Revisiting Black Swan Records:
The Documented History

Harry Pace, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Fletcher, and the
Saga of the Second Black-Owned Record Label

By Allan Sutton

 

This new account draws on Pace Phonograph Corporation documents and correspondence between Harry Pace and W. E. B. Du Bois (Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries), as well as information newly uncovered while researching John Fletcher’s involvement with Black Swan and the affiliated Fletcher Record Company.

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Founded in December 1920 by Harry H. Pace, the Pace Phonograph Corporation was the second Black-owned and operated record company (preceded only by George W. Broome’s short-lived eponymous venture), and the first to succeed commercially, albeit briefly.

A 1903 graduate of Atlanta University, Pace initially worked in banking, but his interests turned increasingly to music. He and W. C. Handy collaborated on their first song in 1907, and in 1912 the pair formed the Pace & Handy Music Company in Memphis. The company had its first major hit in 1914, with the publication of Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” and in 1918 it relocated to New York. Pace resigned in late 1920 to launch his recording operation, taking some key personnel with him. Handy recalled, “With Pace went a large number of our employees, persons especially trained for the requirements of our business and therefore hard to replace. Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan record company.”

 

Harry Pace, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Birth of Black Swan

On December 27, 1920, Pace wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois that he had formed a corporation to manufacture phonograph records. He held open the possibility of involving others, telling Du Bois, “I made the capital stock elastic enough so as to take others into it if the idea met very favorable consideration.”

The letter also makes clear that it was Du Bois who suggested the name “Black Swan” (in honor of the pioneering African-American diva, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield). Pace wrote,

I note your suggestion about the name “Black Swan” and it strikes me very favorably indeed. I debated very seriously  whether I should use a fanciful name or whether I should capitalize on my own name and use it… All of this, of course, had been done before I talked with you on the subject.

Pace reported to Du Bois that he had Ford Dabney’s Orchestra under contract and had already made test recordings by the group. However, no issues were forthcoming, and Dabney later signed with Paramount. Pace also told Du Bois that he was hoping to test operatic soprano Florence Cole-Talbert (who he signed), a very young Marian Anderson (who he did not), and one or two “local folks who are getting in shape, and whom I am trying out with a view of having them record as soon as we are ready to make the permanent masters.”

 

W. E. B. Du Bois (left) and Harry Pace

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Pace encouraged Du Bois to join the new company’s board and provide whatever funding he could. The Pace Phonograph Corporation was formally chartered as a Delaware corporation in January 1921 and made an initial stock offering. Du Bois initially purchased a single share, but would later invest considerably more, and come to regret it. The officers at the time of incorporation were Pace (president and treasurer) and D. L. Haynes (secretary), with a board of directors that included Du Bois, Levi C. Brown, T. K. Gibson, William Lewis, John E. Nail, and Emmett J. Scott. Pace and Du Bois reported finding eager investors not only in Harlem, but in Arkansas, Georgia, Ohio, and other far-flung locations.

Among Pace’s investors was comedian Bert Williams, who according to a misleadingly worded advertisement in The Crisis, “put thousands of dollars into the making of Black Swan records.” It would not be only time that Pace took some liberties in describing Williams’ relationship to Black Swan. Following Williams’ death, Pace placed a full-page advertisement in The Crisis, in which he claimed that Williams had promised to sign with Black Swan once his Columbia contract expired. Canny businessman that he was, it seems unlikely that Williams would have abandoned a company whose annual sales of his records exceeded Black Swan’s total annual sales.

 

Pace’s memorial to Bert Williams in the April 1922 Crisis included the questionable claim that Williams had promised to become an exclusive Black Swan artist following expiration of his contract with “a White company.”

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Harry Pace’s townhouse at 257 West 138th Street served as Black Swan’s first office. Among the employees Pace took from Pace & Handy Music was Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr., a young pianist from Georgia whom Handy had recently hired as a song demonstrator. Henderson’s defection garnered him the position of recording director and house accompanist, although Pace later admitted he felt that Henderson was not fully qualified for the job. William Grant Still, one of W. C. Handy’s staff arrangers, also made the move.

