the opera and classical releases largely failed, the company’s advertising budget—controlled by board members—was spent promoting the classical forms, argues Vincent.1 A typical 1921 advertisement grouped Black Swan releases in four categories: High Class, Dance Numbers, Male Quartette and Blues, with blues receiving last billing.2 Further, in The Crisis—a publication associated with the NAACP—Black Swan’s blues catalogue was either devalued in importance, or ignored altogether. 3 One interpretation is to see such ideological, but perhaps unwise business practices as partially responsible for Black Swan’s rapid decline to bankruptcy.

Growing Lack of Trust for Pace

When Pace established the Pace Phonograph Co. in 1921, he provided an exemplary model of an African-American owned and operated business.4 Pace’s early advertisements underscored this fact stating, “Black Swan Records are made by the only phonograph company in the world owned and operated by Colored people…The only records made using exclusively colored singers and musicians.” With the success of Black Swan came recognition for Pace and his accomplishments, and by 1922, according to Vincent, Pace was representative of the best in black capitalism.5 Pace became a prominent inspirational speaker for the African-American community, lecturing on music, business and self-reliance.6 Having achieved financial success, Pace in 1922 entered into a business deal with John Fletcher (a white man) and purchased the bankrupt Remington Phonograph Co., a large phonograph pressing plant located in Long Island City. 7 With its purchase came Olympic Records, a record label whose back catalogue included such white ensembles as the Original Memphis Five.8 Pace, aware that the presence of white acts on his label’s roster threatened his initial promise to record and promote only "colored musicians," gave the performers fictitious black names or credited their performance to such better-known African-American performers as James P. Johnson.9 This deliberate deception of Black Swan's audience, and Pace's business partnership with Fletcher (a white man), were seen as conniving and offensive by many in the African-American community.0 Debatably, the questionable way in which Pace handled the addition of white artists to Black Swan’s roster caused a chasm to form between his company and the African-American community. Further, it suggests another possible explanation for the failure of Black Swan Records.

Competition from White Owned Record Companies

At its peak in 1922, Black Swan Records was one-tenth the size of such record companies as RCA Victor. Vincent’s study of record label advertising in the so-called “black press” between 1921-23 concludes that by 1923, the success of Black Swan Records inspired such white-owned record labels as Victor, Paramount, and Okeh to place record advertisements in the “black press.”1 The record companies were hoping to appeal to a newly formed African-American consumer class. After World War I ended in 1918, there was a large migration of African-Americans from the south into northern cities where the war effort afforded many employment opportunities. According to Shaw, this new class of African-Americans presented a “made to order market” for the record companies to exploit.2 Having witnessed Black Swan’s early success, Victor, Paramount, and OKeh attempted to emulate their achievements.3 White owned labels “exploded” in their promotion of African-American blues acts between July 1920 and December 1922, according to Vincent.4 At least thirteen record companies recorded African-American blues singers during these years.5 Simply put, Black Swan, despite its early success, lacked a sizable budget to compete with the white owned record labels. Black Swan became unable to promote its key performers, or keep its stars; Henderson, for example left Black Swan in 1922.6 Competition from more financially endowed record companies compounded with the development of radio--an invention Eileen Southern argues “threatened to send all recording companies into bankruptcy”—perhaps forced Black Swan to pre-maturely close its doors and declare bankruptcy in December 1923.7

Conclusion

Black Swan Records helped pave the way for the recording and promotion of African-American musicians, producing over one hundred and eighty recordings during its brief existence. Further, it brought blues musicians (particularly female singers) to the attention of a large, and integrated, audience. Ironically, Black Swan failed to reap the benefits of a musical movement it helped create. Internal feuding about Black Swan’s musical direction, the African-American communities’ increasing lack of trust for Pace, and overwhelming competition from financially solvent white-owned record companies are three suggested explanations that perhaps account for the rapid decline of Black Swan Records, the first African-American owned and operated record company.