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).