Alex van der Tuuk's article "The Revival of Paramount in 1935" in the Frog Blues And Jazz Annual Number 1 deals with this. Ninety five Paramount metal masters were sent to the American Record Corporation (ARC) in 1935. According to van der Tuuk, "Although a metal mother was produced from L-415, Willie Brown's 'Grandma Blues', the metal was not returned ... probably because the master was "buckled"". Van der Tuuk prints a list made by Bob Koester of the Paramount masters in the possession of John Steiner in 1958, and Grandma Blues is not among them. At the end of the article, Grandma Blues is listed as one of seven "missing" Paramount masters. From the article, it seems doubtful that Steiner ever had the master of Grandma Blues.
By the way, The Frog Blues And Jazz Annuals are really worthwhile. Lots of good essays and lots of good pictures. They're a bit hard to come by in the US, but you can order then direct from Frog for about half the price that you'd pay if you ordered from Amazon. Frog is very flexible on the type of payment you can make (I used paypal), and the books ship airmail, so they arrive pretty quickly. Contact information is on the web site:
http://www.frogrecords.co.uk/ (Be aware, the email address is not on the "Contact" page, but at the end of the first article on the Frog home page.)