The studio in which Pace initially recorded remains a subject of debate. The location is not mentioned in any of Pace’s or Du Bois’ known correspondence, but the old tale that Pace initially recorded in his living-room is highly suspect. There is no suggestion in those letters that Pace ever equipped his own studio or hired a recording engineer. A New York Age article from June 1921 confirms that Pace did not yet have his own studio, reporting that the company was “planning to establish its own laboratory [i.e., studio] in the near future.” No convincing evidence has been found that those plans ever came to fruition.

If any of Pace’s pre-production test recordings have survived, they have not been located for inspection. Most of the early issued masters appear to have been made for Pace by the New York Recording Laboratories, the makers of Paramount records, based upon some distinctive physical and aural characteristics. NYRL at that time was recording masters for several other small labels — most notably Arto and Grey Gull, as confirmed in band manager Ed Kirkeby’s session logs — which were assigned master numbers in each label’s own series.

 

Black Swan Comes to Market

Black Swan records were in production by the early spring of 1921, with an initial release planned for May. Pressing was to be handled by John Fletcher’s Olympic Disc Record Corporation plant in Long Island City. Newly incorporated following the failure of Fletcher’s Operaphone label, Olympic commenced operations in March 1921, the same month in which the earliest issued Black Swan recordings are believed to have been made. Like Black Swan, the earliest Olympic records were advertised as May releases. The discs’ physical characteristics were identical with those of the earliest Black Swan pressings, confirming Harry Pace’s recollection that they were pressed in what he called “the Remington factory” (the Remington Phonograph Company being Olympic’s parent corporation).

 

.(Left) An early first-state Black Swan label, showing the sunken ring around the spindle hole and other tell-tale Olympic pressing-plant characteristics. (Right) A second-state label, pressed by the New York Recording Laboratories. 

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From the start, Pace found himself torn between two disparate markets within the African-American community — a small but affluent group that championed what it saw as cultural refinement, mirroring Pace’s and Du Bois’ own backgrounds and musical preferences; and a far larger working-class group with a growing appetite for jazz and blues records. In August 1921, Pace told The Talking Machine World, “While it is true that we will feature to a great extent ‘blue’ numbers of the type that are in current favor, we will also release many numbers of a higher standard.” In his attempt to present Black Swan as a respectable mainstream operation to potential investors, Pace understandably erred on the side of caution in his choice of artists and repertoire.

The first three Black Swan records were announced as ready for delivery on May 4, 1921. Pace’s preference for “numbers of a higher standard” was immediately apparent. For the inaugural release (#2001), he chose two time-worn chestnuts, “At Dawning” and “Thank God for a Garden,” sung by soprano Revella Hughes, with violin, cello, and piano accompaniment. There followed two equally straightforward sides by concert baritone Carroll C. Clark, then two blues-inflected pop tunes by vaudevillian Katie Crippen.

 

Pace promised “a delightful surprise” to anyone comparing Caroll Clark’s recording of “For All Eternity” to Caruso’s version (Victor 88333; the ad copy omitted the first digit).

 

Pace reported first-month sales of 10,300 Black Swan records to Du Bois, who forwarded that figure to The Crisis. The editors, apparently unaware that figure was a minuscule fraction of the major labels’ sales for the same period, seemed impressed.

The Black press (particularly The Chicago Defender) cast Pace’s attempt to enter the record market as nothing less than an epic struggle between good and evil. The venture had barely gotten under way when the Defender proclaimed that “a great uproar was caused among White phonograph record companies who resented the idea of having a Race company enter what they felt was an exclusive field.” If there was an uproar, it went unreported in trade papers like The Talking Machine World, which covered Black Swan to the same extent as the other small startups of the period. TMW’s coverage of the new company was consistently positive, and the magazine obviously was not averse to running Black Swan advertisements.

 

Pressing-Plant Woes

One of the Defender‘s most absurd claims, flying in the face of well-documented facts, was that the Remington Phonograph Company had purchased the Olympic pressing plant for the sole purpose of denying service to Pace — conveniently ignoring the fact that Olympic had pressed the earliest Black Swan discs.

