Gennett Records

In the 1920s, Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, a division of Starr Piano Company, recorded pioneer jazz, blues, and rural music in an unlikely place. The Gennett family ran Starr Piano in a secluded glacial gorge along the Whitewater River (an area locals called “Starr Valley”) with their primitive recording studio in the back.  After they debuted jazz icons King Oliver, Earl Hines, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, and blues singer Charley Patton, the Great Depression killed the record label, and Starr Piano later closed in 1952.  The studio is long gone, but some of the Starr factory survived. The photo, from the 1990s, is Starr Valley at the height of its neglect. Richmond’s Starr Gennett Foundation has since preserved the area.