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.

Early years

Paramount Records, first located in Grafton, Wisconsin, was founded in the 1910s as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Company, of Port Washington, Wisconsin, under the management of its director, Fred Dennett Key. The Wisconsin Chair Company had made wooden phonograph cabinets under a contract with Edison Records and started making its own line of phonographs, in the name of its subsidiary, 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 gramophone records debuted on the Paramount label. They were recorded and pressed by a Chair Company subsidiary, the New York Recording Laboratories, Inc., which, despite its name, was located in the same Wisconsin factory as the parent concern in Port Washington (advertisements, however, stated, somewhat misleadingly, "Paramounts are recorded in our own New York laboratory").

Paramount Records was a record label started in 1969 by Paramount Pictures (then a unit of Gulf+Western) after acquiring the rights to the name from George H. Buck. The previous label with the same name had been unconnected to Paramount Pictures. The new Paramount label reissued pop releases by sister label Dot Records, which became a country label. It also released new albums from other pop musicians and soundtracks to Paramount films such as Paint Your Wagon, among others. One notable artist signed on with the label was The Brady Bunch, from the TV series of the same name.

After Gulf+Western sold its record label holdings to ABC (which happened to have aired the Brady Bunch TV series) in 1974, the Paramount label was discontinued in favor of ABC Records, which itself was sold to MCA Records in 1979. The Paramount catalog is now owned by Universal Music Group and managed by Geffen Records (whose founder, David Geffen, later became a co-founder of DreamWorks, which was a sister studio to Paramount from 2006–08, and whose own record catalog is now owned by Universal).

ABC Records was an American record label, founded in New York City in 1955 as ABC-Paramount Records. It originated as the main popular music label operated by the Am-Par Record Corporation, the music subsidiary of the American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres (later American Broadcasting Companies). ABC-Paramount Records' first president was Samuel H. Clark. Am-Par also established the Impulse! jazz label in 1961 and subsequently acquired a number of other labels before the entire division was sold to MCA Records in 1979.

Background

ABC-Paramount (full name "American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters") -- the direct antecedent of the present-day American Broadcasting Company—evolved from federal antitrust actions taken against the movie studios and broadcasting companies in the 1940s and early 1950s. As a result of a 1943 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) action against anti-competitive practices, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was forced to sell off its broadcast subsidiary the Blue Network, the sister network of NBC, and Blue was purchased by the American Broadcasting System, Inc. In 1953 American Broadcasting merged with United Paramount Theaters, the divested former exhibition/cinema division of Paramount Pictures. The newly merged corporation was chaired by former Paramount Theaters executive Leonard Goldenson and was originally headquartered at 1501 Broadway in New York City, above the Paramount Theater in Times Square.