What actually caused Pace and Olympic to part company was a surge in orders that the Olympic plant was not equipped to handle. During the summer of 1921, it was decided to instead contract Black Swan pressing to the New York Recording Laboratories (Paramount). In a postcard to Du Bois, mailed on June 24, 1921, from Port Washington, Wisconsin (NYRL’s headquarters), Pace reported, “I am here arranging for an increased fall and winter production together with a line of Black Swan Phonographs.”

The NYRL pressing plant, although geographically remote, was a much larger facility than Olympic’s, and the company was actively courting new customers. In addition, Wisconsin Chair (NYRL’s parent company) operated a large factory that was well-equipped to manufacture Pace’s Swanola phonographs. Since Pace was already using NYRL’s New York recording studio, the move made logistical sense, consolidating all Black Swan production within a single company. Black Swan pressings from the summer of 1921 into the spring of 1922 show the unmistakable characteristics of NYRL’s work.

 

Ethel Waters Sparks a Surge in Sales

The initial Black Swan releases were received politely enough by the press and public. Carroll Clark’s first offering appears to have been a relatively good seller, based upon the relatively large number of surviving copies. But the earliest issues failed to generate the sort of excitement that would be needed to make Black Swan profitable. That situation changed with Pace’s signing of Ethel Waters. Already a veteran of the southern vaudeville circuits, Waters was now attracting a strong following at Edmond’s Cellar in Harlem.

Waters had already recorded two titles for Criterion Laboratories, an independent studio that supplied several small labels, but there had been no immediate takers (Cardinal eventually released them in September 1921), so Waters paid a visit to Pace. Her first Black Swan release (“Down Home Blues” / “Oh Daddy”) was released in July 1921. It became a sizable hit, and is still one of the most commonly encountered Black Swan records. In October, Pace signed Waters to an exclusive Black Swan contract that reportedly made her the highest-paid Black recording artist at the time. In November, she was sent on an extended tour as star of the Black Swan Troubadours, who eventually performed in twenty-one states.

 

.Black Swan’s first hit: “Down Home Blues” (here advertised in August 1921) brought national attention to Ethel Water and Black Swan. Pace plugged many of Waters’ subsequent releases as “Another ‘Down Home Blues'” (the example above is from late 1922), but none approached the popularity of the original.

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Thanks largely to Waters’ records, Black Swan developed a small following among White customers, including some stage and film celebrities. It was widely reported that actress Marilyn Miller had presented a “large selection” of Black Swan records to Jack Pickford (Mary’s brother) on their wedding day. The Dallas Express reported, “It is now becoming quite a fad with many stars of the theatrical profession, who have found something different in these all-Colored records, to have them sent to their friends in various parts of the country.”

Pace, however, failed to capitalize on that momentum. He placed no advertising in the White consumer publications and made little effort to court the important entertainment and trade papers. His advertisements in The Talking Machine World, which did not begin running until August 1921, often appeared to be halfhearted efforts, sometimes simply listing a few artists’ names, or dwelling on past hits rather than fresh releases.

Trixie Smith, Pace’s next major attraction, was signed in January 1922, shortly after she took first place at the Fifteenth Regiment Blues Contest in Harlem. With Waters and Smith on his roster, Pace found it easier to attract other singers. However, the oft-repeated tale that he auditioned Bessie Smith, and rejected her after she stopped to spit in the midst of her test recording, is apocryphal. It appears to have originated in the 1940s with W. C. Handy, who was prone to fabricating colorful tales. He is unlikely to have been present at the alleged session (or any other Black Swan session for that matter), given the well-documented antagonism that existed between himself and Pace at the time. (The Black Swan issues by Handy’s Band were not recorded for Pace, but licensed from Paramount.)

April 1922 saw Harry Pace’s quixotic attempt to cast Black Swan as a contender in the classical field with the introduction of a Red Label series, an obvious play on Victor’s prestigious Red Seals. Victor, which for years had taken legal action against competitors’ use of red labels on classical records, does not appear to have taken any such action in Black Swan’s case, casting further doubt on the Defender‘s claims that the White recording establishment was out to destroy Pace.

