Bonus: The Vanishing of Harry Pace

[0] Christian nationalists want to turn America into a theocracy, a government under biblical rule.

[1] If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

[2] I'm Heath Drusen, and on the new season of Extremely American, I'll take you inside the movement.

[3] Listen to Extremely American from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR Network.

[4] Hey, everyone.

[5] Hope your summer is off to a good start.

[6] The next installment of our capitalism series drops in just a few days.

[7] But in the meantime, we have a special treat for you.

[8] It's an episode from our friends over at Radio Lab from their new series, The Vanishing of Harry Pace.

[9] Harry Pace founded the first major Black -owned record label in the U .S., ushering in a new wave of American music.

[10] But it's also a mystery story, because one day, Harry Pace just disappeared.

[11] And before we start the episode, we actually got a chance to sit down and talk to the hosts of the series.

[12] series, who also hosted Dolly Parton's America.

[13] You might have heard of them before.

[14] I'm Shimo Liyai, co -creator of The Vanishing of Harry Pace.

[15] Chadabum -Rod, co -creator of The Vanishing of Harry Pace, and a host of Radio Lab.

[16] I think the first question we have is, given the last thing you did, Dolly Parton's America, which is obviously about someone who's really well known, why then the move to someone like Harry Pace?

[17] oh it's interesting when we were looking at music stories one of the people that we interviewed for Dolly Parns America wrote to us and he said I really think you guys should look at this story and so Jad and I started reading about it and then every kind of page turn in the trajectory of Harry's life was like you think you're on one page and then you're on the other and then something else happens and every chapter was fully surprising and at that moment it just felt like this is not only an amazing story filled with surprises, it's also a very complex story.

[18] It kind of breaks all the ideas we have of binaries and which we felt very attuned to through the last episode and also through our own experiences as first generation Americans and as reporters.

[19] So that was kind of the reason that we were really interested in this music story at this moment.

[20] Yeah, I mean, I'll just add, it's like the inverse of Dolly as a subject in so many ways.

[21] And I don't just mean that, like, I don't mean that in any kind of racial sense.

[22] But in the sense that Dolly is every single minute of her life from age 10 until now has been lived in the media.

[23] And this guy's voice, we don't have his voice.

[24] He's completely, he's completely vanished to us into history.

[25] So it was, as storytellers, a really different challenge.

[26] I mean, we both love stories where you can see everything through a person in a life.

[27] And this is one of those guys and one of those lives where you see all of the complex craziness of America flowing through this single human being.

[28] And you just can't believe that one guy could live a life that is this epic and then completely vanish.

[29] Yeah.

[30] Yeah.

[31] I mean, I think you both kind of alluded to this in your answers, but like the fact that he, he, his life doesn't fit into one category, right?

[32] Like, he is not just one thing.

[33] And, you know, you are like Rantin and I, an Arab -Iranian duo, um, Arab -Iranian American duo, which I don't think there's a ton of, uh, in, in public, and radio, just to, but, you know, I'm wondering what you wanted to convey through Harry Pace's story about, you know, both the advantages and the dangers of not fitting into this country's racial categories.

[34] That's a good question.

[35] I'll sort of unwind it a bit.

[36] You know, I'm not sure that we wanted to convey anything explicitly so much as we just kind of got sucked into the wormhole of this world.

[37] And I think part of the gravity of it, the thing that pulled us into it was exactly what you're pointing at, which is as Middle Eastern people living in a country that is extremely racialized and has a long history behind that, it sometimes can feel a little bit like you're kind of off the grid.

[38] You're kind of off the map.

[39] Like the mapping of America doesn't somehow include.

[40] you.

[41] And I think every story that I've chased in the last five, ten years has some element of that.

[42] And it's something that Shima and I talked about a lot at the very beginning.

[43] I don't want to say we can relate to Harry because it's a very different experience than either of us have had, you know, but there is something that is like a rhyme or something.

[44] There's some kind of like spooky familiarity to it.

[45] And so you can sometimes feel lost.

[46] here and your identity shifts depending on what room you're in.

[47] And there's something about that fluidity that is, I mean, Harry sort of captures that.

[48] One other kind of like craft question I think we have is, you know, there's like one or hers dog saying about trying to pursue an ecstatic truth versus the truth of accountants.

[49] And when you're dealing with historical storytelling, especially one with so many twists and turns and facts, how did you all approach kind of of doing that storytelling of like the, you know, giving the story and the facts, but also trying to get to that kind of deeper truth of what Harry Pace's life and kind of tribulations and adventures means.

[50] That's a great question, Ramtin.

[51] I mean, you know, I mean, well, in a way, Harry Pace is, like, what we can say about him journalistically, just like, based on the facts, is very little.

[52] There was a few entries, paragraph at most, in a couple of textbooks.

[53] So, like, he wasn't really on anyone's radar.

[54] And we can't really say anything about his family.

[55] We don't have any journal entries where we can get in his head.

[56] So it's like he kind of invites you to read into his life by virtue of the fact that there isn't a lot of information, but the information you do have is really, really, really.

[57] intriguing and sometimes contradictory.

[58] And so it felt important to us just as storytellers to be really open with our audience that like there's the stuff we can know and then there's the stuff that we can only guess at.

[59] And we're going to guess.

[60] I think also we were trying to embody the psychology of Harry through his written works because we don't have enough from Harry.

[61] And of course we interviewed his descendants at length several times over.

[62] but yeah we kind of just tried to put the pieces together to kind of get the emotion across of something that does feel so far away we knew that that would be our biggest hurdle in telling the story you know what it is can I say one more one more point about this I don't need to belabor it like we'll never have an official account of Harry Pace and you know it's like I kind of want in that sort of Ouija board way to bring him to us in that way and so this this story is as much about that as it is about pure, hard -nosed historical journalism.

[63] When we come back, episode one of The Vanishing of Harry Pace from Radio Lab.

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[67] Listening to the news can feel like a journey, but the 1A podcast guides you beyond the headlines and cuts through the noise.

[68] Listen to 1A, where we celebrate your freedom to listen by getting to the heart of the story together, only from NPR.

[69] Before we start today's show, I just want to let you know this episode contains a few moments of content and language that might be upsetting for sensitive listeners or young kids.

[70] Wait, you're listening.

[71] Okay.

[72] All right.

[73] You're listening to Radio Lab.

[74] Radio Lab.

[75] From W -N -Y -S -C -C.

[76] See?

[77] Yeah.

[78] Hey, this is Radio Lab.

[79] I'm Chad Ibum -Rod.

[80] Really excited to bring you a project I've been working on with...

[81] Shima Oli -Ai.

[82] It's me. Yeah.

[83] Co -creator of Dolly Parton's America with me?

[84] I jumped in too quick.

[85] I jumped in too quick.

[86] Perfect timing.

[87] No, this project runs for about a month.

[88] And, uh...

[89] Yes.

[90] Really excited.

[91] Let's do it.

[92] Yeah, start us off.

[93] Okay, so every family has a secret, but some family secrets are bigger than others.

[94] We'll start with Eric Pace, the great -grandson.

[95] My sister had gotten me a job at this YMCA camp.

[96] This is 2006?

[97] We got a message from my dad saying we have a mandatory family meeting.

[98] You guys need to leave work to come and talk to us.

[99] Did you tell you what was up?

[100] He didn't give us any other information.

[101] He said, nope, you got to come.

[102] to the family meeting and I'll tell you everything.

[103] We thought like, okay, this has got to be divorced.

[104] We told everybody at the job and they're like, they're just like, good luck with the meeting, you know?

[105] This sounds really heavy, really serious.

