Oldtime
Bela Lam & Family: Poor Little Benny - 1920's
Virginia native Zanddervon Beliah Lamb, renamed Bela Lam by Okeh Records, performs the song Poor Little Benny with wife Rose Meadows.
With Bela's brother-in-law Paul and son Alva, they became local favorites near the Blue Ridge Mountain region in the 1920's, eventually being called to New York City to record six songs.
Influenced by the local religious music of the day, Bela Lam & the Greene County Singers, as they would come to be known, are notable for their shape-note harmonies, highly influential during the period.
Foldin' Bed - Whistler & His Jug Band ca. 1930
Whistler & His Jug Band came up out of Louisville, Kentucky, and became the first recorded jug band, according to R Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country. They recorded at least twenty-one songs between 1924 and 1931. The names of the musicians remain unknown.
Mills Brothers: I Ain't Got Nobody - 1930's
An authentic, rare classic version of the standard "I Ain't Got Nobody," sung by the Mills Brothers, shot in the early 1930's.
Follow the bouncing ball and sing along!
New Orleans - 1920's
Newsreel documentary from the 1920's with photography and animations illustrating old New Orleans, the Crescent City, at work and at play.
Dueling oaks. Influences of colonial France and Spain. Iron grille work. The old townhouses surrounding open courts.
New Orleans, the industrial city, where ports and depot junctions distribute throughout, and out from, the heart of America.
Culture shipped to & from the world.
And, of course, Mardi Gras, Jazz age style.
