Document Records
Encyclopedia
Document Records is a (now) British record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 that specializes in early American blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...

, gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

, spirituals
Spiritual (music)
Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...

 jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, and other rural American genres (collectively known as "roots
American folk music
American folk music is a musical term that encompasses numerous genres, many of which are known as traditional music or roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American...

" music), generally made between 1900 and 1945. Since 2000 it is owned by Gary Atkinson and based in Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart is a burgh town in the south of Scotland in the west of the region of Dumfries and Galloway and in the county of Wigtownshire....

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

.

Document has, among other things, the exclusive rights to a great deal of unreleased music and other audio media produced by the Edison Company between 1914 and 1929.

Artists

  • Albert Ammons
    Albert Ammons
    Albert Ammons was an American pianist. Ammons was a player of boogie-woogie, a bluesy jazz style popular from the late 1930s into the mid 1940s.-Life and career:...

  • Kokomo Arnold
    Kokomo Arnold
    Kokomo Arnold was an American blues musician.Born as James Arnold in Lovejoy's Station, Georgia, he got his nickname in 1934 after releasing "Old Original Kokomo Blues" for the Decca label; it was a cover of the Scrapper Blackwell blues song about the city of Kokomo, Indiana...

  • Barbecue Bob
    Barbecue Bob
    Robert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob was an early American Piedmont blues musician. His nickname came from the fact that he was a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the two extant photographs of Bob show him playing his guitar while wearing a full length white apron and cook's hat.-Early...

  • Ed Bell
  • Gladys Bentley
    Gladys Bentley
    Gladys Bentley was an American blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance.-Biography:Bentley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of American George L. Bentley and his wife, a Trinidadian, Mary Mote...

  • Esther Bigeou
    Esther Bigeou
    Esther Bigeou was an American vaudeville and blues singer. Billed as "The Girl with the Million Dollar Smile", she was one of the classic female blues singers popular in the 1920s....

  • Francis "Scrapper" Blackwell
  • Ishmon Bracey
  • Ada Brown
    Ada Brown
    Ada Brown was an American blues singer. She is best known for her recordings of "Ill Natural Blues", "Break O' Day Blues", and "Evil Mama Blues.-Biography:...

  • Cleo Patra Brown
    Cleo Patra Brown
    Cleo Brown, later Cleo Patra Brown was an American blues and jazz vocalist and pianist.-Life:Brown was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and sang in church as a child...

  • Butterbeans and Susie
    Butterbeans and Susie
    Butterbeans and Susie were a comedy duo made up of Jodie Edwards and Susie Edwards, née Susie Hawthorne . Edwards began his career in 1910 as a singer and dancer. Meanwhile, Hawthorne performed in African American theater. The two met in 1916 when Hawthorne was in the chorus of the Smart Set show...

  • Gus Cannon
    Gus Cannon
    Gus Cannon was an American blues musician, who helped to popularize jug bands in the 1920s and 1930s. There is doubt about his birth year; his tombstone gives the date as 1874....

  • Leroy Carr
    Leroy Carr
    Leroy Carr was an American blues singer, songwriter and pianist, who developed a laid-back, crooning technique and whose popularity and style influenced such artists as Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. He first became famous for "How Long, How Long Blues" on Vocalion Records in 1928.-Life and...

  • Bo Carter
    Bo Carter
    Armenter "Bo Carter" Chatmon was an American early blues musician. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks in concerts, and on a few of their recordings...

  • Doctor Clayton
    Doctor Clayton
    Doctor Clayton was an American blues singer and songwriter.-Biography:Peter Joe Clayton was born in Georgia, though he later claimed he had been born in Africa, and moved to St. Louis as a child with his family. He had four children and worked in a factory in St...

  • Ida Cox
    Ida Cox
    Ida Cox was an African American singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings...

  • Arthur Crudup
    Arthur Crudup
    Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for writing songs such as "That's All Right" , "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later covered by Elvis Presley and dozens of other artists.-Career:Arthur Crudup...