[106] So he and his sister hop in the car.

[107] Kind of just like trying to hurry up and get there so we can see what this is all about.

[108] Three hours later, they walk into their childhood home in Redding, California, and the whole family is there, like eight of them.

[109] My dad tells us to go sit in the living room, and And we're not a very formal kind of family, and so that was strange.

[110] We're like, okay, this is getting weirder and weirder.

[111] And then he holds up a picture that had been on our wall, our whole lives.

[112] It was a really old picture.

[113] It's kind of the sepia tone.

[114] Guy in a pinstripe suit, really good looking, but kind of a weary look on his face, like he's being told to smile, but he doesn't really want to smile.

[115] And he says, do you all know who this man is?

[116] And we said, yeah, that's your grandfather, Harry Pace.

[117] What did you know about Harry Pace at that point?

[118] I mean, not much.

[119] This is Susan Pace, granddaughter.

[120] Well, he was a lawyer.

[121] He was a lawyer.

[122] We knew that.

[123] Peter Pace, grandson.

[124] We knew he lived in Chicago and he lived in New York.

[125] He's the one who called the meeting.

[126] And I was told he was like Italian.

[127] Somehow the notion was presented that Pace was an anglicization of Pache.

[128] Pache.

[129] Pache.

[130] An Italian name.

[131] Wow.

[132] They told me it means Pace.

[133] peace.

[134] And so I was like, ah, like peace.

[135] Cool.

[136] You know, we grew up thinking maybe we're Italian.

[137] You put together Italian and lawyer.

[138] So we thought, oh, well, maybe he's a lawyer for the mom.

[139] We just kind of made this stuff up.

[140] In any case, at the meeting, Peter sits everyone down.

[141] I think I told him.

[142] I said, you know how we've never really known anything about grandfather Harry Pace?

[143] Well, we've discovered some interesting.

[144] interesting information about it.

[145] Then he handed us the packet.

[146] It was about 10 pages long.

[147] And so we started reading, and within like about 30 seconds, I was just like, Oh my God.

[148] Oh, my God.

[149] It was mind -blowing.

[150] Oh, my God, this is crazy.

[151] I can't believe this has been kept from us.

[152] It was really...

[153] You know, it was just so shocking.

[154] Wow.

[155] How could it even been a consideration that I wouldn't need to know this?

[156] What they discovered is that this man, Harry Pace, who's picture had been hanging on their wall their whole lives.

[157] Well, first of all, he wasn't Italian.

[158] It turns out that he was African -American.

[159] He was black.

[160] That's how he identified.

[161] That's how he was seen.

[162] And he was someone who literally changed America.

[163] In like 19 different ways.

[164] Music.

[165] Culture.

[166] Law.

[167] He proceeded to fight the case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

[168] The decision opened 500 new properties to black residents.

[169] He desegregated whole neighborhoods, laid the groundwork.

[170] for so much music.

[171] Like without him.

[172] We'd have no Robert Johnson.

[173] Please allow me to introduce myself.

[174] No Rolling Stones and no Eric Clapton.

[175] He even had a hand in coining the term rock and roll.

[176] I mean, this dude's, good God.

[177] Why don't we have like three movies about this dude, right?

[178] I mean, you know, hello, Ava DuVernay, right?

[179] Good God.

[180] I mean, this dude is like, he is like the vocational McGuiver.

[181] But then somehow, right at the...

[182] the peak of his power.

[183] It's like, poof.

[184] He vanishes.

[185] So completely that none of us know his story, not even his own family.

[186] Wow.

[187] So you're telling me we're related to this unsung hero and you want me to just sit here and laugh about it?

[188] I've got to go understand this.

[189] For the next three episodes, we're going to dig into some of these questions.

[190] Who was he?

[191] Why did he disappear?

[192] And why did America let him?

[193] This is the vanishing of Harry Pace.

[194] mini -series on Radio Lab.

[195] On the TED Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

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[197] That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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[202] Now, this was a tricky story to report and tell.

[203] Where did you all get all this about him?

[204] He can be hard to research.

[205] Is there a book about him?

[206] Is there a single book?

[207] There's not a lot out there about Harry.

[208] He's a hard guy to know.

[209] We don't have his voice.

[210] We barely have his words.

[211] So, to try to help us make sense of all this, we assembled an amazing team of collaborators.

[212] I'm Jamie Floyd.

[213] I'm Terrence.

[214] Mcnight.

[215] Himani, Perry.

[216] Kiss and Lehman.

[217] Core Jefferson.

[218] You'll hear all of them along the way.

[219] And I'll just say, full disclosure, one of the things that drew us to Harry's story is that he's a guy who just didn't fit the categories that the world offered him.

[220] Kind of slips between the cracks.

[221] Yeah.

[222] And in a very different way, I say this cautiously, I feel like as Middle Eastern people, that experience, there's something about it that makes sense.

[223] Sometimes it feels like people don't know how to see you.

[224] I mean, I think a lot of people have this experience in all kinds of ways.

[225] My parents say...

[226] For example, Cord, filmmaker Cord Jefferson, one of our collaborators.

[227] My parents tell a story about when I was about two, putting me in front of a mirror with them and just sort of letting me take in the differences in all of us and the fact that I neither looked entirely like my mother nor entirely like my father.

[228] because they said that I asked, what am I?

[229] What am I?

[230] I cannot remember a time when I was not aware of being different from everybody else I know.

[231] This is journalist Jamie Floyd, another of our collaborators.

[232] She runs WNYC's Race and Justice Unit.

[233] I mean, everybody I knew was either white or black.

[234] There was nobody else who was kind of coffee colored with an Afro like me. And I mean coffee with some milk in it.

[235] To this day, I feel a lot blacker than I really am.

[236] Like, in my mind, I am really black.

[237] That doesn't mean my black friends and colleagues always see me as black.

[238] And so it is complicated.

[239] And then when you step into the multiracial...

[240] Okay, so we'll get back to Jamie and Cord and the family soon -ish.

[241] But we'll out of ground to cover.

[242] So first...

[243] We're going to take you on an audio roller coaster through what they discovered in the those pages.

[244] Chapter 1, The Rise.

[245] Okay, let's go.

[246] He was born in 1884.

[247] 1884 in Covington, Georgia.

[248] Scholars David Sweeasman and Emmett Price.

[249] Which is about 32 miles east of Atlanta.

[250] A very picturesque place that's been used for a lot of movies and TV shows like the Dukes of Hazard was shot there and in the heat of the night and other films and TV shows that needed a good antebellum background.

[251] Now remember.

[252] Scholar Willie Ruff.

[253] Harry Pace was born just a few years after emancipation.

[254] About 30 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

[255] His parents were slaves.

[256] Grandparents, actually.

[257] One of the things we know about Harry, or we think we know, is that his grandfather owned a plantation, raped one of his slaves.

[258] She had a child.

[259] And that child was Harry's grandfather.

[260] which helps to tell us why Harry himself was so fair -skinned, which played quite a role throughout his life.

[261] This is journalist Paul Slay.

[262] To our knowledge, he has written the only book that's out there about Harry.

[263] What do we know about Harry's father and mother?

[264] So we know that his father was named Charles.

[265] Charles was a blacksmith.

[266] We know that his dad died when he was really young?

[267] Five or six.

[268] Dad's gone.

[269] Mother is Nancy Francis Pace.

[270] And we think that Harry's mother was a lawn.

[271] If that is true, then we do know that the type of folks whose laundry she would be doing would be of significant means.

[272] She was a single mom, so no doubt she took Harry around town with her as she was picking up laundry and dropping it off.

