(See Several Vintage Paramount Records on the 78 Pages)

Paramount Records was founded in the 1910s as a subsidiary of the "Wisconsin Chair Company" of Port Washington, Wisconsin, Fred Dennett Key, director. The chair company had previously made some wooden phonograph cabinets by contract for Edison Records.

Wisconsin Chair decided to start making its own line of phonographs with a subsidiary called the United Phonograph Corporation at the end of 1915. It made phonographs under the Vista brand name through the end of the decade; the line failed commercially.

In 1918 a line of phonograph gramophone records was debuted with the Paramount label. They were recorded and pressed by Chair Company subsidiary The New York Recording Laboratories, Incorporated, which despite its name was located in the same Wisconsin factory complex as the parent concern. In its initial years, the Paramount label fared only slightly better than the Vista Phonograph line. The product had little to distinguish itself. Paramount offered recordings of standard pop-music fare, on records recorded with below average audio fidelity pressed in below average quality shellac.

In the early 1920s, Paramount was still racking up debts for the Chair Company while producing no net profit. Paramount began offering to press records for other companies at low prices.

The Paramount Record pressing plant was contracted to press discs for Black Swan Records. When that later company floundered, Paramount bought out Black Swan and thus got into the business of making recordings by and for African-Americans. These so-called "race music" records became Paramount's most famous and lucrative business.

Black entrepreneur Mayo Williams arranged most of Paramount’s “race music” recordings. Mayo had no official position with Paramount, but was given wide latitude to bring African-American talent to Paramount recording studios and to market Paramount records to African-American consumers. Williams did not know at the time that the "race market" had become Paramount's prime business, and he was essentially keeping the label afloat.