Last Friday I posted about a beautifully restored jukebox that was equipped to show films of the bands performing the songs in the jukebox. These films, known as ‘soundies’, are a great preservation tool as far too little film of performers of the day exist, especially black performers who were
Here’s an excerpt of a musical sequence from an obscure 1944 Republic Studios movie called ‘Atlantic City’. The number is ‘Harlem On Parade’ and it’s a more-than-slightly-valuable documentation of three of the prime black entertainers of the 1930s/40s. I refer to the above mentioned performers who all are given a
A gentleman named Jon Torrence made the above home video of a beautifully restored machine from 1939 called a Mills Company Panoram. This was a period jukebox with a screen that permitted the viewing of soundies–short films of bands and singers performing popular songs of the day. Mr. Torrence is
Here’s the complete ‘Shindig’ from October 7, 1964 which features The Beatles bookending the show. They begin with ‘Kansas City’ which features a rocking (though barely audible) McCartney vocal and then everyone has to wait twenty minutes for their return. Meanwhile another seven performers take the stage, possibly feeling the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOmlwDTVxA As a piece of material, ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkens is pretty much indestructible. When I first stumbled upon this clip from a 1969 ‘Hollywood Palace’, featuring a Barrie Chase dance set to the song, I had high hopes. Alas, they seem to
Here’s a production number from the 1930 version of ‘Good News’, adapted from the hit 1927 Broadway musical of the same name by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson. The lead singer/dancer is Penny Singelton who later played ‘Blondie’ in the Columbia Pictures series of that iconic comic strip. Here she does
The director behind the great dance show ‘Hullabaloo’ (see yesterday’s post) was Steve Binder. After the shows untimely (and unfathomable) cancellation, Binder went on to direct many high profile TV music specials, including Elvis Presley’s famous ‘comeback’ show. In 1968, NBC gave Petulia Clark her own special–she’d been a guest
The dance show ‘Hullabaloo’, which aired on NBC from January 12 1965 to April 11, 1966, was arguably the best show of it’s kind–better than ‘Shindig’ in my humble opinion. If you’ve never seen it watch the above complete twenty-five minute episode which features a mind boggling line-up of guests–Sammy
Here’s a clip from a variety show called ‘Fanfare’ of Allan Sherman and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits doing a little lyric-swapping routine using Sherman’s sequel to his ‘Hello Muddah Hello Faddah’ song. (There’s a fun clip somewhere that I can’t find of Sherman on another variety show introducing that
The beloved Allan Sherman actually was a thoroughly depressed screwed-up man and his biography, ‘Overweight Sensation’, is so depressing that I haven’t watched/seen/thought of Sherman since I read it a few years ago. Today I’m breaking that self-imposed sanction with this delightful clip of Sherman singing ‘Crazy Downtown’, his parody