[273] And so he was able to see a huge swath of people that most average kids wouldn't have access to.

[274] It was probably pretty eye -opening for him at a young age.

[275] Corr Jefferson again?

[276] I have no idea, but I just think that.

[277] he probably saw people treat his mother pretty horribly as a servant, as somebody who you give your dirty underthings to.

[278] My grandmother and grandfather were domestic servants at a rich white man's estate in Ohio.

[279] If you see yourself as being part of the underclass, I think that there's some anger that develops with that.

[280] One of the things we do know about Harry is that later in his life, he would write a brutal revenge story.

[281] Through all these years, he had held this bitterness, this desire for revenge against those of his own blood who had cheated him out of the heritage and the life that properly belonged to him.

[282] About a young mixed -race kid like him who tracks down his white ancestors and kills them.

[283] He thought of himself as being a special avenger of God, an instrument to be used in bringing about punishment.

[284] So, yeah, there might have been some anger there.

[285] In any case, by the time he's 10, 11, Harry clearly excelled in Latin, in Greek.

[286] He played music.

[287] He sang.

[288] I think even at that point, it must have been pretty clear that Harry was a phenomenally bright kid.

[289] And at the age of 12, he is sent to Atlanta University.

[290] Who paid for it, by the way?

[291] From the brochures of the school that I went through from that time, they had donations.

[292] Got it.

[293] So he basically, he sort of he got a scholarship.

[294] I mean, Atlanta University was the spot.

[295] It was the intellectual mecca for black folks.

[296] I think the motto of Atlanta University is I'll find a way or make one.

[297] How boss is that?

[298] What?

[299] I'll find a way or make one.

[300] Watch me. Professor Charles McKinney.

[301] Okay, so take us back to Harry.

[302] Like, what do we know about his life on campus?

[303] We know that when he gets to school, this cat was well -dressed.

[304] This dude...

[305] He's a handsome man. There's one picture you can find where he's about 17.

[306] Dark jacket, starched white collar.

[307] Closely cropped hair, wavy.

[308] Slight smirk.

[309] It seems, I would say, pleased with himself.

[310] All of the black, young black women would have fell for this dude.

[311] Writer Kesey Lehman, by the way.

[312] He couldn't be the country boy that he was from Covington.

[313] His first few years, he sings a cappella in the choir.

[314] Joins a debate team, writes for the school newspaper.

[315] He works his way through school.

[316] working as a printer.

[317] He was what was known as a printer's devil, which is some kind of print shop job.

[318] A printer's devil?

[319] Yeah.

[320] A young boy at or below the level of apprentice in a printing establishment.

[321] Are you just getting it from the internet just now?

[322] Just looked it up.

[323] Oh, wow.

[324] While he's at Atlanta University, he finds out that the white printer's devil is making more money than him.

[325] What does he do?

[326] He quits.

[327] He says enough of this.

[328] I refused to be treated in this manner.

[329] Okay, so he's printing, he's singing, he's learning to advocate for himself.

[330] All that's just warm up because by far the most important thing that happens to him at Atlanta University.

[331] Well, the most significant thing that happens to him there is that he meets W .E .B. Du Bois.

[332] William Edward Burgaard Du Bois.

[333] One of the greatest thinkers America has ever produced.

[334] In 1897, I went to Atlanta University.

[335] and stayed there 13 years, making a systematic study of the American Negro.

[336] It's fair to say that for the next 25 years, there wasn't a book published on the Negro problem that didn't have to depend upon what we were doing at Atlanta University.

[337] Well, with Du Bois, I mean, you know, he's sort of who all of us black studies, academics, are chasing, because he's the ultimate, like, Renaissance intellectuals.

[338] This is a scholar Imani Perry.

[339] You know, he's the father of American sociology.

[340] He's a novelist.

[341] He's, you know, one of the founders of the NACP also.

[342] In 1903, he writes the souls of black folks.

[343] It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness.

[344] We get his phrase of double consciousness.

[345] The sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on an amused contempt and pity.

[346] Which is the...

[347] One feels his twoness.

[348] It's the most critical work for black people still.

[349] Steel.

[350] I mean, he's like...

[351] Published this in 1903.

[352] Many of us, even if we have very different politics, we're all chasing Du Bois.

[353] Negro's had to have some voice in their government and trained men to lead them.

[354] On that point of who would lead Black America, it's exactly when Harry steps foot on campus that De Bois writes the following phrase.

[355] The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by, its exceptional men.

[356] The problem of education, then among Negroes, must first of all deal with the talented 10th.

[357] WBD.

[358] Boyce coins and brings to life this idea of the talented 10th.

[359] Scholar Bill Doggett.

[360] African Americans, Negroes, only 35 years earlier slaves could improve its law in America by investing in the talented tent, the brightest, the most intellectual of the race.

[361] Certainly, Du Bois was an elitist.

[362] But his idea was, I want to find people who can accomplish things that are so great that even the most bigoted white person can't deny it.

[363] And Harry was almost a personification of that, I think.

[364] In the talented 10th, Pace is number one.

[365] Okay, if we were to imagine then, Harry has just started there.

[366] Like, what would have been the first interaction like?

[367] Harry Pace would have heard about him.

[368] But then when he sees him.

[369] Du Bois is light skin.

[370] So you could only imagine Harry Pace following this guy around trying to figure out what makes him tick.

[371] Easy to imagine that one day after class, he's like, excuse me, Mr. Du Bois, I have a question?

[372] And boom.

[373] I mean, you see this bond that's there.

[374] I mean, if we think about Star Wars, Harry Pace is the Padawan, you know, to the Jedi master, Du Bois.

[375] Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the force.

[376] W .E .B. Du Bois more or less adopts Harry.

[377] He recruits Harry to help him with some of his own research projects.

[378] He, I think, gives Harry the father figure that this fatherless kid has never had.

[379] And he also gives Harry a whole outlook.

[380] To be a race man, driven by a sense of service to black people.

[381] The talented tenth, that it's up to him to lift up the race.

[382] Double consciousness.

[383] It's up to him to see him.

[384] through the hostile white gaze and manipulate that gaze for his own benefit.

[385] In fact, later in his life, he would give speeches about how important it is to use public opinion to make equality happen.

[386] The question was, how do you do that?

[387] How do you show white America, what black America is capable of?

[388] That's after the break.

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[397] Okay, okay, this is, um, The Vanishing of Harry Pace, a miniseries on Radio Lab, episode one.

[398] That's Jada Abramrod.

[399] I am Jad, you are.

[400] I'm Shima Oliari.

[401] And we are here.

[402] Yeah, we're two people making a podcast.

[403] Let's do this.

[404] So get us back to story.

[405] Okay, so Harry Pace, talented 10thor, Du Boisian raceman that wants to uplift as he climbs.

[406] The question is, how?

[407] How are you going to do it?

[408] And the answer he comes up with, through a roundabout series of events, ends up creating this amazing thing that we're celebrating the 100th anniversary of pretty much right now.

[409] But it begins at a bank.

[410] So 1907.

[411] Harry is working at Solvent Bank on Beale Street in Memphis.

[412] He taught Latin and Greek for a while.

[413] He tried to start a magazine.

[414] And now he was working at a bank.

[415] Harry's there at Solvent Bank.

[416] Sitting at his desk.

[417] And a man who turns out to be W .C. Handy walks in.

[418] Now Handy The father of the blues When I didn't love you WC.

[419] Handy Who we now know as the father of the blues The man who really introduced blues music To America and to the world It is my good fortune This is Handy from an oral history To live for two years In the state of Mississippi And to hear the crude singing A -ho Of the Negro down there Hey -oh Harry would have known who WC Handy was.