  • Cow Cow Davenport
    Cow Cow Davenport
    Charles Edward "Cow Cow" Davenport was an American boogie woogie piano player. He also played the organ and sang.-Career:...

  • Blind Gary Davis
  • Walter Davis
    Walter Davis (blues)
    Walter Davis was an African American blues singer and pianist.Davis had a rich singing voice that was as expressive as the best of the Delta blues vocalists...

  • Sleepy John Estes
    Sleepy John Estes
    John Adam Estes , best known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, was a American blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist, born in Ripley, Lauderdale County, Tennessee.-Career:...

  • Fisk University Jubilee Singers
  • Blind Boy Fuller
    Blind Boy Fuller
    Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...

  • Lawrence Gellert
    Lawrence Gellert
    Lawrence Gellert, born September 14, 1898 in Budapest, Hungary, died 1979 , was a music collector who in the 1920s and 1930s documented black protest traditions in the South of the United States...

  • Lillian Glinn
    Lillian Glinn
    Lillian Glinn was an American classic female blues and country blues singer and songwriter. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville...

  • Harlem Hamfats
    Harlem Hamfats
    The Harlem Hamfats was a Chicago jazz band formed in 1936. Initially, they mainly provided backup music for jazz and blues singers, such as Johnny Temple, Rosetta Howard, and Frankie Jaxon for Decca Records, but when their first record "Oh Red" became a hit, it secured them a Decca contract for...

  • Jeff Harris
    Jeff Harris
    Jeffrey Austin Harris is a former Major League Baseball relief pitcher who is currently the pitching coach for the Lake County Captains in the Cleveland Indians organization. He batted and threw right-handed....

  • Lucille Hegamin
    Lucille Hegamin
    Lucille Nelson Hegamin was an American singer and entertainer, and a pioneer African American blues recording artist.-Life and career:...

  • Rosa Henderson
    Rosa Henderson
    Rosa Henderson was an American jazz and classic female blues singer, and vaudeville entertainer.-Career:...

  • King Solomon Hill
    King Solomon Hill
    King Solomon Hill was an American blues musician, who recorded a small handful of songs in 1932. His unique guitar and voice make them among the most haunting blues recorded...

  • Mattie Hite
    Mattie Hite
    Mattie Hite was an African American blues singer in the classic female blues style. Her birthplace is unknown, but New York City has been suggested. Around 1915 she moved to Chicago, where she sang at the Panama Club, often with such performers as Alberta Hunter and Florence Mills...

  • Son House
    Son House
    Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...

  • Rosetta Howard
    Rosetta Howard
    Rosetta Howard was an American blues singer, who recorded in the 1930s and 1940s.Little is known of her life. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and moved into singing by joining in with jukebox selections at the club where she worked. Around 1932 she began singing professionally...

  • Alberta Hunter
    Alberta Hunter
    Alberta Hunter was an American blues singer, songwriter, and nurse. Her career had started back in the early 1920s, and from there on, she became a successful jazz and blues recording artist, being critically acclaimed to the ranks of Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith...

  • Mississippi John Hurt
    Mississippi John Hurt
    John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...

  • Skip James
    Skip James
    Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

  • Blind Lemon Jefferson
    Blind Lemon Jefferson
    "Blind" Lemon Jefferson was an American blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s, and has been titled "Father of the Texas Blues"....

  • Monkey Joe
    Monkey Joe
    Jesse "Monkey Joe" Coleman was an American country blues pianist and singer, who recorded sporadically from the 1930s into the 1970s.Jesse Coleman was most likely born in Mississippi, and though the year of birth is not known, he was probably born around 1906...

  • Bunk Johnson
    Bunk Johnson
    Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson was a prominent early New Orleans jazz trumpet player in the early years of the 20th century who enjoyed a revived career in the 1940s....

  • Lonnie Johnson
    Lonnie Johnson
    Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...