The Red Label listing included operatic arias by Florence Cole-Talbert and Antoinette Garnes, and concert selections by Hattie King Reavis. In December 1922, Pace tried to secure concert tenor Roland Hayes for Black Swan, only to be informed by Hayes that he was under contract to Aeolian in England. The Red Label series sputtered along until being discontinued in May 1923, marking the end of Pace’s production of original classical recordings.

 

Marketing Black Swan

Although demand for Black Swan records was growing steadily, weak marketing and spotty distribution were hobbling sales. Pace was unable to obtain national coverage through the major jobbers. Although racial prejudice was likely a factor in some cases, small White-owned startups had experienced the same problem for many years. In Pace’s case, however, the major distributors’ lack of confidence probably was compounded by his lack of any track-record in the recording business and Black Swan’s nearly exclusive targeting of a still-unproven market.

 

.Lacking national distribution, Harry Pace recruited small-time retailers and enterprising individuals “with a backbone” to sell Black Swan records wherever and however they could.

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Pace countered by recruiting small-time retailers and enterprising individuals to sell the records wherever and however they could. In June 1921, he hired Paul Robeson (who was then a student at Rutgers) as a part-time salesman. But as he had with Marian Anderson, Pace missed a golden opportunity by failing to record him.

That autumn, Pace hired C. Udell Turpin (spelled Turpine in some accounts, but Turpin in company correspondence) as his sales manager. A Columbia University business school graduate, Turpin brought along several sales professionals he knew from a previous venture, but he continued to build Pace’s network of small retailers and individual salespeople as well, advertising in The Crisis, “We want men and women with a backbone and a desire to earn $100 a week…men and women who don’t care what $20 a week people think.”

 

.Pace depended heavily on heavily on “agents” — independent sellers like Mrs. L. A. Shaw of Dallas, Texas.

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In March 1922, Pace published a Black Swan distributor map in The Crisis that looked impressive at first glance, with all forty-eight states covered to varying degrees. The heaviest concentrations were east of the Mississippi, but many states had a distributor or jobber, and at least a few retail dealers. However, the largest number of dots on the map represented “agents,” those independent salespeople who peddled the records door-to-door, from their homes, or wherever else they could.

 

..Black Swan record distribution, as depicted in The Crisis
for March 1922. “Agents” (individual sellers) predominate, while distributors and jobbers are widely scattered.

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In January 1922, The New York Age perhaps unintentionally revealed the company’s financial fragility when it reported that Black Swan had made a profit of slightly more than $3,300 on sales of $104,628.74 in 1921. Although the reporter seemed impressed by the latter figure, it was minuscule by industry standards of the day. Given that Black Swan records initially retailed for $1 (reduced to 85¢ late in the year), and normal wholesale rates were 50% of list price, Black Swan’s 1921 sales probably amounted to between a quarter- and a half-million records, depending upon the ratio of wholesale to direct retail sales. In the same year, the Victor Talking Machine Company sold nearly fifty-five million records.

 

Enter John Fletcher

On March 25, 1922, assets of John Fletcher’s bankrupt Olympic Disc Record Corporation were auctioned by order of the company’s receiver. The purchaser was Fletcher himself, in partnership with Harry Pace and Michael Naughton. For their winning bid, they acquired ownership of Olympic’s trademarks and masters, but more importantly for Pace, the company’s Long Island City studio and pressing plant — the same “Remington” plant that had pressed for Pace in the spring of 1921.

The Fletcher Record Company was incorporated in New York on May 26, 1922. Fletcher, Pace, and Naughton were listed as directors of the new company, which was chartered simply “to deal in merchandise.” With Fletcher serving as president, and Pace as vice-president and treasurer, the Fletcher Record Company was the first American record company to have a racially integrated executive team. However, there appears to have been only minimal interaction between Pace and Fletcher.

The Fletcher Record Company initially served only as a supplier to Pace, recording Black Swan’s masters and making pressings to order; its name never appeared on a Black Swan label. The Pace Phonograph Corporation continued to function as an autonomous entity, with a separate board of directors, and with Harry Pace still largely in control of who and what appeared on the Black Swan label. It would not be long however, before disguised Olympic recordings began turning up in the Black Swan catalog.