[420] Obviously, first of all, they have to talk about the mortgage business.

[421] Mr. Handy, please sign this form and that form.

[422] As the meeting draws towards an end, all the mortgage business is completed.

[423] I imagine Harry hesitating for a moment and wondering, do I dare do this?

[424] He might not like it.

[425] What's he going to say?

[426] Should I show him my lyrics?

[427] Turns out Harry had been writing some song lyrics that he probably had in the top door of his desk.

[428] The way I imagine it, he gets up his nerve, he takes a deep breath, he does show Handy his lyrics.

[429] and lo and behold, and he rather likes them.

[430] Shortly after that meeting, they get together and start writing songs.

[431] The first song that he collaborated on Harry with was called In the Cotton Fields of Dixie.

[432] One of the most exciting moments in this series was I finally found the sheet music for the song after much hunting and Jad Jamie Floyd and I ended up visiting John McWhorter at his home in Queens.

[433] John McWhorter, and I teach linguistics and some other things at Columbia University.

[434] And in my off time, such as it is, I am a great lover of music.

[435] Right now, I'm in a room where I believe there are 850 Broadway cast albums.

[436] He agreed to cite read the song for us.

[437] Can you sing it a little bit so we can hear it?

[438] It's out of my range, but in the cotton fields of Dixie is a dear old southern home where the mocking birds in moonlight love to sing.

[439] Though it's just a lonely cabin, it is mine the far I roam in the land where cotton is king.

[440] I'm not a tenor, I'm a baritone.

[441] That's where it's written.

[442] So it's not a good song, but that's what he is.

[443] You know, it's better than I thought it was going to be.

[444] It grows on you, doesn't it, damn it?

[445] I think the chorus grows on you.

[446] If you swing your ears and.

[447] don't listen to the word.

[448] If you don't think about what it's about.

[449] You know, we are struggling to understand what are they trying to accomplish?

[450] Are they trying to advance a people?

[451] Oh, they wanted to make some money.

[452] The day in this case was probably more handy than Pace.

[453] Of the two of them, he was far more famous and far less political.

[454] And he knew that these plantation songs, they sold.

[455] There wasn't a market for conscious sheet music back then.

[456] But, John, who are they writing this song for?

[457] Good white people who, want to hear about that wonderful period when everybody was so happy in the South.

[458] Then you would bring, you know, Trixie and Rebecca and Uncle Bill around the piano, and everybody would sing along to it, and then they laugh and clap and then, you know, die of typhus or whatever.

[459] Bill, I can play this.

[460] Will you sing along with me?

[461] Oh, sure, honey.

[462] And so, in the cotton fields of Dixie is a dear old southern home where the mocking birds.

[463] Oh, get that flossie.

[464] And Moonlight love to sing.

[465] Okay, Wilbur, can you come do harmony?

[466] with me?

[467] Well, I guess I could.

[468] Okay.

[469] So just a lonely cabin, it is mine of our home in the land where cotton is king.

[470] That's what this was for.

[471] And then Aunt Madge would bring some lemonade.

[472] Here you all go.

[473] Because this is their form of entertainment.

[474] That's all there was.

[475] This particular song they wrote it, paid a guy 50 bucks to publish it, and he ran off with their money, which is carmically something.

[476] I don't know.

[477] Then they make another song called Beale Street Blues.

[478] pretty well, and then suddenly they moved from Memphis to New York City.

[479] When they moved to New York, their goal is to set up shop in and amongst all of the other Tin Pan Alley houses.

[480] So all white.

[481] Which are all white -owned.

[482] We're going to compete with everybody else.

[483] Show them we have just as good, if not better, material.

[484] Problem is, unsurprisingly.

[485] They run into a lot of racism.

[486] There are accounts of white music publishers literally accosting them in the street.

[487] Now, at this point, the way that things worked was the sheet music was sold in dime stores, and most of those stores were wide -owned.

[488] So what Pace and Handy decided to do is they hired white piano players, songpluggers, as they were called, to go into those dime stores and demonstrate their music.

[489] Oh, so would this be the thing when you'd walk into a place and you'd grab a sheet music and be like, oh, I wonder what this sounds like, Mr. Demonstrator, can you play this for me?

[490] Then they'd key it out.

[491] Or Miss Demonstrator, they were often women.

[492] Oh, they were women.

[493] Yeah, some of them.

[494] It's so interesting to think about the sheet music passing for black or white, just like, you know, like a person.

[495] Right.

[496] This is historian Elliot Hurwit.

[497] He says the strategy worked.

[498] You know, they're making all this money.

[499] I mentioned 1918, 1920.

[500] Yellow Dog Blues.

[501] People love it.

[502] It sells huge numbers of recordings.

[503] And then?

[504] The big one.

[505] St. Louis Blues.

[506] Maybe the most popular song of the 20th century.

[507] It's recorded over 2 ,000 times.

[508] There are St. Louis Blues recordings by Stevie Wonder.

[509] St. Louis Woman.

[510] Matt King Cole, Louis Armstrong.

[511] The Beatles?

[512] Herbie Hancock.

[513] People will be recording that for another hundred years.

[514] So the product that these guys produced was immensely important and spread all over the world and really helped American folklore and American styles and ways of thinking.

[515] It's through these two men, primarily, through Pace and Handy, that this pervades and permeates mainstream American society.

[516] So white people in Ohio have their sheet music on the piano and they're playing it at parties.

[517] People are buying recordings of their records in Australia, in England, eventually in Korea and in Russia.

[518] This is how America really invades the world.

[519] So Pace and Handy are killing it.

[520] Absolutely killing it.

[521] But at the height of their success?

[522] There is this sharp division.

[523] Handy is really stuck on sheet.

[524] music.

[525] The old world of sheep music sales.

[526] You know, he was 11 years older than Harry.

[527] He liked how things were gone.

[528] That Harry, that's not what we wanted.

[529] He believed that records are the big new thing.

[530] Now, records at this point were just a few decades in, but people were just starting to get into them.

[531] Pace was like, let's do it.

[532] Pandy said no. So right at the peak of their popularity, with barely any notice, he quit.

[533] He rolled out.

[534] He was like enough.

[535] I'm done.

[536] Harry Pace bailed out of Pace and Handy.

[537] Harry also poached a good number of Pace and Handy's staff.

[538] Oh.

[539] Right the way from the postroom to the accounts department, mostly people in their 20s.

[540] Do we have any idea how handy, how this hit him?

[541] Oh, yeah.

[542] What does he say?

[543] He says all in, down and out.

[544] He talks about I was broken the bank and blind and, you know.

[545] Blind.

[546] How could Pace do this to me kind of thing?

[547] But for Harry, this was about more than just music.

[548] Remember, Pace is a race man. He's got a mission.

[549] He's a race man. The same way that Du Bois is a race man. Harry Pace is all about black people of how do I uplift, right, while I climb.

[550] And in the record industry, there was a lot more uplifting to do there than in sheet music.

[551] Because basically you had three main white record companies, and what they were releasing was almost entirely these really demeaning minstrel songs.

[552] All coons look alike to me. Like all coons look alike to me and the frenologist coons.

[553] The phrenologist coons.

[554] Bill Doggett again, he says it is impossible to overstate just how massive minstrelsy was at this point in time.

[555] The minstrel show is the behemoth of American entertainment at the turn of the century.

[556] It is based on the demonization of blackness.

[557] You had white bands dressing up in blackness.

[558] face, singing outrageously racist songs based on overblown stereotypes.