  • Margaret Johnson
    Margaret Johnson
    Margaret Johnson was an American blues and early jazz vocalist and pianist.Johnson's primary era of recording activity as a vocalist was 1925-1927. Prior to this, she had worked in vaudeville...

  • Curtis Jones
    Curtis Jones (pianist)
    Curtis Jones was an American blues pianist.-Biography:Jones played guitar whilst young but switched to piano after a move to Dallas. In 1936 he relocated to Chicago, where he recorded between 1937 and 1941 on Vocalion, Bluebird, and OKeh...

  • Maggie Jones
    Maggie Jones (blues musician)
    Maggie Jones was an American blues singer and pianist, who recorded thirty-eight songs between 1923 and 1926. She was billed as "The Texas Nightingale." Jones is best remembered for her songs, "Single Woman's Blues," "Undertaker's Blues," and "Northbound Blues."-Biography:She was born Fae Barnes...

  • Charley Jordan
    Charley Jordan
    Charley Jordan was a St. Louis blues singer, songwriter and guitarist, as well as a talent scout, originally from Mabelvale, Arkansas...

  • Lottie Kimbrough
    Lottie Kimbrough
    Lottie Kimbrough was an American country blues singer, who was also billed as Lottie Kimborough, Lottie Beaman, and Lena Kimbrough . Kimbrough was a large woman, and was nicknamed "the Kansas City Butterball"...

  • Leadbelly
    Leadbelly
    Huddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....

  • Meade "Lux" Lewis
  • Virginia Liston
    Virginia Liston
    Virginia Liston was an American classic female blues and jazz singer. She spent most of her career in black vaudeville. Liston recorded "You Can Dip Your Bread In My Gravy, But You Can't Have None Of My Chops," and "Just Take One Long Last Lingering Look." She worked with her then husband, Samuel H...

  • Cripple Clarence Lofton
    Cripple Clarence Lofton
    Cripple Clarence Lofton , born Albert Clemens in Kingsport, Tennessee, was a noted boogie-woogie pianist and singer....

  • Daisy Martin
    Daisy Martin
    Daisy Martin was an African American actress and blues singer. who performed in the classic female blues style that was popular during the 1920s....

  • Sara Martin
    Sara Martin
    Sara Martin was an American blues singer, in her time one of the most popular of the classic blues singers. She was billed as "The Famous Moanin' Mama" and "The Colored Sophie Tucker"...

  • Blind Willie McTell
    Blind Willie McTell
    Blind Willie McTell , was an influential Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he used exclusively a twelve-string guitar...

  • Memphis Minnie
    Memphis Minnie
    Memphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...

  • Monette Moore
    Monette Moore
    Monette Moore was an American jazz and blues singer.Moore was raised in Kansas City and then moved to New York City early in the 1920s; she moved often in that decade, working in Chicago, Dallas and Oklahoma City...

  • Romeo Nelson
    Romeo Nelson
    Iromeio "Romeo" Nelson was an American boogie woogie pianist. His recordings from 1929 are regarded as some of the finest, and certainly the fastest, boogie woogie showpieces on record....

  • Paul Oliver
    Paul Oliver
    -Biography:Oliver was a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development , and from 1978-88 was Associate Head of the School of Architecture. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Gloucestershire...

  • Kid Ory
    Kid Ory
    Edward "Kid" Ory was a jazz trombonist and bandleader. He was born in Woodland Plantation near LaPlace, Louisiana.-Biography:...

  • Pace Jubilee Singers
  • Joe Pullum
    Joe Pullum
    Joe Pullum was an American Texas blues singer and songwriter.-Biography:Pullum, a Houston-born nightclub singer, was one of the more obscure blues stars. He was accompanied on his few recordings by two pianists; Rob Cooper on his earlier discs, and Andy Boy on his later efforts...

  • Ma Rainey
    Ma Rainey
    Ma Rainey was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues....

  • Clara Smith
    Clara Smith
    Clara Smith was an American classic female blues singer. She was billed as the "Queen of the Moaners", although Smith actually had a lighter and sweeter voice than her contemporaries and main competitors.-Career:...

