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.
MORE ...You know you’ve made the Big Time when you’re leading a band that’s accompanied with a chorus line of perky flappers. But then again, if you’re Ted Weems in the early 1930’s, this is the life of a famous radio bandleader. Just another day at the beach on the Eastern Seaboard during the Jazz Age, […]
MORE ...Stage, radio and film star Eddie Cantor puts on a classic vaudeville routine including a few jokes in between breaking into song. One of the biggest entertainers of the early 20th century, the type self-deprecating humor he helped define can still has influence today with comedians such as Letterman, Conan, and Jon Stewart. Lately, Cantor […]
MORE ...For an Oldsmobile commercial, the Fleischer Bros. created this extremely bawdy cartoon. No, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
MORE ...In this re-discovered clip, the classically trained Bill Powers sings an operatic rendition of the song Caroline. A performer with with few if any informative references online, he is accompanied by the similarly under-appreciated member of the Brown Sisters on piano.
MORE ...In this serendipitously surreal short “A Jazz Etude,” tap dance extraordinaire Billy Burt dances up a storm in top hat, tuxedo tail and cane. Is he floating? And that screwy soundtrack … a mishmash of ‘Flight of the Bumblebee,’ ragtime fills, and 1930’s jazz cliches, is remeniscent of Carl Stalling or Raymond Scott. Still, I […]
MORE ...If you were taking a sea cruise from the Eastern Seaboard to the West Coast via the Panama Canal, this might be the film you’d see before disembarking in San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. An exquisite travel film documenting the magnificent landscape and locales of pre-WWII California, this film showcases classic school California, […]
MORE ...In this newsreel, presented is a look at the historic 1934 West Coast Longshoremen’s Strike which lasted nearly three months and led to the establishment of unions for port workers on the West Coast. On Bloody Thursday, after fights broke out near San Francisco’s Embarcadero between police, strikebreakers and waterfront workers, the situation took a […]
MORE ...A journey from Damascus, Syria to Jerusalem shot in 1936 showing the holy land as it was then.
MORE ...We Work Again is a US government civic-minded film aimed specifically at the unemployed African American population in the wake of the Great Depression.
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