J Mayo Williams: Early American Football and Record Industry Pioneer.

 J Mayo Williams – One in a Million.

Early American Football and Record Industry Pioneer.

 

Williams in his
college football days.

Jay Mayo Williams was one of the very few African American recording company executives before World War II and was working for several classic labels, among them Paramount, Vocalion, Brunswick and creating his own influential labels Black Patti and Ebony. Williams attended the Ivy League College Brown University, where he was a track star and All-American football player. To say Williams achieved more than most in many a lifetime would be an understatement, but he managed it in Jim Crow America.

Jay Mayo “Ink” Williams, who rarely used his first name or initial, was born on July 25, 1894, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. After his father, Daniel Williams, was killed in a railway station shooting, his mother, Millie, moved the family to Monmouth, Illinois, where she had originally married her husband in 1885. Mayo Williams grew up in Monmouth and excelled as a high school athlete, winning a state championship in the 50-yard dash and taking second place in the 100-yard dash in 1912. He was part of the Monmouth High Maroons football squad that made it to the Illinois state championship in 1910. Williams excelled in sports and academically, he applied and was accepted into Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island in 1916. He continued to perform well on the football field, playing throughout his college years and making the New York Times All-America third team in 1920. He was also a New England track champion at the 40-yard distance. Williams's college career was interrupted in 1918 by a stint in the U.S. Army, where he served as a private. An outstanding scholar and athlete, he graduated from Brown in 1921 with a major in philosophy.

Williams contemplated a banking career but soon decided to try out for the new National Football League (NFL, which briefly used the names of American Professional Football Association or American Professional Football League after it was formed in 1920). He was a member of several teams during this period.

Williams joined former Brown teammate Fritz Pollard (First African American NFL player, Coach and Inductee of the NFL Hall of Fame) along with Paul Robeson (hugely popular singer and Broadway performer) as members of the Hammond Pros. His playing career lasted until 1926.

In 1922, Paramount Records, based in Wisconsin just outside of Chicago, became the second company to market "race" records, following Okeh from St. Louis. Paramount became famous for its "race" record series and if any one person could take credit for the success, it was Mayo Williams.

The freshly minted Brown philosophy graduate transported bootleg alcohol for a time and then began writing a sports column for an African-American newspaper called The Whip. The paper's editor, who had been Williams's fraternity brother at Brown, also worked as a distributor for the Black Swan record label. Williams helped him out for a short time, and although he knew nothing about the record business and his musical knowledge was limited to the blues music his mother liked, he decided to apply for a job with the Paramount

label, headquartered in Port Washington, Wisconsin. So novel was his position that crowds of children who had never seen a black person before dogged him from the railroad station to the label's office, which was headquartered in the Wisconsin Chair Company's building.

As an educated man dealing largely with artists playing rural music, Williams, whose musical tastes ran toward more cultured performers like Paul Robeson, put aside his musical and cultural differences for Paramount. He did have an appreciation for the blues that he picked up from his mother as a child, and he felt the style of music was a valuable part of the African-American community.

Williams, who said his nickname "Ink" came from his ability to convince artists to sign with him, had an uncanny ability to produce musicians that black customers liked. Many artists were surprised, however, to find a black man as an executive, and in 1927, Little Brother Montgomery even refused to record with him, thinking there was no way he could be an executive.

By today's standards, it would be unlikely to find a producer who doesn't socialize with talent. But Williams' "high" social status and introverted personality may have contributed to his tendency to do just this. He also maintained that keeping all artists at an equal distance allowed him to avoid any views of favouritism.
Despite his inexperience, Williams, whose side career in the NFL was never discovered by Paramount executives, was the most successful "race" producer of his time. About half of the approximately 40 artists he recorded for Paramount sold well -around 10,000 copies -- for the company to continue to record more artists.

Williams established an office on Chicago's South Side, away from the Wisconsin headquarters of Paramount. His location, in the heart of Chicago's "stroll" or African-American entertainment district, allowed him to travel to clubs or cabarets within a few blocks to recruit new talent. He also solicited public suggestions for talent in African-American newspapers like "The Chicago Defender."

