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Long ago, our own house of blues

Collector comes to Ozaukee seeking remnants of 1920s label

By JEFF COLE and NICK CARTER
of the Journal Sentinel staff

Last Updated: May 9, 2002

Port Washington - John Tefteller doesn't sing the blues. But he's a traveling bluesman just the same.

Local Blues   Photo/Karen Sherlock John Tefteller is in Wisconsin looking for recordings and memorabilia from Paramount. Photo/Karen Sherlock A long-defunct record label known as Paramount produced about a quarter of the blues music recorded in the United States during the 1920s.   Related Coverage   Blues: Essential artists

And if you're a real bluesman, says the 44-year-old from Grants Pass, Ore., there are two places you have to visit.

Port Washington and Grafton.

Tefteller doesn't mistake Ozaukee County for the Mississippi Delta, but its legacy is nearly as important.

That's because of a long-defunct record label known as Paramount, which had headquarters in Port Washington and pressed its records in Grafton. It churned out a quarter of the blues music recorded in the United States during the 1920s.

"I know there are records produced by the company in somebody's attic or basement," Tefteller said. "People may not think they are worth anything, but I would like to see them."

Which explains why the gray-haired Tefteller, a married father of three, has been driving around Ozaukee County since May 3, wearing a black T-shirt with the words "Record Collector" on it.

Tefteller took out a full-page ad in the Ozaukee Press encouraging people to contact him at his hotel if they had the kind of rarities he was interested in. He leaves Sunday.

Many of the Paramount recordings are exceedingly rare and historically significant, Tefteller said. Those 78s are a window on a part of black culture in the 1920s, and they also show the roots of rock 'n' roll.

Three times in the past 15 years, large numbers of original Paramount 78s have been discovered, Tefteller said. He ended up buying many of them, including the first recording ever made by Tommy Johnson, for which he paid $11,000.

Fundamental source of culture

There's no debating the importance of Paramount, experts say.

"The Paramount recordings represent some of the most thrilling Delta blues ever recorded," said Bruce Iglauer, chief executive officer of the national blues label Alligator Records. "They are seminal recordings, capturing these blues artists at the peak of their creativity.

"Paramount was among the few essential blues labels before World War II. There should be a landmark at the site of the studio - even though it's a bit ironic that a studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, is distinguished for being a recording spot to all these Delta blues artists."

Paramount was owned by the Wisconsin Chair Co., a Port Washington furniture company. In the early 1900s, the company began making phonograph cabinets for the Edison Co. Accounts of Wisconsin Chair's history said the company decided to produce its own records in 1917. It started out making ethnic records under the Paramount label designed to appeal to German, Scandinavian and Mexican immigrants.

"In those days, it was the common practice to give away records when you sold a phonograph," Tefteller said.

But it was hard for Paramount to compete against larger, better-financed recording companies. Looking for a market niche before the term existed, Paramount executives jumped into the black-music market, producing both jazz and blues in 1922.

The company is as famous for its jazz recordings as it was for its blues, Tefteller said. The company recorded such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver.

The company recorded in Chicago and other locations but eventually moved the recording studio to an old knitting mill in Grafton along the Milwaukee River just north of Falls Road.

"In my opinion, their (Paramount's) recordings are among the most important in the blues," said Jim Feeney, a national blues promoter and historian. "They're kind of the songbook for a lot of blues and rock performers.

"I think on those grounds alone it should be deemed some sort of historical site, something along the lines of what they did for Chess studios here in Chicago. Paramount should be a must-stop tourist destination for any serious blues fan."

Fading into history

But locally, knowledge about the area's blues history is more the stuff of legend and lore than of historical pride.

Neither the Grafton knitting mill nor the lakefront Chair Factory plant in Port Washington stands. No historical markers point them out.

Several myths surround Paramount's Grafton recording sessions, Tefteller says.

"The legend said that the artists recorded at night, slept in the factory during the day and then were taken back to Milwaukee at night," Tefteller said. "That's just not true. The quality of the performances is too good. These people were awake and alert when they recorded, something that couldn't have been done in the middle of the night."

The performances were good, Tefteller noted, but the records themselves often were not. The records are made of a shellac, clay and stone. That's part of the reason the records are so rare - they just didn't last.

Another myth is that when the company went out of business in 1932, it took the master recording plates and the remaining 78s and tossed them into the Milwaukee River, Tefteller said. That didn't happen either, he said.

Many of the plates were stored in a warehouse behind what is now Simplicity Manufacturing Co. in Port Washington, Tefteller said. In 1942, some of them were given to the war effort, but it is likely that just as many ended up in people's basements, he said.

And that's what draws a collector such as Tefteller.

"I have talked to people who said that people were taking boxes of records home then," Tefteller said. "I know they are out there. I want to see what people have."

Collecting is not just a hobby for Tefteller. He makes his living buying and selling vintage rock 'n' roll records through his company, World's Rarest Records. He says he makes a comfortable six-figure income doing it.

"I started in 1970, when I was 12 years old, growing up in Orange County, California," Tefteller said. "My grandparents had died, and my dad and I were selling a lot of their stuff at a flea market each weekend."

At the flea market, Tefteller befriended a record collector. The man explained how he would buy vintage records for flea market prices and then sell the same records for a collector's profit. Tefteller liked the sound of that and started doing the same.

In high school, Tefteller kept himself in spending money buying records at flea markets for a dollar and selling them to his friends for $3.

Today, Tefteller has more than 200,000 records for sale and another 5,000 in his personal collection. Along the way, Tefteller got hooked on the blues, particularly Delta Blues, which is characterized by slide guitar.

Tefteller's reputation also grew. In 1998, he was one of 20 experts who created a scale for determining the uniqueness of a collectible item.

Although Tefteller said he will never part with any of his blues records, he has lent them to Yazoo Records, a New Jersey company that reissues vintage music. The company has used many of Tefteller's records in its blues compilations, he said.

Blind Joe Reynolds

The gem of Tefteller's collection is a 1929 Paramount 78. In that year, a Louisiana street musician named Joe Sheppard recorded four songs in Grafton, which were released on two records.

One of the songs, "Outside Woman Blues," was rerecorded in 1967 by Cream on its album "Disraeli Gears" because Eric Clapton is a Sheppard fan.

Sheppard was on the run from the law, Tefteller said, so he used the name Blind Joe Reynolds.

The other record, which contained the songs "Ninety-Nine Blues" and "Cold Woman Blues," disappeared until this year, when an Ohio schoolteacher found the only known copy at a Nashville flea market. Tefteller now owns it.

This week's Ozaukee County trip has been productive, Tefteller said. He has purchased a number of advertising fliers Paramount produced to tout its records.

"I like that stuff as much, because people tended to throw the paper advertisements out faster than the records," Tefteller said.

On Wednesday, Tefteller struck gold: He found and purchased one of the last records ever recorded at Paramount. It was done by an obscure blues artist who used the name King Solomon Hill.

"He is not that well-known, and if most people heard the record, they would say it's OK," Tefteller said. "But I appreciate it."

The record - Tefteller wouldn't say what he paid for it - is interesting for another reason. At the end of the song titled "Times Has Done Got Hard," Hill sings: "I'm goin' to leave Milwaukee, goin' back to Chicago."