Initially, at least, the arrangement eliminated the production bottlenecks that has plagued Black Swan from the start. Pace was soon able to report, “We are now issuing ten numbers a month instead of three…. We do our own recording, plating, pressing, as well as printing of every description, in the above plant.” However, the operation soon proved to be unprofitable.

 

.Fletcher-era Black Swan pressings. Note the return of the sunken ring surrounding the spindle hole, which is absent on the New York Record Laboratories’ and Bridgeport Die & Machine Company’s Black Swan pressings. Black Swan 60006 is a reissue from Fletcher’s Olympic catalog, with xylophonist George Hamilton Green disguised as “Raymond Green.”

 

Pace Breaks his Pledge to Use Only Black Artists

Fletcher revived his Olympic label later that year, with an all-White artist roster. Pace had already reissued some older Olympic recordings on Black Swan, under pseudonyms, quietly breaking his pledge to use only Black artists.

By July 1922, so many outside recordings by White artists were being released on Black Swan that the catalog was split into ten separately numbered series. Of those, only the 14000 race series (replacing the original 2000’s) and 7100 operatic series remained purely Pace productions, employing Black artists exclusively. The remainder — which included Hawaiian, novelty, sacred, and classical and operatic series — were made up almost entirely of pseudonymous reissues from Fletcher’s Olympic catalog. There was also a smattering of sides from Paramount and Pathé, the latter consisting of material Pathé had earlier licensed to Fletcher for his Operaphone label.

In an ironic twist, the nation’s first successful race-record label was now producing its own racially segregated catalog, while continuing to push the misleading claim that it was “the only record made by colored people.”

 

 

.Pace broke his pledge to use only Black artists (above) even before going into partnership with John Fletcher. By the time this ad appeared in The Crisis in late 1922 (below), the Black Swan catalog contained many pseudonymous reissues from Fletcher’s all-White Olympic catalog.

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The aliases employed by Black Swan for Olympics’ White artists were obviously contrived to suggest Black performers. Various Harry Yerkes groups became “Joe Brown’s Alabama Band” or “Sammy Swift’s Jazz Band,” Rudy Wiedeoft’s Californians became “Haynes’ Harlem Syncopators,” and novelty whistler Margaret McKee was renamed “Bessie Johnson.” Recordings
by Irving Weiss’ Ritz-Carlton Orchestra, Fred Van Eps’ Quartet, and Wiedoeft’s Palace Trio were released as “Ethel Waters’ Jazz Masters” while Waters was on tour and likely unaware that Pace was using her name on records with which she nothing to do. Some Olympic recordings by conventional White dance bands were credited to “Henderson’s Dance Orchestra” or “Henderson’s Novelty Orchestra,” with no first name given, but obviously meant to imply Fletcher Henderson’s involvement, even after Henderson had left the company.

At least one newspaper was taken in by the bogus artist credits. A reporter for The Chicago Defender praised the Baltimore Blues Orchestra as “a new musical organization…doing exclusive recording for Black Swan records,” unaware that name was simply a disguise for several White dance bands from the Olympic roster. Whether record buyers were more savvy than the Defender‘s reporter is unknown, but Black Swan sales began to stall.

In September 1922, a bomb was discovered in a load of coal delivered to the Fletcher pressing plant, and the old paranoia resurfaced. “The officials of the company were alarmed at first,” The Chicago Defender reported, “lest it were the work of white competitors.” Pace’s reaction exposed his continued inability to understand and respect his competitors, none of whom had ever been even vaguely suspected of employing such tactics. Fortunately, calmer heads prevailed, and the unnamed Defender reporter later admitted that investigators believed the event might have been connected with an ongoing coal workers’ strike. 

 

Black Swan in Decline

Pace reported sales of only 256,202 Black Swan records for fiscal year 1922. In his November 1922 financial statement, he acknowledges that Black Swan had experienced “the greatest slump since we began business” during July.

The slump persisted into early October, by which time Pace seemed resigned to average monthly sales of only 25,000 records. “I am trying to devise some sales plan whereby this figure can be greatly increased,” he wrote to Du Bois, “but regret to say that I have not yet hit upon it.” In the same month, Pace set up a dummy collection agency to handle delinquent accounts. Although the operation netted only $544 in its first month, Pace seemed pleased with that figure and reported that the operation was “still pulling them in.”