[559] You know, the watermelon, the fried chicken, the big lips.

[560] And he told us about a songwriter, Bob Cole, Black Man, who Harry definitely would have known about.

[561] What makes it even worse is when a song like this is good.

[562] John Wortham actually played us one of Bob Cole's songs.

[563] This is Robert Cole.

[564] And so, if you like a me, like I like a you, and you like me just the same, and then they're under the band.

[565] bamboo tree, and it's about a jungle person from Matabulu, and it's in this dialect.

[566] And Jesus Christ, the song is very catchy.

[567] Bob Cole had an issue with the Koon song.

[568] All of the extremes, he had a lot of trouble with that.

[569] And so all of a sudden, one day, I believe it was in 1910 or 1911, he made a decision.

[570] I don't know if he was drunk or what.

[571] He walked into a lake and drowned.

[572] Wow.

[573] Here is the most successful black writer of his time period.

[574] Wow.

[575] I don't think it's an accidental drowning.

[576] So the idea that Harry would want to move on from sheet music, this was the context, right?

[577] The white companies were releasing these minstrel songs.

[578] That's all they were doing.

[579] They were putting out circular platters of white supremacy and destroying lives in the process.

[580] And Harry wanted to change that.

[581] And if Handy didn't want to be involved with that, their partnership was over.

[582] Harry Pace obviously saw the need.

[583] He, he, I can't, I mean.

[584] This is performer Riannon Giddens.

[585] Why are, why are we neglecting all of this talent, you know?

[586] I mean, that's the kind of rage, to be honest.

[587] Like, I mean, I can't speak for the man because I, you know, he's obviously dead.

[588] But I can only imagine that it would be rage inducing, you know, to put it mildly.

[589] So I can only imagine.

[590] you know, that that all got funneled into, you know, let's do this ourselves.

[591] He understood that who makes records under what conditions and to what effects really matters.

[592] He understands that those are political issues.

[593] To him.

[594] This is not going to be a regular business.

[595] No, no, no. Pace definitely saw it as a social movement as much as a purely commercial one.

[596] But Pace being the businessman he was, went out and got funding for it.

[597] He got a board of directors with.

[598] Du Bois and others on the board.

[599] Media historian Tim Brooks.

[600] How old is he?

[601] Harry would have been 36 at the time.

[602] The first question he had to consider.

[603] What to call it?

[604] Well, he wanted to call it something that spoke of Black Pride.

[605] Do you know who named it?

[606] I do.

[607] For several months at the end of 1920, Harry was writing letters to W .E .B. Du Bois.

[608] The idea of calling the label Black Swan actually came from Du Bois.

[609] He told Harry, before you were born, there used to be this singer.

[610] She was a soprano?

[611] So Black Swan, the name itself, you know, was named after an opera singer.

[612] Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, and that was her moniker.

[613] She was known as the Black Swan.

[614] The first concerts were 1851, 1852.

[615] When she made her debut in New York City, curator Duwanda Lynn Reese.

[616] She was brought out on stage and there was laughter.

[617] Audiences were jarred and laughed at her.

[618] They couldn't make sense out of what they were.

[619] hearing out of that body.

[620] She had a magnificent voice.

[621] Looking back, it's this magical moment.

[622] Even in slavery days when a black woman could command this kind of attention.

[623] So that was very much in the air.

[624] So in May of 1921, almost exactly 100 years ago, Harry Pace launches Black Swan.

[625] When he launches the company, it is hailed in the Black Swan.

[626] Black Press.

[627] Chicago Defender, May 7th, 1921.

[628] News of the completion of the first list of Black Swan Records, which are now ready for delivery, will be received with great interest and enthusiasm by our people all over the United States.

[629] When the announcement was made that a company had been formed to manufacture phonograph records by our artists, a great uproar was caused among white phonograph record companies who resent the idea of having a race company enter what they felt was an exclusive field.

[630] They could see what a huge deal it was.

[631] I've got one of their first press ads here from May 1921.

[632] Ask your dealer for Black Swan Records, the only phonograph company owned and controlled by colored people using exclusively Negro voices and musicians.

[633] So the only records using exclusively Negro voices and musicians.

[634] Yes, that was a slogan and a fact.

[635] You remember Fubu.

[636] Fubu runs the fashion world.

[637] Fubu, Fubu Kloon.

[638] Clothes.

[639] For us, by us.

[640] This was the 1920s version.

[641] All stockholders are colored.

[642] All artists are colored.

[643] All employees are colored.

[644] And what did they release?

[645] What was their first record?

[646] There was At Dorning by Revella Hughes.

[647] Okay.

[648] And for all eternity by Carol Clark.

[649] It's more opera -e.

[650] than I expected.

[651] Well, this is classic talent -intent stuff.

[652] Uplift the race by trying to encourage people to listen to better music, quality music.

[653] A lot of the Black Swan material is boring as to be honest because it's just this hoity -toity white, light classical crap.

[654] But I get why he recorded it because the idea is to show that black people could do that too.

[655] So at Donning comes out and Harry releases a couple other classical records.

[656] How did these do?

[657] Did anyone buy them?

[658] Yeah, I mean, they sell only $674 and $64 worth of records.

[659] Wow.

[660] So at that sort of level, they're not going to survive too long.

[661] And so now he has to figure out what is he going to do?

[662] This is one of the many moments.

[663] We wish we could get in Harry Pace's head, but we can't.

[664] There are no journal entries.

[665] There's no letters to go to.

[666] But we can say that probably hit him pretty hard.

[667] Like, we know he had a stubborn will, but we also know that when he met failure at other times in his life, it really rocked him.

[668] There's a short account from a writer named Mara Stewart, who apparently knew Pace personally, and he describes a moment after Atlanta University, when Harry was working on Beale Street trying to start a magazine with W .B. Du Bois, it failed.

[669] And as he describes it, Harry looked out the window and, quote, there was the Mississippi River, swift and deep, at the foot of Beale Street.

[670] And according to this writer, Pace very seriously considered throwing himself in and committing suicide.

[671] And maybe that's how he felt at this point.

[672] But then, a very lucky break that would change him.

[673] and American music forever.

[674] Can you describe the moment where all of the fortune changes?

[675] So, Harry Pace, trying to figure out what they're doing, is 1921.

[676] Harry walks into a bar called Edmund Seller in Harlem.

[677] It's the spot.

[678] This place is small.

[679] Seats may be 150, 175 on a good day.

[680] But on the, that night.

[681] These folks are jammed in elbow to elbow.

[682] They'd all come to see this one hot shot 21 -year -old.

[683] And you imagine just a very tiny spotlight on her.

[684] Down in Georgia gotta dance that's new, easy to do call shake that thing.

[685] And she is amazing.

[686] So full of life.

[687] Some artists, you listen to them, you can have light conversation, and they're the backdrop.

[688] But when Ethel Waters sings, she is the oxygen in the room.

[689] But the old folks learn the young ones, what you do about shaking breath.

[690] Harry is spellbound.

[691] I come along in that.

[692] I was working in nightclubs.

[693] That laugh of hers.

[694] Willie Ruff got a chance to interview Ethel Waters about those early days.

[695] I can't tell you what a thrill it is for me these 45 years later to hear her voice.

[696] They called me then Sweet Mama String Bean.

[697] Sweet Mama String Bean.

[698] That's because I was so thin.

[699] And you got it before you started in show business?

[700] Yeah, but I was awfully thin.

[701] That was one of the things the Lord stopped me from grieving over me because I was always, She was a tall child.

[702] She was tall, elegant, pretty.

[703] I got rhythm.

[704] She could dance.

[705] I got music.

