Start Labor Day Weekend Right: Paramount Music Festival

PORT WASHINGTON, WI — Paramount Music Association is drumming up marketing efforts for its 12th Annual Paramount Music Festival, which will coincide with Paramount Records’ 100th anniversary.

With help from a $30,000 grant from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, the three-day Paramount Music Festival Centennial Celebration will feature live music, local performing arts group, free educational workshops, historical displays and children’s activities.

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Learn more about the performers, performances, and ticketing information here.

The festival kicks off this Friday, Sept. 1 at Coal Dock Park in Port Washington.

The Paramount Music Festival Centennial Celebration aims to highlight the area’s musical heritage. To honor the milestone, musicians will share stories of the Delta Blues men and women that recorded in Grafton, Ozaukee County in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Over 1600 recordings were made at Grafton with major artists including, Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, Charley Patton, Big Bill Broonzy, Son House, Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Henry Townsend.

Featured performers will include Chicago Blues Legends, newly crowned Queen of the Blues, Shemekia Copeland and Wisconsin's local and international touring artists such as, Greg Koch, Jim Liban, Billy Flynn, Reverend Raven, Cathy Grier.

Local businesses will also host music-related activities during the festival. A presentation and unveiling of a blues marker will take place on Saturday, Sept. 2 at 1:45 p.m. and features local dignitaries, historian & author Gayle Dean Wardlow and the director of the Mississippi Development Authority.

The blues marker is the second Blues Trail Marker presented honoring Paramount Records, with the first one standing in Grafton, Wisconsin.

The event is estimated to bring 8,000 visitors to Port Washington with an estimated economic impact of $470,000 in visitor expenditures. JEM grant funds will go towards outdoor, direct mail, online, print and broadcast marketing, along with public relations efforts.

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image author: Steve Garry from Manchester, United Kingdom via wikipedia creative commons