George Buck purchased the rights to Paramount from Steiner.
Dave Lewis
On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Mark Hendrix <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Steve Ramm wrote, "This set is Pricey but it's also 1/3 the price of Black
> Europe that Rainer priced for Bear Family."
>
> That is true, but this Paramount set has very little material on it that
> has
> not already been reissued (unlike Black Europe) and the 800 recordings on
> the flash drive are in the form of mp3s (unlike Black Europe). (Will a
> Chris King-transferred MP3 offer better sound than a Chris
> Zwarg-transferred
> CD? I don't see how it can.)
>
> The first volume of the Paramount set, despite the advertising, has NO
> Paramount recordings from 1917-1922, so is not a comprehensive overview of
> the label's offerings. It has no ethnic recordings. The label's history
> has already been extensively covered (in 78 Quarterly and then in Alex but
> der Tuuk's Mainspring Press-published book) and the label's discography is
> being covered by Agram books. Unless one is new to discovering this
> material (and that may be the audience this set is directed at), the
> Paramount set doesn't have much to offer.
>
> As for bootlegs, my understanding is that John Steiner purchased the rights
> to Paramount recordings from Wisconsin Chair Co. head Otto Moeser, and so
> whoever purchased those rights from John Steiner has legal title to those
> recordings. (Someone please correct me if I am mistaken.) Thus, I assume
> that when Paramount recordings are re-issued by John Tefteller's Blues
> Images, Revenant, Third Man Records, Yazoo, Document, etc., etc., all of
> these entities are bootlegging the recordings. Not that I mind… without
> their efforts I would not have been able to hear them.
>
> --Mark Hendrix
>
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