[706] She was a good dancer.

[707] She did the shimmy.

[708] The buzzard low, the Charleston, of course.

[709] You know that song, Back That Thing Up?

[710] She knew how to back that thing up.

[711] Ethel Waters is like one of those entertainers.

[712] I wish I would have been alive to see her on stage.

[713] She can get something across.

[714] I could sing, dance, talk, and whistle.

[715] I'd make you laugh and I make you cry.

[716] Make you laugh and I can make you cry.

[717] To me, baby, I got to tell the story.

[718] When I say a thing, I'm envisioning a picture.

[719] And I'm trying to paint that picture for you to see.

[720] I want you to see what I see.

[721] Now, in terms of what did Harry see when he walked into Edmonds and saw her, it's interesting to imagine, because on the one hand, Ethel Waters is as unpacian as he gets.

[722] She says, look, you know, I grew up by four.

[723] I knew how to curse like a sailor.

[724] I knew junkies.

[725] I knew sex workers.

[726] Author Randall Jelks.

[727] She's a woman of the streets, so to speak.

[728] But perhaps he also saw something in her that was in him.

[729] It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others.

[730] So she understood the use of masks.

[731] This is writer Margot Jefferson.

[732] The love of and the absolute immersion, as if it was her birthright in masquerade.

[733] and disguise.

[734] Ethel was a chameleon.

[735] She played with styles, doing what you might call vocal black face and vocal white face.

[736] Can you give us an example of that?

[737] What does that mean?

[738] Well, you can hear that, good question, in the, for example, I can't give you anything but love.

[739] The first verse, she sings, you know, with what we might call, white -faced dust, I can't give you anything.

[740] You know, and you can just hear her having a wonderful, amused time with, I can't give you anything but love.

[741] Then, the second verse, she drops her voice.

[742] She finds Bessie Smith.

[743] You know, much lower, she does that.

[744] And then, the little grace notes start going into blue notes.

[745] The phrasing changes.

[746] So you can absolutely hear the two.

[747] Oh, my God.

[748] When Harry saw her at the bar, it must have been like, oh, you're the person I've been looking.

[749] You can do it all.

[750] You got it all.

[751] So in between sets, Harry, or maybe one of his associates, elbows his way to the front of the room, where Ethel is lounging by the piano.

[752] He said, well, will you do me a favor?

[753] This man, I can't think of his name.

[754] He was a very nice man, a very intelligent man, colored man. And he said, there's a...

[755] colored company.

[756] He said, the Black Swan Records.

[757] He said, why the Black Swan is starting out, and that was Pace and Handy.

[758] It was actually just Pace.

[759] And I knew both them.

[760] I knew Mr. Pace from Memphis, Tennessee when he was in the insurance business, and I knew Handy when they, and they was in the music publishing business, because you had to get permission from him to sing to St. Louis Blues.

[761] But I knew, and they had this little office on 139th Street down in the basement.

[762] So he said, just go there.

[763] and talk.

[764] So I make an appointment to go with him down in this basement to where this office was a very nice place and very dignified because I was from the other side of the tracks.

[765] But it was our color, it was us.

[766] But we still had lines of distinction.

[767] I still do.

[768] So Mr. Pace was in the office at the time.

[769] Very nice friendly man. Anyhow, the result was, they said, would I be interested in making a test recording?

[770] So we went to a place in Jersey.

[771] That was when they were singing through horns.

[772] This was before the invention of the microphone.

[773] You and I are talking with good microphones.

[774] They had to do that in the recording studio with a megaphone.

[775] They'd have these horns drop down, tubas and bass horns and things like that, you know, and that dominated.

[776] As the story goes, Harry Ethel and Harry's arranger, Fletcher Henderson, get into a discussion about what Ethel's going to sing.

[777] Do we do more classical concert, you know, elevating elite kind of music, or do we go popular?

[778] No doubt Harry was like, can you do some opera?

[779] But it seems like what happened is Ethel said, no, we're going to do popular, and you're going to pay me $100, which was three times what she was making at Edmonds.

[780] And so I went in this little high.

[781] hot studio.

[782] It was a little hot room and I sang the Down Home Blues.

[783] Woke up this morning, the day was dawning, my loving daddy was not about.

[784] And he's got that loving, that always makes me shout.

[785] So when they put it out, it was an instant sensation in New York.

[786] An absolutely massive hit.

[787] Before it all gives out.

[788] It was a big hit and it got pacing, the Black Swan Records, off the hip.

[789] She says that recording got them off the hip, you know, put them on the mountain.

[790] Down Home Blues just completely transformed fortunes.

[791] You know, it was night and day.

[792] That don't mean I can't be had.

[793] The success of Down Home Blues was so big.

[794] It kept on going back to the press again and again.

[795] Some because I'm snappy.

[796] Some call me honey.

[797] Quite a few think I've got.

[798] Harry always used to claim he sold 500 ,000 copies of Down Home Blues in six months.

[799] Probably a bit of an exaggeration.

[800] Harry is hyping it up for all his worth when he gives that figure.

[801] But it's hard to appreciate.

[802] You know, music of the past can sometimes sound really far away.

[803] It's hard to appreciate what an atomic bomb Ethel was.

[804] You could argue that from this moment forward, she became the first crossover artist in American history.

[805] She was Beyonce before Beyonce, right?

[806] I mean, she was on stage, she was in the movies, she was a recording star, so she's a superstar.

[807] As soon as Ethel hit, Harry basically does a 180 from opera to blues, and he starts spitting out press releases full of lies, just to stoke the hype.

[808] So this was dated December 24th, Christmas Eve, 1921, in my newspaper, the Chicago Defender, How I Love, How I Love, Love that paper.

[809] Ethel must not marry, sign contract for big salary, providing she does not marry within a year.

[810] That's the, this is the contract?

[811] Ethel Waters has signed a unique contract with Harry H. Pace, which stipulates that she is not to marry for at least a year, and that during this period she is to devote her time largely to singing for Black Swan Records.

[812] It was due to numerous offers of marriage, many of her suitors suggesting that she'd give up her professional life at once for domesticity that Mr. Pace was prompted to make this step.

[813] Side note, Ethel Waters was openly in a relationship with a woman.

[814] Harry would have known this.

[815] She was dating another woman named Ethel, a dancer, and they were famous in Harlem for getting into screaming matches in the streets.

[816] New York Age on the must -not -marry contract.

[817] But she played along.

[818] Upon receipt of these documents, Ms. Waters is reported to have smiled and prominently attached her signature to the contract, which was returned to New York without delay.

[819] Ms. Waters' contract makes her now the highest salaried, colored star in the country.

[820] There is no diminution in the number of perspectives.

[821] Swains.

[822] I'm sorry.

[823] Swains is a word that we should bring back.

[824] Information is to the effect that there is no diminution in the number of prospective swains, however, and that each city visited adds its quoted to the list of victims.

[825] This is an amazing sentence.

[826] I mean, what a beautiful.

[827] She must have felt amazing.

[828] This is in the newspaper.

[829] Oh, my God, yeah.

[830] It's just like everybody's famously aroused by you.

[831] In any case, only a few months after that big hit, after Ethel signs the contract.

[832] Harry was getting the tour underway.

[833] They start touring as Black Swan Records.

[834] I mean, we'll later see Motown Records do this, Stax Records do this.

[835] You know, bad boy records do this.

[836] All of the record labels that come later in terms of black -owned for black folks, they take the same model.

[837] The tour actually kicked off in Washington, D .C., November the 17th, 1921.

[838] Paul spent months scouring old newspapers to put together the only full account that we know of of this tour.

