Page 34 - BiTS_05_MAY_2021

The Nitecrawlers remember the notorious Race Records

ace producer and founder of Black Patti Records, Mayo

Williams...

Around about the same time that Al Capone was strutting his stuff around Chicago, a pioneering
producer of Race Records was operating his own smaller scam, ruthlessly chiseling his artists with
contracts that only ever played off in his favour. “The only way to
make money is to screw the artist before he screws you”,
cynically claimed the man who provided a platform for Ma

Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tampa Red, Alberta Hunter, Blind
Boy Fuller, Roosevelt Sykes and Sleepy John Estes amongst many
others.

Jay Mayo Williams, also known as ‘Ink’, (because of his capacity to
get artists to sign on the dotted line ED) came out of Arkansas but

after his sawmill working father got shot dead the family moved
to Monmouth, Illinois. Mayo played pro football, but the pay
wasn’t good so to make a living he also hustled bath-tub gin and
acted as a collection agent for Black Swan Records.

Silvery tongued Mayo saw an opportunity when the mysterious
Wisconsin Chair Company decided to form Paramount Records
and buy up the masters from a now pretty near bankrupt Black
Swan, and by somehow convincing the naïve Chair Company owners that he’d been a big noise in
the Black Swan organisation, Mayo conned himself into the job as Paramount’s talent scout and race
recording manager.

Setting up office on South State Street in the heart of
Chicago, Ink started searching for talent. “I went to some
low-class areas when I worked for Paramount”, said Ink. “A
man could get shot there, robbed, anything”. Fortunately

for him, Ma Rainey had just quit the talent show circuit and
moved up to the Windy city. Ink found her singing down at
a heel juke joint close by the railroad tracks, signed her up
and recorded eight sides that made her a star and Mayo
Williams a big name in the Race Records business.

The thing was, Ink was too smart for the steady stream of
rural bluesmen knockin’ on his door and he grabbed the
opportunity to fleece those naïve country boys who were
happy with a thirty-dollar recording fee and free whiskey while signing their copyrights over to
Ink’s Chicago Music Publishing Company. “He was a thief from the day he was conceived”, declared
Alberta Hunter.

After Williams left Paramount and set up his own short-lived ‘Black Patti’ label, he continued
writing crooked contracts and recording from cheap studios, while his partner Fred Gennett
pressed and shipped poor quality shellac records from his plant in Richmond. The trouble was,