The empty tower that looms over Whitewater Gorge in Richmond, Indiana is the last vestige of what was once a highly influential American recording label. While never very profitable, Gennett Records holds a number of distinctions important to the development of American music. It was here, in Richmond, that some of the first jazz recordings were made, and a series of other important performers, from Wilbur Sweatman to Guy Lombardo to Gene Autry, waxed their music in the cramped, overheated studio built just off the railroad tracks.
Gennett Records was founded in 1917 and named after Henry Gennett, then the president of the Starr Piano Company. In 1915, Starr Piano started building phonograph machines to compete with models such as the Victrola (made by Victor), While Starr Piano Company remained primarily a piano manufacturer throughout its existence, Gennett observed that the sales of phonograph players were growing at a huge rate; by 1918, roughly 2 million were sold each year.
Initial records recorded by the Starr and Gennett imprints were light pop, classical and brass band recordings, standard for many labels of the time. But in 1922, Fred Gennett (son of Henry Gennett) started seeking out new audiences for their recordings. A friend of his, Fred Wiggins, who managed the Starr Piano Chicago store, heard the New Orleans Rhythm Kings playing in a club in Chicago. Between Gennett and Wiggins, the group was convinced to make their way by train to Richmond. On August 29, 1922, the group recorded the first jazz record for Gennett, the first of hundreds of jazz songs for the tiny label. The New Orleans Rhythm Kings were an all-white group that moved to Chicago from New Orleans after the closing of the legendary Storyville nightlife district during World War I. For their next Gennett session, on March 12, 1923, the band brought with them a fellow transplant, Black pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton. The ensuing sessions, of which seven sides were released, are the first known racially integrated musical recordings in American history.
Gennett Records was not done making jazz music history. In 1923, New Orleans-based jazz group King Oliver Creole Jazz Band made their way to Richmond. In their group was a promising young cornetist, who would soon marry the band’s piano player, Lil Hardin. Born in 1901, Louis Armstrong had served time in a juvenile correctional institution, where he had learned to play music. While Armstrong went on to international acclaim and charted #1 records well into the rock era, his very first recording was made at the Richmond studio.
“Froggie Moore”, one of two songs with Louis Armstrong solos. From the first Gennett recording session for the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band, April 6, 1923
As other labels added jazz groups to their catalogues, Gennett went further to seek out new sounds and new listeners. Two artists who knew each other well are probably the best known from Gennett’s fruitful mid-1920s era. Jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke recorded for the label from 1925 through 1927, turning out hits under his own name and with his band, the Wolverines. Beiderbecke met Indiana based songwriter Hoagy Carmichael in Bloomington at the Indiana University campus while promoting his Gennett-recorded single “Jazz Me Blues”. The two struck up a working partnership. By 1927, pianist Carmichael had already been writing for Beiderbecke and his band the Wolverines for a few years, and he tried his hand at recording his own composition for the first time. The result of that first session, “Star Dust” (note the two separate words) became an instant American classic. Carmichael went onto a major career as a Tin Pan Alley style songwriter. Beiderbecke, on the other hand, succumbed to alcoholism in 1931. He was just 28 years old.
Gennett Records later became known for its early “old time” recordings featuring early country and Southern gospel music. Among the most successful of these artists was Vernon Dalhart. While classically trained, he found his greatest success as a rural-styled singer, covering American folk songs such as “The Wreck of the Old 97” and “Get Away Old Man, Get Away”, released on the Gennett budget label Champion. In addition to popular rural-style singers like Dalhart, Ernest Stoneman and future Grand Ole Opry star Bradley Kincaid, Gennett also recorded “shape note” musical groups like Allison’s Sacred Harp Singers, preserving this unusual musical form and distributing it nationally. Other important artists who recorded for Gennett in the country style include fiddler and Grand Ole Opry performer Uncle Dave Macon and country blues artist Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Yet the Great Depression slammed the music industry as a whole and spelled the end for Gennett Records. Except for a relatively active trade in sound effect records, Gennett and its subsidiary labels Champion, Supertone and Gennett Electrobeam all folded by 1934, and it ceased distributing to Sears under the Silvertone label at about the same time. Today, however, Gennett is recognized as one of the most important labels in American music history, preserving many of popular music’s treasured and respected artists in their earliest recordings. The Starr-Gennett Foundation works to preserve this history and maintains a Walk of Fame highlighting these and other important artists.
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