Movies ‘Til Dawn

This week I’ve posted several recordings of Paul Whiteman’s big fat orchestra. Above is the big fat man himself, dancing. Sort of. It’s from his 1930 starring vehicle ‘King Of Jazz’ and the name of his body double who does the actual dancing is lost to history. The double does an impressive job...

The other day I posted a 12 inch 78rpm recording of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra playing an extended piece that contained within it a melody that later became ‘Stairway To T...

I Back in the day (by the way–when does that annoying phrase date to? Does ‘back in the day’ date back to ‘back in the day’? I doubt it–it sounds too cutesy–retro. I’m embarrassed to find myself using it, but too late now). Anyway, back in the day the occasional 12 inch 78 RPM record was issued...

On Monday I posted a nifty ‘March Of Time’ newsreel featurette about the nightclubs of the 1940s. Here’s another in the same series, this time tracing the history of the recor...

Here’s a very valuable find. It’s a 1946 ‘March Of TIme’ newsreel featurette which does a deep-ish dive into the popular nightclubs of the day. It takes a full two minutes to get to the subject at hand–you might say the filmmakers buried the lead just a tad–but the meat of the story finally get...