King Has No Barriers

The First Truly Integrated Record Company Paves the Way Bringing together Black & White America.

The fusion of Country & Western and Rhythm & Blues that led to Rock and Roll occurred at King Records because the company practiced racial integration at every level. King founder Syd Nathan challenged the nearly universal segregation of American popular culture as well as American business in the 1940s and 1950s.  As a Jew, Nathan was aware of discrimination and translated his understanding into hiring both Blacks and Whites as production staff as well as artists. Music, too, crossed the color line. For example Henry Glover, one of the first African-American music executives in the United States, produced “Moon’s Tune” in 1949, a song that took advantage of Country musician Moon Mullican’s proficiency in Black Boogie Woogie piano.

Left, King Records employees packing and sorting the gems from the studio, Photo courtesy of King Studios/Xavier University

African American Migration

Beginning in the early 1900s, African Americans began to move to northern cities like Cincinnati, leaving behind environmental damage to farming in the South caused by floods and boll weevil infestation. Anti-Black violence also drove migrants North. Industrial growth in northern cities offered new job opportunities, especially during the two world wars. Between 1910 and 1940 Cincinnati’s Black population more than doubled from 32,100 to 69,700. During and after World War II, the period when King Records was making hits, the number of Black residents in the city rose to 152,800.

Many of these new arrivals settled in the neighborhood called West End, located near downtown. Segregated from the rest of the city, African Americans created their own base of entertainment. The ballroom in the Sterling Hotel, located in the heart of West End, was converted into a nightclub in the early 1920s. From the 1930s through the 1950s, that nightclub, known as The Cotton Club, was the leading venue in Cincinnati for black entertainers and musicians. Many artists who performed at the Cotton Club also recorded at King, including Earl Bostic, H-Bomb Ferguson, Tiny Bradshaw and Hank Ballard.

Right, The Cotton Club played a key role in creating and cultivating culture in Cincinnati. Illustration by Jason Snell

Appalachian Migration

At the turn of the century, Cincinnati, nicknamed the Queen City of the West, had a proud tradition of fine art and culture with a booming entertainment district. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, internationally known dramatists and bands played the local theaters and concerts halls in the downtown area. The city’s taste in opera, symphony, and choir music reflected a strong European influence. By the 1920s White southerners were bringing their cultural heritage to the city.  Some, like the Delmore Brothers, were originally sharecroppers driven North by the same conditions affecting southern Blacks. Others, Appalachians from Kentucky and West Virginia lost their jobs as coal miners as the coal industry became mechanized or mines played out. For example, Merle Travis wrote songs about coal mines such as “Sixteen Tons” and “Dark as a Dungeon,” though at King Records he recorded Gospel tunes as part of early King groups, the Brown’s Ferry Four and the Sheppard Brothers. 

Called “Hillbilly Music” in the forties, the songs written and performed by White southerners came to be called “Country Music.” Sometimes, as in “Red River Valley,” these songs referred to the pangs of homesickness described so poignantly by Alton Delmore: “when we moved it made me feel kind of numb and it seemed like all the ambition I had ever had was gone down the drain. It was tough moving into a new and strange atmosphere. And leaving all that I cherished so much.” At other times they celebrated the sights and sounds of the urban environment that had lured them North with the promise of better paid jobs, especially in the war effort. For example, the York Brothers recorded “Hamtramck Mama” at King even though it was originally about industrial production in World War II Detroit.

Left, WLW was a pivotal part of growing King Records in Cincinnati as many of the artists at King Records got their start performing on WLW Radio. Illustration by Jason Snell