[839] Started in Washington, then Philadelphia.

[840] They played New York.

[841] A little later, it was Baltimore.

[842] Spent a long time touring around small towns in Ohio.

[843] Paul says at first they played little Nickelodeons in Black Run theaters.

[844] Cincinnati, they played Little Rock.

[845] Ethel would always headline.

[846] She was the big star.

[847] Lower down the bill, maybe a comedian.

[848] In one case, I had some acrobatts.

[849] And all along the way, it's like one of those Avenger movies where superheroes just keep making cameos.

[850] Like, that just keeps happening.

[851] For example, in New Orleans?

[852] That's where Fletcher Henderson met Louis Armstrong.

[853] On this tour?

[854] On this first tour?

[855] And ultimately that's the meeting that led to Louis Armstrong joining Pleasure Anderson's band and, you know, inventing swing music.

[856] Oh my God.

[857] Louis Armstrong was an unknown young trumpeter at the time.

[858] So there was Louis.

[859] Also, in a few of the early days, Jack Johnson.

[860] One of the greatest fighting machines in the history of boxing.

[861] Jack Johnson was the first heavyweight boxing champion in America, maybe the most famous person in the country at that point.

[862] And he was the reason for that Bray's great white hope.

[863] White people hated that he was so good, kept throwing up Challenger after Challenger.

[864] He always beat them.

[865] Johnson rushes in, lands an uppercut, three left hooks, a tremendous barrage of punches.

[866] Apparently on the tour he'd do little comedy skits.

[867] I have been requested to tell just how.

[868] I knocked out so many of my opponent.

[869] And he would tell stories.

[870] He put the moves on Ethel at one point, but she brushed him off.

[871] Speaking of Ethel Jubilee is proud to have with us tonight a talented lady Miss Ethel Waters Thank you, Ernie, and hello then.

[872] It's a privilege to be here.

[873] Another thing that happens is that Ethel Waters appears on this new thing called The Radio.

[874] He sings a few songs.

[875] Just hearing trumpets blow again.

[876] So that makes her the first black woman to ever sing on U .S. radio.

[877] Wow.

[878] I was the first.

[879] and I was the first comedy person present.

[880] Having that voice transmitted across the airwaves was extremely significant.

[881] But anyway, let me get back on track.

[882] As the tour gathers force, Ethel was determined that they should play dates in the South because her argument was that all the records that have sold for Black Swan, all that music originates from the South.

[883] We have a responsibility to let the people they hear us play.

[884] As soon as she suggests this.

[885] Four members of the band, they quit.

[886] They weren't going down south.

[887] You got lynching going on.

[888] You got clear Jim and Jane Crowe going on.

[889] But Ethel said she wouldn't perform unless they did.

[890] They went south January, February, 1920.

[891] This was the second leg of the tour.

[892] Cincinnati, Memphis, Pine Buff, Little Rock, Arkansas.

[893] And so in many ways...

[894] Nashville, Chattanooga.

[895] Ethel Warner's and the folks who were on this tour.

[896] Savannah, South Carolina.

[897] These artists felt that they were active in.

[898] Paris, Texas, Fort Worth, Texas, Waco, Texas, Dallas.

[899] That black people not only can excel, but we actually come in peace.

[900] We literally come in peace.

[901] But that's not always what they found.

[902] For example, Macon, Georgia.

[903] Moments before they show up to perform at the Douglas Theater.

[904] There's a white race riot, essentially, in Macon.

[905] A young black man had been accused.

[906] of attacking a white police officer.

[907] A white mob then invaded the black section of town, searched homes, trashed businesses.

[908] Eventually they found the man, shot him hundreds of times, tied him to a tree, and then lit a fire at his feet.

[909] They then take the body, they throw it into the back of a truck, and they drive it into the center of Macon's black neighborhood, which is where this theatre, the Douglas Theatre, is.

[910] And they, depending on which account you believe, they either throw the body actually into the lobby at the Macon, or they throw it up against its main entrance.

[911] I play Macon, Georgia.

[912] Here's Ethel remembering that moment many years later.

[913] And I got there just a few, they had just removed, say, about a half hour.

[914] Before I got there, the remains of a person that had been lynched, a man that had been lynched.

[915] And you never sensed the pall that comes over.

[916] Oh, it was, it was, it just, you could feel it, you didn't see that.

[917] Ten years later, when Irving Berlin writes the song, Supper Time, poor Ethel, which is an anti -lynching song, that's the incident that Ethel thinks of to fuel her performance.

[918] When Mr. Berlin was telling me about how to pretend, I only had to remember.

[919] Somehow I ain't able to cause that man of mine ain't coming home no more.

[920] The grief and the fear.

[921] In any case, I got to say the fact that this tour even happened is kind of a miracle.

[922] Yeah, absolutely.

[923] As the troubadours tore through the South, something surprising happened.

[924] Black Swan became quite a chic thing for people right at the top of white society.

[925] He says Nouveau -Rish -White people started giving each other Black Swan Records as wedding gifts, and Harry started adding shows to the tour.

[926] What would often happen is they'd organize what they called a midnight frolic after the main show on a Friday or a Saturday night.

[927] It would start about 11 o 'clock at night and it would run probably until about two or three in the morning.

[928] And this would be a whites -only show.

[929] It's just like the equivalent of Brooklyn hipsters coming in and slamming out.

[930] Yeah, I think that's probably right.

[931] One of the strangest most amazing details of this tour is that at a few of these midnight shows for Ethel Waters' big entrance, the electrician would kill the lights.

[932] The stage would suddenly be plunged into complete darkness.

[933] Ethel would then walk onto stage, holding a giant Japanese fan that covered her entire body, and behind the fan was her dress made of 100 %?

[934] Radium.

[935] Wait, you mean radium like the element?

[936] Yeah, absolutely.

[937] So the whole building is pitch black and all you can see is Ethel on stage.

[938] She then Snap Shutter fan and what the crowd suddenly sees is this woman.

[939] Illuminated by the light of this radiant dress.

[940] And you imagine the whole house just going crazy.

[941] Wow.

[942] That's so cool.

[943] This is 1922.

[944] No one would have seen anything like that.

[945] That is crazy on so many levels.

[946] It was Black Swan Records, most incandescent moment.

[947] But ultimately...

[948] That was the beginning of the end.

[949] Almost, yeah.

[950] I mean, it's like a wave cresting and breaking.

[951] Everything was brilliant.

[952] It looked as if, you know, the company's good luck would never end, and then suddenly the wave crashed.

[953] And everything just went to...

[954] Chapter 2.

[955] The Fall.

[956] Now, it went to shit in stages.

[957] When Harry got back from tour, things were going great.

[958] I've got an extract here from one of his letters to Du Bois.

[959] We were selling around 7 ,000 records a day and had only three presses in the factory, which could make 6 ,000 records daily.

[960] Oh, dang.

[961] Literally, he is selling records past and that he can make them.

[962] Desperate to keep up, he buys an entire record pressing plant in Long Island.

[963] And then the white response.

[964] That backlash, the white record owners got pretty pissed.

[965] September the 1st, 1922, you've got workers at the plant.

[966] They're shoveling coal into the furnace which powers the plant, and one of them discovers a three -inch shell in the coal.

[967] They discover a bomb.

[968] Chicago Defender, September 16th, 1922.

[969] At the Black Swan plant.

[970] Just where the bomb came from could not be ascertained.

[971] The officials of the company were alarmed at first, lest it were the work of white competitors.

[972] The Daily News carried a picture of the bomb, which was of unusually large size.