 Williams then talked his way into the post of manager of the Chicago Music Company, Paramount's publishing arm. The company paid him poorly and steadfastly refused to give him raises or promotions. But the situation was ideal from a musical point of view: Williams rented space at 36th and State Streets on Chicago's South Side, close to the city's vibrant black entertainment district, and his secretary, Althea Dickerson, gave him tips about up-and-coming blues acts. He had a good deal of autonomy from Paramount's white top executives, and from their point of view (although not that of the performers he signed) he did well: he acquired the copyrights for much of the music he recorded simply by paying the singer a token sum (often between five and twenty dollars) and making it clear that the performer's Paramount recording session depended on his or her going along with the deal.

Williams proved to have a good ear for material (even though the down-home blues artists he recorded were sometimes put off by his middle-class ways), and with the black record market growing rapidly in the 1920s he consistently scored hits with the female blues singers who flourished in black vaudeville halls. His prize discovery at Paramount was Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, who had come north after a career with Southern traveling tent shows. Williams produced her classic "See See Rider" in 1924, which featured the young New Orleans trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who had just arrived in Chicago. The song became a blues standard. He also recorded the banjoist-vocalist Papa Charlie Jackson as well as blues woman Ida Cox, and a variety of other material including comedy routines and sermons. He also produced the first recordings of the great Southern country bluesman and massively influential Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Edged out of his position by one of Paramount's white salesmen, who had actually discovered Jefferson, Williams started his own label in 1927. It was officially called the Chicago Record Company, but on the label, he used the name Black Patti, after the black opera singer M. Sissieretta Jones (known as the Black Patti). Black Patti 78 rpm releases in the blues, jazz, and gospel genres never sold in large numbers, but are now among the most prized items in the record collecting field.

Perhaps most importantly, the label issued the Down Home Boys' "Original Stack O' Lee Blues." This recording, of which only a handful exist today, is one of the oldest surviving recordings of the Stagger Lee Blues. A black folk ballad, the song tells the story of how Stagger Lee shot Billy Lyons over a Stetson hat. Groups ranging from The Grateful Dead to The Clash have covered the song, and the owner of the only known Black Patti pressing still in existence has turned down offers of up to $20,000 for his copy. The record is proudly owned and jealously guarded by legendary collector Joe Bussard.

Despite the future influence the label would have on music, Black Patti's sales figures weren't as profitable as hoped, and after just seven months of operation, the label folded in September of 1927. Today, Black Patti's output of 55 records has become some of the most sought-after 78s of the period.

Record sales plunged during the Great Depression, and from 1931-1933 Williams returned to football as head coach at the historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta.
He returned to music in 1934 when the British label Decca launched its American subsidiary and put Jack Kapp in charge. Kapp called Williams to New York , signing on as a talent scout for Decca Records and its legendary 7000 series of "race" records. By this time, the blues was firmly entrenched in popular music and only a few labels, including Decca, issued the records marketed specifically to a black audience.
While employed by Decca, Williams produced the recordings for future gospel star Mahalia Jackson, as well as former Paramount stars like Trixie Smith and Blind Joe Taggart.

Williams stepped into the studio with boogie piano acts like Peetie Wheatstraw and Bumble Bee Slim. He scored a hit with bluesman Kokomo Arnold's "Milk Cow Blues,"

Upon retiring from Decca in 1946, Williams struck out on his own with Ebony Records.
The new blues styles that began to arise in the South and West during and after World War II finally diminished Williams's influence, although he had one last flash of brilliance when he recorded the young guitarist Muddy Waters for his Ebony label in the late 1940s before his long association with Chess Records. Williams started
several small labels after the war, eventually selling off rights to some of his copyrights and returning to Chicago. Williams established a South Side office for Ebony

One of Williams later labels.

and continued to run his one-man company into the 1970s. In all, he spent nearly 50 years in the business. and continued to work almost until the end of his life. He died on January 2, 1980.

Williams in his latter years.

A general underestimation of his influence on the blues tradition has resulted from his own refusal to assert his own importance in interviews he gave late in life. According to his biographers, he did, however, tell one interviewer, "I've been better than 50 percent honest, which in this business is pretty good."

His successes were recognized posthumously in 2004 when the Blues Foundation acknowledged his contributions to the genre with his induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.

References

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/j-mayo-ink-williams-5411/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/williams-j-mayo

https://www.allaboutbluesmusic.com/j-mayo-williams/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Mayo_Williams

http://ivy50.com/blackhistory/story.aspx?sid=12/26/2006