Scott Radio Service Company

Scott Radio Service Company in Jackson, Mississippi, was among the state’s first businesses to offer professional recording technology and became an important site for Trumpet Records sessions from 1950 to 1952. Located first at 128 North Gallatin Street and later moved by owner Ivan M. Scott to 601C West Capitol Street, the company recorded blues, gospel, and country performers including Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, Big Joe Williams, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Willie Love, Luther and Percy Huff, Earl Reed, Clayton Love, Bobo “Slim” Thomas, Lonnie Holmes, and Sherman Johnson. Before World War II, few artists were commercially recorded in Mississippi because recording technology was expensive and most studios were in northern cities, though some companies held occasional sessions in the state and folklorists such as John A. and Alan Lomax made early blues recordings with portable equipment. After World War II, technological, social, legal, and economic changes reshaped the recording industry, and new independent labels emerged, including Jackson’s Trumpet Records, founded by Willard and Lillian McMurry. Trumpet first recorded at WRBC in April 1950, then began sessions at Scott Radio Service Company in November, where Scott, a Florida native who had come to Jackson in the 1930s and worked in several radio and music-related occupations, engineered more than seventy recordings for the label on a disc cutting machine, including the first releases by Elmore James, “Dust My Broom,” and Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2, “Eyesight to the Blind.” Before opening Diamond Studio in 1954, the McMurrys also issued recordings made at radio stations in Hattiesburg and Laurel and at other studios in Jackson and Memphis, while Jimmie Ammons recorded a wide range of music and released records by blues artists on his Delta label.

Jackson, Mississippi · United States