Between 1917 and 1932, the Village of Grafton became an important center of American recording history through the Wisconsin Chair Company, which mass-produced and sold records to promote its phonographs under the subsidiary New York Recording Laboratories. Operating from what is now 12th Avenue and Falls Road, the company launched the Puritan, Famous, Broadway, and Paramount labels. At first, records were pressed in Grafton from wax masters made at off-site studios, but by 1929 the company established a recording studio inside the factory. There, artists first sang into large acoustic horns and later into microphones as sound vibrations were transferred by needle into spinning wax master recordings, with molds made from materials including clay, shellac, and bits of limestone. Paramount signed major gospel, jazz, and blues performers, and artists traveled from the Deep South to record in Grafton, including Thomas A. Dorsey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Papa Charlie Jackson, Blind Blake, Alberta Hunter, Ida Cox, Charlie Patton, Hattie McDaniels, Mead Lux Lewis, Joe "King" Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. From 1929 to 1932, more than 1,600 titles were recorded there, including one-fourth of the nation's gospel, jazz, and blues records, alongside jazz, gospel, Wisconsin dance bands, religious sermons, and recordings by local musicians and choirs. Powered in part by the Milwaukee River, the pressing plant employed hundreds of people, and the Paramount and associated labels preserved a remarkable range of early blues, jazz, gospel, dance, and country music that inspired later generations and helped form the basis of rock and roll and many other genres.