Recording
In 1932, while performing in Minden, Holmes was invited to record for Paramount. Wardlow speculates that the Paramount Sales Manager Henry Stephany stopped at Minden en route from Birmingham, Alabama to Dallas on the recommendation of Ben Curry (possibly the same man as Bogus Ben Covington), a friend and fellow musician who had moved from Arcadia, Louisiana to Birmingham. In any case, somebody representing Paramount took Holmes to Birmingham, where he met up with Ben Curry and other Alabama musicians: blues singer Marshal Owens and the gospel quartet Famous Blue Jay Singers Of Birmingham. The musicians travelled to the Paramount recording studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, and recorded at least twenty-eight titles, six of them by Joe Holmes and issued as by King Solomon Hill. The date of the recording session was previously estimated as c January 1932, but Roberta Allums stated that it was in the spring. Fourteen records were issued, three by King Solomon Hill, but Paramount was on the edge of bankruptcy, pressing and shipping only small numbers of records. Joe Holmes took three discs with white labels back to Sibley, but his friends and family never saw any discs with a Paramount label. His friend John Wills didn't believe they were 'real records'. Until convinced by Wardlow, he believed that Joe had paid to have them recorded privately. Few copies survived. One of the three, Paramount 13125 with My Buddy Papa Lemon, and Times Has Done Got Hard was long believed to be completely lost, until a copy was discovered in 2002.
Read more about this topic: King Solomon Hill
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.”
—Jane Heap (c. 1880–1964)
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
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