Pace advertised a new stock issue in October 1922, promising a “certain” 6% return in three years, plus 6% dividends.” But no dividends were forthcoming, and the stock would soon be virtually worthless.

 

Exit John Fletcher

By late 1922, it must have been clear to Harry Pace that he needed to disentangle himself from the Fletcher plant. Pace Phonograph’s financial report of November 8, 1922, noted, “The factory has been a severe drain on our cash.” On January 20, 1923, he reorganized the Pace Phonograph Corporation as the Black Swan Record Company, ending what had become an unprofitable relationship with John Fletcher. Fletcher carried on alone, but his revived Olympic label failed to attract much attention.

With the Fletcher connection severed, Pace returned to the New York Recording Laboratories for pressings, using the affiliated Bridgeport Die & Machine Company in Connecticut as a secondary supplier. A new three-color label design and the release of a new catalog in May 1923 apparently did little to boost sales.

 

.Letterheads for the original Pace Phonograph Corporation (above) and the Black Swan Phonograph Company (below), a 1923 reorganization of the original corporation following Pace’s split with John Fletcher. (W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)

 

Artist Exodus

The problems at Black Swan had not escaped the notice of Pace’s artists. Alberta Hunter was the first major artist to leave the label. Reportedly unhappy with Black Swan’s lackluster marketing efforts, she moved to Paramount in July 1922. Fletcher Henderson departed that autumn. His position was filled by William Grant Still, who took over as Black Swan’s new recording director on November 13. Pace, who later stated that he had not been satisfied with Henderson’s work, predicted that “Still will bring wider experience and more technical musical knowledge than Henderson has had, and I believe will greatly improve the work of the records.” But being preoccupied with his theatrical work and growing stature as a serious composer, Still brought about no apparent improvement in Black Swan’s recorded output.

The company’s reorganization and declining fortunes spurred a second and far more damaging artist exodus. It began in March 1923 with the departure of Trixie Smith, one of Black Swan’s most popular singers. Smith was followed in short order by Josie Miles, Julia Moody, Lena Wilson, among others. Smith landed an exclusive Paramount contract, while many of the lesser-lights signed on as free-lance recording artists with music publisher and booking agent Joe Davis, who shopped them around to whatever labels would have them.

In the meantime, Ethel Waters had begun touring quite successfully on her own, in what could only be seen as an ominous sign for Pace. When the Black Swan Troubadours embarked on their 1923 tour, Josie Miles took her place. Waters quit the label in June, after returning from a transcontinental tour to discover that Black Swan was barely operational.

 

Ethel Waters returned from her 1923 tour to find Black Swan barely operational. She left the label a short time later.

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The Black Swan office hosted a second-anniversary celebration during the first week of June 1923, albeit with little to celebrate. In or around early August, Fae Barnes made what are believed to have been the last Black Swan recordings.

Only a handful of new Black Swan issues would be forthcoming after July, and some that were advertised are not known to have been released. The label’s last original offering (Ethel Waters’ “Sweet Man Blues” / “Ethel Sings ‘Em,” recorded in June at her final Black Swan session) was advertised in The Chicago Defender on  December 22, 1923. Black Swan advertised in the Defender for the last time on February 23, 1924. Even then, Pace was still soliciting “agents in every community.”

 

“Every Effort Should Be Made to Dispose of the Assets”

By the autumn of 1923, Du Bois was looking to cash out of the failing operation. On October 1, he wrote to Pace,

Is there any market for Black Swan stock? I have got to be out of the country attending the Pan-African Conference for three months and I want to finance my house payments while I am gone. If you think of any way I can help myself by the sale or a hypothecation of any part of my stock, kindly let me know.

