Jack White’s Third Man Records to Issue Second Paramount Records Box
Jack White‘s Third Man Records and John Fahey’s Revenant Records have planned a companion collection to its lavish 2013 box set, The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records., Vol. 1 (1917 – 1927), that will focus on recordings by Mississippi Delta blues icons like Charley Patton, Son House and Skip James that the Paramount label released between 1928 and 1932. The new box set, The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume 2 (1928-1932), is due out November 18th.
Like its predecessor, Volume 2 will be just as expansive. The box, which is housed in a streamline case that has been modeled off a Thirties-era, art deco portable turntable, will contain six LPs, a USB drive, a 250-page hardcover book that recounts the history of the label and a 400-page “illustrated field guide” with biographies and recording info for each artist in the set. The USB alone will contain more than 800 newly remastered songs and over 90 original hand-drawn ads from the Chicago Defender. Each LP will contain a hand-etched numeral and a holographic image. Paramount historian Alex van der Tuuk co-produced the collection.
“The zenith of Paramount – recording Charley Patton – is going to be explored in the second volume,” White told Rolling Stone last October. “They recorded the grandfather of the blues, of modern music. He didn’t seem like a real person. He seemed like he wasn’t from Earth. Charley Patton’s presence led us to this idea. But as we got into more obscure songs, we realized this is just too good a story. You have so many pieces of America involved in this one thing: a company that’s going out of business, looking to stay afloat, so they decide to go into the record business.”