• HOME

  • CATALOG

  • ARTICLES

  • ARCHIVES

  • LINKS

  • COMPANY

  • CONTACTS

  • NEWS

Marketed by George W. Broome (23 Clayton Avenue, Medford, Massachusetts), Broome Special Phonograph Records is the first known black-owned record label. Broome's label predates the introduction of Harry Pace's far more successful Black Swan brand (which is frequently, and incorrectly, cited as the first black-owned record label) by approximately eighteen months.

Broome's first documented work in the recording field was as a sales manager for Roland Hayes, a pioneering black concert tenor and entrepreneur. Hayes marketed his own Columbia Personal Records by mail order in 1917-1918 and later recorded for Aeolian-Vocalion in England.

Broome announced the first releases under his own label in September or October 1919 and sold the records by mail order through advertisements in The Crisis and other black newspapers and magazines. He drew on existing masters from several sources, including the Starr Piano Company (Gennett). For his Booker T. Washington release (pictured above), Broome simply pasted his own labels over the original Columbia Personal Record pressings. However, Broome's releases by Harry T. Burleigh, Florence Cole-Talbert, and other concert artists were pressed from masters that remain untraced to other sources and apparently were produced by or for Broome. The pressing source of these issues is also unknown.

At least two variations of this label are known: a brown label with brown and black type, which Broome marketed as the Brown Seal Record, and a white label with blue type. Both versions are extremely rare. The Talking Machine World Trade Directory for 1923 shows Broome still in operation, but it seems unlikely that his label issued any new material beyond that year. According to anecdotal reports, surplus Broome pressings were still available as late as the 1940s.

.