Pace could offer no assistance, explaining that “summer has been very dull for us.” By then the company had gone dormant for all practical purposes, and its stock was virtually worthless. Its debts, which reportedly included a substantial sum due the New York Recording Laboratories for pressing services, were accumulating at an alarming rate. At year’s end, Black Swan’s board of directors approved a resolution that read, in part,

To make the corporation successful..will require not simply time, but the uninterrupted and undivided services of all the executive officers. We believe that any division of time or of interest will be fatal to the interest of this corporation. If, however, the president and other officials feel that the present condition of the corporation does not warrant them in giving their full services, we think that every effort should be made to dispose of the assets of the organization… .

 

Paramount Takes Over

In January 1924, Paramount’s Maurice Supper traveled to New York from the company’s Wisconsin headquarters to negotiate a buyout of Black Swan. On April 2, The Port Washington Herald reported that Pace had agreed to sell. With Pace’s abandonment of Black Swan, the race-record business was now entirely in the hands of White-owned record companies.

 

The New York Recording Laboratories announced its takeover of the Black Swan label in the 1924 Paramount catalog.

 

Under terms of the agreement with Paramount, the Black Swan Record Company was to remain in existence, but only on paper. It would serve solely as a holding company for the protection of its shareholders and have no further involvement in recording or record production. NYRL would take over the Black Swan trade name, trademark,  and goodwill, and it would continue to manufacture and distribute the existing Black Swan recordings. The Black Swan masters would be leased to NYRL, rather than being sold outright, in return for which Pace would be paid a monthly royalty on sales.

 

(Left) A redesigned Black Swan label appeared in early 1923, following Pace’s split with John Fletcher. Pressings bearing this label were produced by both the New York Recording Laboratories and the affiliated Bridgeport Die & Machine Company (the example pictured was pressed by the latter). The hybrid Paramount – Black Swan reissue label was introduced in June 1924 by NYRL, which leased Pace’s masters.

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Consumers saw the first evidence of the new arrangement in May 1924, when Paramount’s advertising logo was changed to read “Paramount Records (Combined with Black Swan).” A hybrid Paramount – Black Swan label, combining elements of both companies’ trademarks, was introduced with some fanfare a month later, but it never developed into anything more than a reissue vehicle for previously released Black Swan recordings. Having failed to attract much interest after ninety-nine releases, the joint venture was abandoned. The licensing agreement was finally terminated in January 1926, by which time the Paramount – Black Swan label had already been discontinued.

 

Winding Down Black Swan

Pace spent the next several years attempting to liquidate Black Swan’s remaining debt of $18,006, at one point asking stockholders to contribute $10 for each share they owned. He complained, “I did not get even the courtesy of a reply from one percent  of the stockholders, and not a dollar were they willing to risk to safeguard $100 invested.”

Pace contributed a few thousand dollars of his own money and made vague allusions to engaging in “other activities” with the potential to raise some funds. The company’s only other significant revue was rental income from the heavily mortgaged Seventh Avenue building, which was netting just $2,500 annually. The masters were deemed worthless; a message to stockholders noted “it is doubtful if anything is going to be realized” from their sale. As far as can be determined, no buyer was found, and the masters have long-since vanished.

In a final January 1927 appeal to Du Bois and other investors, Pace characterized his efforts as a “worry for me and punishing effort which appears to be wholly unappreciated by some.” He then turned his back on the recording industry, went on earn a law degree from the University of Chicago, and in later years operated an insurance business.

 

Selected References

“2nd Anniversary — Black Swan Record Co. Crosses Another Mile Line.” Chicago Defender (Jun 2, 1923), p. 6.

“A Consolidation.” Chicago Defender (Apr 19, 1924), p. 6.

“A New York Incorporation.” Talking Machine World (Feb 15, 1921), p. 157.

Allen, Walter C. “Report on Black Swan.” Unpublished manuscript (Jun 12, 1961). William R. Bryant Papers, Mainspring Press Collection.

“Black Swan Artists Broadcast.” Talking Machine World (May 15, 1922), p. 43.

“Black Swan Takes Over Company.” Chicago Defender (Apr 1922).

“Black Swan Records—New Firm Announces First List of Productions.” Chicago Defender (May 4, 1921), p. 8.

“C. Udell Turpin Takes Charge.” Talking Machine World (Oct 15, 1921), p. 46.