[973] And if that shell had gone into the furnace, it would have blown the whole place up.

[974] Yeah, I have in my hand here a letter from Harry Pace to the Board of Directors of Black Swan Records.

[975] During the past few months, we have been the target of attack from our competitors.

[976] The desire seems to be that we must be put out of business by any means fair or foul.

[977] The white labels had woken up, and they were coming after Harry.

[978] The white backlash.

[979] It was clear then that there was profit to be made, producing, and distributing music for black people.

[980] Harry's success had proven to the white companies, oh, there's a market here.

[981] There are over 12 million colored people in the United States.

[982] There are millions of people who have money and don't want to buy minstrel songs.

[983] So all of a sudden, in the space of just a few months.

[984] Just about every record label, every white -owned record label, launches its own specialist race records imprint.

[985] My dear Dr. Du Bois, the summer has been very dull for us.

[986] The white companies have every one of them gone in for colored business teeth and toenail.

[987] Paramount comes along in August 1922, launches its own race label.

[988] Columbia, as early as February 1923, and the really big one was Victor.

[989] August 1923.

[990] It's caused a serious slump in our country.

[991] sales.

[992] That's like suddenly discovering Google or Facebook have decided to operate against you.

[993] Another phase of oppression from which we are suffering is the attempt that is going on to wean away our singers from us.

[994] And so the poaching begins.

[995] Trixie Smith gets pulled away.

[996] Trixie Smith, we haven't talked about her yet.

[997] She was a black swan artist, coined the term rock and roll on this Black Swan release.

[998] She gets poached.

[999] They also poached Carol Clark, who recorded spirituals for Black Swan.

[1000] And of course, Harry hit the roof.

[1001] There's a very good news report from the Chicago Defender.

[1002] It says, Mr. Pace is advised by his attorneys that another company has bribed certain dealers to damage their Black Swan records before selling them to consumers, with a view of making the consumer feel that the race product was sent out in that condition and to cause him to cease buying them.

[1003] Oh, man. If I'm Harry at this point, I'm hiring some thugs.

[1004] That is slow.

[1005] Harry's a gentleman, Jed.

[1006] He's a gentleman.

[1007] He's not going to do that.

[1008] They're scratching his records.

[1009] Making things even worse, in the middle of all this.

[1010] You get Ethel Waters.

[1011] Am I blue?

[1012] Am I blue?

[1013] Who gets poured away?

[1014] Ethel.

[1015] Ethel, no. Ethel's Aeolian side start appearing in 1923.

[1016] This feels like the end of like Scarface.

[1017] Like Harry in a room alone with a bunch of cocaine and some like big guns.

[1018] And it's just not going to.

[1019] Harry Pace, like Tony Montagna and Scarface, he goes down ugly.

[1020] First thing he does is he starts running as.

[1021] in newspapers saying don't be deceived don't be deceived don't be deceived passing for colored has become popular since we established black swan records the only genuine colored records Harry would accuse white companies of passing for black every white phonograph company is now issuing a Jim Crow catalog of records he says they're operating a Jim Crow annex whoa and I've saved the best to last oh no it gets worse This is desperate measures for desperate times.

[1022] Harry, at this point, isn't a bind.

[1023] What he desperately needs to do is to get some kind of black swan product out there on the market to fight back.

[1024] But the white companies had stolen all his stars.

[1025] What is he going to do?

[1026] So he decides what he does is...

[1027] He does the exact opposite of what he's known for.

[1028] As he accuses the white labels of passing, he himself gets his hands on a bunch of things.

[1029] of unreleased music by white bands.

[1030] Gets them through a white lawyer, by the way.

[1031] And he changes the names.

[1032] Not the music, just the names.

[1033] He takes white artists' recordings, and he passes them off as black.

[1034] Mamie Jones, for example, she was really a white singer called Aileen Stanley.

[1035] Henderson's dance orchestra.

[1036] That would have been either the Merry Melody Men or Lannin's Roseland Orchestra.

[1037] Rudy Weidoff's Californians, that's a German name Weedoff.

[1038] They became Haynes -Harlem syncopators.

[1039] I have to say I'm really on the fence about the morality of this move.

[1040] Is this a badass move or is this just like the opposite?

[1041] What it is is a premonition of things to come.

[1042] Make a long story short, just a few months after Ethel Waters records Down Home Blues and literally lights up the night in a radium dress.

[1043] Harry is basically broke.

[1044] are cramp now, very seriously for cash.

[1045] We are cutting down to the bone in every way, although I have personally put in large amounts of money and have used my personal credit to borrow more.

[1046] Harry was forced to cut the price of Black Swan's discs.

[1047] They'd started off at a dollar.

[1048] He had to cut them first to 85 cents and then to 75 cents.

[1049] Eventually he's selling a whole bundles of discs.

[1050] And he's throwing in a free 10 cent pack of needles.

[1051] So, what?

[1052] Phonograph needles.

[1053] Okay.

[1054] So, you know, at prices like that, there's just not much room for profit.

[1055] Harry holds out for as long as he can.

[1056] But then ultimately, Chicago Defender, April 19, 1924.

[1057] He sells Black Swan to Paramount Records, a white company.

[1058] White combinations of white businesses are frequent.

[1059] It does not often occur where there is a combination of a white and a racial business.

[1060] It is of more than local interest, therefore, to know.

[1061] Note the recent consolidation of the phonograph record business of the Paramount, a white organization, and the Black Swan.

[1062] Black Swan Records came and went in just two years.

[1063] But if you think about it, if you think about what came before and what came after, it was a pretty gigantic domino to fall.

[1064] Black Swan really hastened the process of the white labels, giving black artists a chance.

[1065] And it only needs to be a couple of years for Robert Johnson to have died before he ever recorded a note, that process had been delayed by just a couple of years.

[1066] We'd have no Robert Johnson.

[1067] And with no Robert Johnson, you've got no Rolling Stones and no Eric Clapton.

[1068] Oh my God.

[1069] That's weird to imagine.

[1070] Once you take that brick out, you know, the whole tower starts to look pretty shaky.

[1071] I mean, it's all historical speculation, really.

[1072] Here's what we'll say.

[1073] Everything that we just told you about Black Swan and Ethel and all the stuff, that's Just the first part of Harry's story.

[1074] This guy lived five lifetimes in one.

[1075] And the craziest part is yet to come.

[1076] There is a conspiracy.

[1077] There is, like, they threatened my family.

[1078] They threatened Harry Jr., your father.

[1079] They threatened Josephine.

[1080] It's like, poof.

[1081] That's haunted.

[1082] In the next episode, Harry's record roulette starts to spin out of control.

[1083] You know, so basically after 60 years of battle, you know, how many more years did he owe you?

[1084] Right?

[1085] How many more years did he owe?

[1086] That's on the next episode of The Vanishing of Harry Pace.

[1087] The Vanishing of Harry Pace was created by Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliai and is presented as a collaboration between awesome audio, radio lab, and radio diaries.

[1088] The series is based on the book Black Swan Blues, the hard rise and brutal fall of America's first black -owned record label by Paul Slade.

[1089] We had original music from musician Hanya Rainey, her song Buka off the album Esya.

[1090] Our editorial advisors are Yasei Lehman, Imani Peri.

[1091] Corey Jefferson and Terrence McKnight.

[1092] Jamie Floyd is our consulting producer.

[1093] Our fact checker is Natalie Mead.

[1094] Series artwork was created by Kathy Herrera and special thanks to Nellie Giles, Ben Shapiro, and Joe Richmond.

[1095] Next episode is right on the heels of this one.

[1096] Thank you for listening.

[1097] Yeah.

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