  • Laura Smith
    Laura Smith
    Laura Smith is a Canadian folk singer-songwriter. She is best known for her 1995 single "Shade of Your Love", one of the year's biggest hits on adult contemporary radio stations in Canada, and for her adaptation of the Scottish folk song "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean" which she entitled "My Bonny"...

  • Mamie Smith
    Mamie Smith
    -External links:* African American Registry* with photos* with .ram files of her early recordings* NPR special on the selection on "Crazy Blues" to the 2005...

  • Trixie Smith
    Trixie Smith
    Trixie Smith was an African American blues singer, recording artist, vaudeville entertainer, and actress. She made four dozen recordings.-Biography:...

  • Victoria Spivey
    Victoria Spivey
    Victoria Spivey was an American blues singer and songwriter. She is best known for her recordings of "Dope Head Blues" and "Organ Grinder Blues", and Spivey variously worked with her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey, and with Bob Dylan, Lonnie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence...

  • Roosevelt Sykes
    Roosevelt Sykes
    Roosevelt Sykes was an American blues musician, also known as "The Honeydripper". He was a successful and prolific cigar-chomping blues piano player, whose rollicking thundering boogie-woogie was highly influential.-Career:Born in Elmar, Arkansas, Sykes grew up near Helena but at age 15, went on...

  • Hannah Sylvester
    Hannah Sylvester
    Hannah Sylvester was an African American blues singer who performed in the classic female blues style that was popular during the 1920s. She was billed as "Harlem's Mae West"....

  • Tampa Red
    Tampa Red
    Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....

  • Eva Taylor
  • Johnny Temple
    Johnny Temple
    John Ellis Temple was a Major League Baseball second baseman who played for the Redlegs/Reds ; Cleveland Indians , Baltimore Orioles and Houston Colt .45s . Temple was born in Lexington, North Carolina. He batted and threw right-handed.Temple was a career .284 hitter with 22 home runs and 395 RBI...

  • Sister Rosetta Tharpe
    Sister Rosetta Tharpe
    Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...

  • Hociel Thomas
  • Jesse Thomas
  • Ramblin' Thomas
    Ramblin' Thomas
    Ramblin' Thomas was an American country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. He was the brother of another blues musician, Jesse Thomas. Thomas is best remembered for his slide guitar playing, and recording several pieces in the late 1920s and early 1930s...

  • Bessie Tucker
    Bessie Tucker
    Bessie Tucker was an American classic female, country, and Texas blues, singer and songwriter. Her best-known songs are "Penitentiary" and "Fryin' Pan Skillet Blues". Little is known of her life outside the music industry. Her known recording history comprised just twenty-four tracks, seven of...

  • Sippie Wallace
    Sippie Wallace
    Sippie Wallace was an American singer-songwriter. Her early career in local tent shows gained her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by herself or her brothers, George and Hersal Thomas...

  • Washboard Sam
    Washboard Sam
    Robert Brown , known professionally as Washboard Sam, was an American blues singer and musician.-Biography:...

  • Peetie Wheatstraw
    Peetie Wheatstraw
    Peetie Wheatstraw was the name adopted by the singer William Bunch, an influential figure among 1930s blues singers...

  • Josh White
    Josh White
    Joshua Daniel White , better known as Josh White, was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s....

  • Ralph Willis
    Ralph Willis (blues musician)
    Ralph Willis was an American Piedmont and country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. Some of his Savoy records were released under pseudonyms, such as Alabama Slim, Washboard Pete and Sleepy Joe.-Biography:...

  • Bill Wyman
    Bill Wyman
    Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...

  • Jimmy Yancey
    Jimmy Yancey
    James Edwards "Jimmy" Yancey was an African American boogie-woogie pianist, composer, and lyricist. One reviewer noted him as "one of the pioneers of this raucous, rapid-fire, eight-to-the-bar piano style"....

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