 Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Mary Stafford, Katie Crippen, Edith Wilson, and Esther Bigeou, among others, made their first recordings before the end of 1921.Blues had become a nationwide craze, and the recording industry actively scouted, booked and recorded hundreds of black female singers.Blues recordings were marketed exclusively to African Americans, largely by advertisements in black newspapers such as the "Chicago Defender" and the "Pittsburgh Courier", and were typically labeled "race records" to distinguish them from records marketed to white audiences.