The Big Bands. Volume 1, The Soundies, and: Harlem Roots. Volume 1, The Big Bands, and: The Spike Jones Story (review)

Abstract

The Big Bands. Volume 1, The Soundies. DVD. [San Diego, CA]: Storyville Films, 2007. 26011. $11.98. Harlem Roots. Volume 1, The Big Bands. DVD. [San Diego, CA]: Storyville Films, 2004. 26000. $11.98. The Spike Jones Story. DVD. [San Diego, CA]: Storyville Films, 2007. 26024. $11.98. The name Storyville has special resonance in the history of American jazz. First, it was the name for the red light district in New Orleans from 1897 to 1917, where many early jazz musicians worked. Secondly, there were several jazz clubs called Story - ville, including a famous one in Boston owned by impresario George Wein. Since 1950, it is also the name of a jazz and blues record label started by the Danish collector Karl Emil Knudsen. Up until his death in 2003, Knudsen licensed, recorded and released music that suited his tastes; mostly blues, swing, and mainstream jazz artists like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Ben Webster. In addition to the record label, Storyville Films has begun to reissue DVDs of these artists, packaging performance footage, documentaries, and compilations of short films known as Snader Telescriptions and Soundies. Soundies, the single-song films created for coin-operated Panoram jukeboxes, offer a fascinating window into the American music culture of the 1940s. The Big Bands. Volume 1, The Soundies, for example, presents ten popular bands of the day miming and lip-syncing to their hits. In general, the vocal numbers hold up best; a young June Christy actually singing in tune with Stan Kenton's Orchestra, Tony Pastor on a barn dance set blowing tenor sax and shouting Oh, Marie, a charming and undeservedly obscure Peggy Mann breaking hearts with Deep Purple backed by Larry Clinton's Band, and The King Sisters in matching white gowns harmonizing on St. Louis Blues with mind-bending Alvino Rey on slide guitar. There are also moments of unintentional humor as Kenton bassist Eddie Safranski hopelessly attempts to mime to his previously recorded improvised solo on Southern Scandal. But the strangest of these Soundies is the corny-surreal Where Has My Little Dog Gone by Claude Thornhill's Orchestra. This wonderfully ridiculous 1942 film features dancing girls traipsing with bizarre little fake dogs, not to mention a vendor serving a hot dog with little wings that flies away with visible strings! Some of the most artistically successful Soundies are found on Harlem Roots. Volume 1, The Big Bands, especially the five numbers by Duke Ellington's Orchestra from 1942. Two of the songs are drawn from Ellington's ground-breaking musical Jump for Joy; Ivy Anderson's definitive torch song I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good, and the nonsensical novelty tune Bli Blip, complete with cute mugging and hip dance moves from Marie Bryant and Paul White. Ellington's handsome baritone Herb Jeffries sings Flamingo intercut with a startling dance sequence by Janet Collins and Talley Beatty of the Katherine Dunham dance troupe. Cottontail, based on the chord changes of Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, features tenor saxophonist Ben Webster at his brutish best inspiring spectacular acrobatics from Whitey's Lindy Hoppers. …