Race records

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The segregated catalogue category under which American record companies from 1920 issued music by Black musicians for Black buyers, and the commercial mechanism through which most early blues, gospel and jazz survives at all. It began with a commercial surprise. On 10 August 1920 Okeh recorded the vaudeville singer Mamie Smith in New York performing "Crazy Blues", written by the Black songwriter Perry Bradford; the record sold in very large numbers, a substantial share of them to Black purchasers whom the industry had not previously regarded as a market. Companies responded by creating dedicated series and sending field units south to record singers and players in hotel rooms and warehouses. The consequence is double-edged and both edges matter. Segregation of the catalogue is why a large body of Black American music from the 1920s and 1930s was recorded and therefore exists; it is also why it was priced, marketed, distributed and credited separately, and why the terms on which musicians were paid for it were routinely one-sided. The archive this Journey depends on was assembled by an industry practising the segregation the music was made under.