- What does the Public want? What will you have? If your preferences are not listed in our catalog, we will make them for you, as Paramount must please the buying public. There is always room for more good material and more talented artists.
For part of those years there was a pressing plant in Grafton, for stamping out copies of recordings. Later there were recording studios in Grafton and in Port Washington.
The Great Depression brought an end to Paramount Records recording sessions. The last blues recording for the label was made by Skip James; a legendary figure whose song, "I'm so glad", was the basis for a hit in the 1960s, by Eric Clapton's group Cream.
Some of the Paramount Blues and Jazz labels have been reissued. Any original Paramount Records are collector's items now, as well as any other memorabilia of the record label. But the musical influence of those early Blues and Jazz recordings are not gone. We can still hear the sounds they made famous, though today we can listen on CDs rather than on fragile shellac records.
In 2002, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, opened the Ozaukee Interurban Trail, a 30-mile, paved, mostly off-road, multi-use transportation and recreation trail that crosses the County from north to south passing through eight of Ozaukee County's sixteen communities. This trail is not new. It primarily follows the same right-of-way as the historic interurban railway that connected Ozaukee's communities with Milwaukee. The interurban electric railway had connected Milwaukee to Sheboygan from 1908 until 1951. This was often the route taken by the musicians, both black and white, as they traveled from Chicago to Milwaukee to Grafton, to recording sessions. Today, you can still follow the route followed by blues musicians from the rural South, who came north to Wisconsin in the 1920s and 30s, to record their music.
If you are visiting Wisconsin, take the Interurban Trail to Ozaukee County and follow in the footsteps of the early performers whose music set the stage for much of the music to come.
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