Black Swan Records

By: Aaron Myers

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Black Swan Records

First black-owned recording company specializing in popular music, especially blues, recorded for a black audience.

In 1921 music publisher Harry Pace founded the Pace Phonographic Corporation. Black Swan Records, the division responsible for releasing Pace's records, was named for nineteenth-century opera singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who was known as “the black swan.” Pace hired up-and-coming bandleader Fletcher Henderson, Jr. as recording director and composer William Grant Still as arranger and music director, and in May 1921 Black Swan released its first record. The success of Black Swan's early recordings, most notably “Down Home Blues” sung by Ethel Waters, led to the formation of the Black Swan Troubadours, a group led by Henderson and Waters that toured the South to promote the Black Swan label.

Labels and record jackets from Black Swan specified that these records were made entirely by black people and featured only black singers and musicians.

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Pace purchased the Olympic Disc Record Corporation in 1922 to market music by black and white artists. Many African American patrons were disappointed by Pace's decision, because it seemed to contradict his earlier declaration that Black Swan would have only African American stockholders, employees, and artists. Outmaneuvered by larger, white-owned recording companies such as Paramount and Okeh, which recognized the market potential of race records, Black Swan went bankrupt in 1923. In 1924 Paramount took over the Black Swan catalogue.

See also Blues.

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