“Demand for Ethel Waters Record.” Talking Machine World (Aug 15, 1921), p. 89.

“Distribution System of Black Swan Phonograph Records.” The Crisis (Mar 1922), p 221.

Du Bois, W. E. B. Letter to Roland Hayes (New York, Nov 24, 1922), re: Invitation to record for Black Swan. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries).

— . Letter to Harry Pace (New York, Oct 1, 1923), re: sale of stock.

Du Bois, W. E. B., et al. “To the Stockholders of the Black Swan Phonograph Company” (New York, Jan 2, 1926). Du Bois Papers.

“Gives Jack Pickford Black Swan Records as Wedding Present.” Dallas Express (Nov 11, 1922), p. 1.

Handy, W. C. (Arna Bomtemps, editor). Father of the Blues—An Autobiography, pp. 202–203. New York: Macmillan (1941).

“New Incorporations.” New York Times (May 26, 1922), p. 34.

“New Incorporations — Capital Increases.” New York Times (Feb 1, 1923), p. 28

“New Incorporations — Delaware Charters.” New York Times (Feb 5, 1921), p. 22

“New York Charters—Name Changes.” New York Times (Jan 30, 1923), p. 27

“New Incorporations—New York Charters.” New York Times (Jun 25, 1921), p. 13.

“Now the Fletcher Record Company — Plant of Olympic Disc Record Corp. Purchased by Harry Pace and John Fletcher and Will Be Operated by a New ­Corporation.” Talking Machine World (Jul 15, 1922), p. 57.

Pace, Harry H. Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois (New York, Dec 27, 1920), re: Company launch and Du Bois’ proposal of the Black Swan name. Du Bois Papers.

— . Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois (New York, Mar 21, 1922), re: Financial statement through Dec 31, 1921.

 — . Letter to W. E. B. Du Bois (New York, Dec 23, 1922), re: Roland Hayes, and proposal to press imported Caruso masters. Du Bois Papers.

 — . Letter to Du Bois, et al. (New York, Jan 19, 1927), re: Ongoing attempts to liquidate Black Swan debt.

— . Postcard to W. E. B. Du Bois (Port Washington, WI, Jun 24, 1921), re: Preparations for increased record production. Du Bois Papers.

— . Stockholder Notice (New York, Jan 1, 1923), re: Organization of Black Swan Phonograph Company. Du Bois Papers.

Pace Phonograph Corp. “Black Swan Records.” U.S. trademark filing #149,558 (Jun 23, 1921).

“Pace Phonograph Corp. Changes Name.” Talking Machine World (Feb 15, 1923), p. 124.

“Phonograph Company Making Rapid Progress.” New York Age (Jun 18, 1921), p. 6.

“Purchase Black Swan Business.” Talking Machine World (Apr 15, 1924), p. 168.

“Report of Pace Phonograph Corporation” (Nov 8, 1922). Du Bois Papers.

“Robeson Casts His Chances with Pace Phonograph Co.” Chicago Defender (Jun 18, 1921), p. 9.

“Sales by Class of Record and Total Sales of Records by Units,
Years 1901 and 1941 Inclusive” (Exhibit: Victor record sales). U.S. District Court, S.D. of N.Y., Jan. 26 1943

“The Horizon” (re: First-month Black Swan record sales). The Crisis (Aug 1921), p. 176.

“The Horizon” (re: Black Swan distribution and record sales). The Crisis (Mar 1922), p. 220.

“The Swanola—A New Phonograph” (ad). The Crisis (Oct 1921), p. 284.

Thygesen, Helge, et al. Black Swan: The Record Label of the Harlem Renaissance. Nottingham, UK: VJM Publications (1996).

“To the Investing Public.” The Crisis (Nov 1922), p. 282.

“Try to Make It Hot for Black Swan.” Chicago Defender (Sep 16, 1922), p. 3.

“White Phonograph Record Companies Object to Colored Men Making Phonograph Records.” Dallas Express (Feb 26, 1921), p. 3.

 

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© 2024 by Allan R. Sutton. All rights are reserved.

A preliminary version of this work appeared in the author’s Race Records and the American Recording Industry (Mainspring Press, 2017).