Jay Mayo Williams

Jay Mayo Williams was among the very few BLACK recording company professionals prior to Globe Battle II and was doing work for many labels, included in this Paramount, Vocalion, and Brunswick. Williams went to Brown School, where he was a monitor superstar and All-American soccer player. Through the ’20s, he performed professional football using the Hammond (Ind.) Advantages, becoming among three black sportsmen (with Paul Robeson and Fritz Pollard) to try out in the fledgling Country wide Football Group during its initial year of procedure. He inserted the music business around 1924 being a skill scout and manufacturer for Paramount’s “competition” series; he also went the label’s linked posting arm. He still left Paramount in 1927 to start out the short-lived Chicago Record Firm; after the failing from the firm’s label, Dark Patti, Williams shifted to Vocalion and Brunswick. He still left the business for a while in the middle-’30s and coached soccer at Morehouse University in Atlanta. He was employed as head from the competition section at Decca in the middle-’30s. While at Decca, he documented such music artists as Alberta Hunter, Norfolk Jubilee Quartet, Monette Moore, Offer and Wilson, Trixie Smith, Tiny Parham, and Blind Joe Taggart. Williams proved helpful freelance and went some small, independent brands in the ’40s, included in this Harlem Information in NY. He founded Ebony Information in the past due ’40s (a Muddy Waters documented for the label) and went the business until ill-health compelled his pension in the first ’70s. Williams was an associate from the National Soccer Hall of Popularity Association.