(PCM) Third Man Records, founded by artist Jack White, and Revenant Records released a huge vinyl collection last year titled “Rise & Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One (1917-1932). Now, it seems that a non-profit organization has stepped forward and are claiming to own the rights of about 800 songs featured in the collection.
Jazz musician Lars Edegran, who belongs to the George H. Buck, Jr. (GHB) Jazz Foundation, claims that Buck himself purchased the rights to the Paramount recordings back in 1970. However, at this time the foundation has yet to offer up any physical proof that they do in fact own the recordings only their word.
Dean Blackwood, the founder of Revenant Records says that they have informed the foundation that they would be more than happy to reach an agreement with them if they are able to indeed prove ownership of the recordings. Blackwood goes on to say that “there is a more than 50-year history of labels large and small reissuing this material without their involvement, we remain open to discussions with them if they can prove ownership of the recordings.”
Edegran responded to Blackwood with the following statement, but still has yet to surface with any physical proof of ownership. “Paramount recordings have been issued under license agreements for a very long time going back to the first owners, the Wisconsin Chair Company who licensed material to Columbia and Decca and others. The next owner of Paramount, John Steiner, licensed Paramount recordings to Biograph, Milestone, Riverside and others. GHB Jazz Foundation has license agreements with Sony, Rhino, Rykodisc, Shout, Universal, Fantasy, Fox Music, HBO to name a few. All these companies recognize our ownership of Paramount Records. It is true that a number of small labels have used Paramount material without our permission but there has been no infringement on the scale of the box set issued by Third Man/Revenant Records—close to 800 tracks of Paramount recordings.”
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