Recording the Blues – Field Trips

Today, records (interesting that many of us still call them that despite CDs and downloads) can be made in someone's bedroom or some other room in a house, or wherever, using sophisticated recording technology that is available on lap tops and home computers. Of course they can also be made in state of the art recording studios with huge sound-proof studios like Abbey Road. When the blues started to be recorded it was all very different.


In the early 1920s the major record companies recorded the women blues singers in studios in New York City, catching them when these artists worked the city’s theatres. By 1921 the sale of record  reached 100 million for the first time and by 1923 Columbia Records was more active in the Race recording field than their main rival Victor. It was Bessie Smith, Clara Smith and Papa Charlie Jackson that gave Columbia the edge. Paramount Records were also on the ascendancy it was Paramount that were the most effective of all the labels in exploiting the vast untapped market for recordings by black performers.

Paramount’s artists from the South went to their recording studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, the other labels all maintained studios in New York City. After the initial success of the Classic Blues singers - women like Bessie and Clara Smith – the labels had to look farther afield for new artists to record. Their solution for finding new talent was not to bring them all the way to New York City but to send mobile field recording units to see out new talent. The first field trips were in 1923, with more taking place in 1924 and 1925. But it was the discovery, in 1926, of Blind Lemon Jefferson, which stirred the labels into a frenzy of field recording. Interestingly, although Blind Lemon was discovered in Dallas he, in true Paramount fashion, was taken up North to record.

Scouts from the record companies travelled throughout the South in the search for new artists. These men would either arrange for an artist to travel north to a company’s home base or alert the company so that a mobile recording unit could record the artist the next time they were in the area. Neither were these field trips exclusively to record black artists, or blues singers. They recorded gospel and religious music, as well as HillBilly artists, the forerunners of country performers.

The mobile units visited cities for periods ranging from a few days to a few months, often setting up their recording unit in a hotel. The time taken to alert potential recording artists of the labels visit somewhat dictated the length of time they spent in any one city. Some artists would recall when a company made their annual or bi-annual visit to the town, and made sure they were around. Field recording also inadvertently encouraged the practice of artists adopting pseudonyms in order to record more sides for different labels. It was on a field trip to Dallas that Robert Johnson was recorded on two separate occasions, a year apart.

Sporadic field trips took place late into the 1930’s, the Library of Congress were also running their own, more academic, trips in the 1930’s and 40’s . The opening of local recording studios helped to put an end to the trips. This also gave raise to another phenomena that would drive the whole history of the Blues and Rock and roll, the local independent label.

Field trips were a very important aspect in the history of the Blues and popular music. Without them the story of the Blues would have been very different, some artists would never have recorded; history would have passed them by.