The same talent scout who dug me up for Cardinal worked for other record companies. After catching my act at Edmond's a second time, he asked if I would care to make some records for Black Swan, a new company just started by Harry H. Pace and W. C. Handy, the two grand old men of Negro music. The Black Swan office was, I think, in the home of one of the owners. The day I went there I found Fletcher Henderson sitting behind a desk and looking very prissy and important. Fletcher had come up from Georgia to study chemistry at one of the big New York colleges. But he was making side money doing arrangements and musical backgrounds for the company. He also made band records for them. There was much discussion of whether I should sing popular or "cultural" numbers. They finally decided on popular, and I asked one hundred dollars for making the record. I was still getting only thirty-five dollars a week and tips, so one hundred dollars seemed quite a lump sum to me. Mr. Pace paid me the one hundred dollars, and that first Black Swan record I made had "Down Home Blues" on one side, "Oh, Daddy" on the other. It proved a great success and a best seller among both white and colored, and it got Black Swan out of the red. << less