Chappelle and Stinnette Records, sometimes known as C&S Records was a small independent

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...

founded in New York City around 1921. According to the label, Chappelle and Stinnette Records were manufactured "by C.& S.

Phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

Record Co.", which in turn was run by the husband and wife team of Thomas E. Chappelle and Juanita Stinnette Chappelle, noted

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

entertainers of the time. Chappelle and Stinnette is notable as the second record company to be owned and operated by African Americans, after

Black Swan Records Black Swan Records was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem, New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans. (Broome Special Phonograph Records was the firs ...

. All but one of the 9 known C&S records feature one or both of the Chappelles singing. Clarence Williams also recorded one disc for the label. The audio fidelity of C&S records is about average for the era. It is unknown whether C&S recorded their own sides or if they leased

recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enoug ...

use from some other company, probably in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The Chappelle and Stinnette

disc records A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...

are quite rare. All of the releases on this label were blues, and all were likely recorded in 1921 or early 1922.

References

Record labels established in 1921 Record labels disestablished in 1922 American independent record labels {{US-record-label-stub

See also

References