Broome Records

Broome (Special Phonograph) Records was the first African American owned and operated record label in the United States. Established by George W. Broome in 1919, Broome focused on promoting black concert artists who faced discrimination from the major labels. The label stopped pressing records in 1923 but overstock records were supposedly still being sold as late as 1940.

Most of the records were original issues recorded and pressed by Columbia, but at least two were pressed from pre-existing masters. (Black Swan was the first African American owned label to record and press their own records.) Broome sold them through a regional mail order catalog that operated throughout eastern Massachusetts but also placed national ads in The Crisis.

History
George Wellington Broome was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1868. After an unsuccessful career in theater he soon married and moved his family to Medford, Massachusetts, where he worked in a verity of roles as a porter, laborer, and waiter. After attending Howard University in 1896, Broome started printing sheet music, including Will Marion Cook's earliest compositions. He found employment working for the government, but his exact role is unknown. It helped him build up enough capital to establish the Broome Exhibition Company to produce African American documentary films. Broome became a local businessman, forming working relationships with both Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. By 1917 Broome was working as a sales agent for tenor Roland Hayes, with his home address acting as Hayes business address. Hayes became the first African American to publicly distribute his own records. Going to Columbia to record and press them, selling them at his concerts, through agents, and by mail. Hayes' personal records were only available through 1918 while he was touring.

Broome saw the demand in the African American community for commercial recordings of serious black performers outside stereotypical Vaudeville. He established his own mail order catalog company in September 1919 to sell his records and remaining sheet music from his home. Most of Broome's records were original recordings he contracted through Columbia's personal record service, only applying his own label. At least one (No. 53) was an already existing master he purchased from the Starr Piano Company, and the Washington speech from an earlier Columbia master. The first three issues were advertised in October 1919 of The Crisis. The consensus amongst record collectors is that Broome stopped pressing records in 1923, continuing to advertise records into the late 1920s and selling the final remaining records in 1940. The exact number of issues released is unknown, only around a dozen have surfaced.

Partial Discography
The first records issued were singled sided, when the matrix changes to 51 they become double sided.

There are three label variations: The blue background with black lettering (believed the earliest variation) the brown background with black lettering. (the most common), and the brown background with red lettering.(only appearing for the Washington issue.)

No. A "Atlanta Exposition Address"-Booker T. Washington

No. 1 "Go Down Mosses"-Harry Burleigh

No. 2 "Villanelle"-Florence Cole Talbert

No. 3 "Cradle Song"- Clarence Cameron White

No. 51 "Go Down Mosses / Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"-Harry Burleigh

No. 52 "Lament"-Clarence Cameron White / "Dell' Acqua: Villanelle"-Florence Cole Talbert

No. 53 "Cradle Song" / -Clarence Cameron White / "So Near the Kingdom"- Robert Carr and Ethel Toms (White singers)

No. 54 "I Don’t Feel Noways Tired"-Edward H. S. Boatner / "In the Bottoms"-Robert Nathaniel Dett

No. 55 "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen"-Florence Cole Talbert / "Mammy"-Robert Nathaniel Dett

No. 56 "Villanelle"-Florence Cole Talbert / "My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair"-Antoinette Garnes