To celebrate today’s release of Soundies: The Ultimate Collection, the folks at Kino Lorber have prepared a slew of film clips highlighting some of the top performances.
Here are three of my favorites.
The Charioteers in Swing for Sale (1941)
The Kim Loo Sisters in Gee! The Jeep Jumps (1944)
And Louis Jordan and His Band in Ration Blues (1944)
It’s here! All 25 programs and 200 films’ worth. Roughly 10 hours of viewing, pulled from the full breadth of the Soundies catalog.
Each DVD in the 4-disc set explores a different theme, from “Introducing Soundies” and “Musical Evolutions” to “Life in the Soundies Era” and “Women, Sexuality, and Gender.”
Many of the Soundies you’ve enjoyed on this site are included in the package–some of them in spiffy 35mm versions–along with some amazing discoveries and rediscoveries.
Beyond the iconic performances by Nat King Cole, Doris Day, Ricardo Montalban, and other stars, there are Soundies with entertainers you may never have heard of: terrific all-women big bands like the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, early rock n rollers like Maurice Rocco and Harry “The Hipster” Gibson, comic singer-songwriter Cindy Walker, and a washtub solo by Florence Gill, probably the only performer to make a living by clucking like a chicken.
On his website, slide the timecode to 64:19 for the start of the interview, which runs roughly 40 minutes.
It was great to talk Soundies with Mike, who’s a smart, lively interviewer and a terrific editor. The conversation is dotted with audio excerpts from a variety of Soundies, all of them spot on for the topic at hand.
Our interview closes out NitrateVille’s 100th episode. Congratulations to Mike, and thanks for making Soundies part of that milestone.
Now, several of those September Soundies–and others that I suggested–are available for streaming on Max (formerly HBO Max).
The 5 programs include an all-star lineup in Season 1, followed by sets on big bands, dance, country-western, and wartime life.
With a little over two weeks to go before the July 25 release of Soundies: The Ultimate Collection, these programs are a terrific preview for Max subscribers.
Exciting news! The Soundies package I’ve been curating for the past two years is headed for release this summer.
On July 25, Kino Lorber will roll out “Soundies the Ultimate Collection,” a 25-program extravaganza showcasing some 200 films. That’s roughly 10 hours’ worth of viewing, pulled from the full breadth of the Soundies catalog.
Each DVD in the 4-disc set explores a different theme, from “Introducing Soundies” and “Musical Evolutions” to “Life in the Soundies Era” and “Women, Sexuality, and Gender.”
Many of the Soundies you’ve enjoyed on this site are included in the package–some of them in spiffy 35mm versions–along with a slew of new discoveries. As the back-cover blurb puts it:
“Never have so many Soundies been celebrated in one collection, or presented with such care: thematically organized, accompanied by on-screen introductions and a booklet of essays, photos, and credits.”
Ready to put in your advance order (at a 20% discount)? For details, see Soundies the Ultimate Collection on the Kino Lorber website.
I’m honored to be part of the Regeneration Summit, a celebration of Black cinema coming to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles this weekend.
I’ll be speaking on the panel “Soundies 101: A Hidden History,” talking about the films, performers, and cultural history that I wrote about in the book.
I’ll be in conversation with artist and media conservation specialist Ina Archer, who did several of the intros for the upcoming Kino Lorber Soundies collection (see the post just below this one); archivist and jazz-on-film scholar Mark Cantor, who was so vital to the book; film researcher Manouchka Labouba; and our moderator Doris Berger, co-curator of the museum’s milestone exhibition “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.”
The panel is at 1 p.m. on Saturday, February 4, followed by a meet-and-greet in the museum bookstore at 2.
If you’re in the LA area, I’d love to see you there.
Ina Archer and Susan Delson in the Library of Congress theater in Culpeper, VA
Last week I was at the Library of Congress Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia with Ina Archer, an artist and media conservation specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
This spring, Kino Lorber will release a collection of Soundies that I curated—24 programs worth. Ina and I were in the LC’s gorgeous Packard Campus Theater to shoot some of the on-camera intros.
We had a blast talking Soundies—everything from Paddy Callahan Has Joined the Army to Emily Brown.
Thanks to everyone at the LC, especially Rob Stone and David, the theater projectionist. And to our indefatigable crew, production manager Heather Buckley and DP Eric Thirteen.
More news about the Kino Lorber Soundies package to come.
Trust a librarian to know good books! And the librarians of Choice, the American Library Association magazine, have named Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time an Outstanding Academic Title of 2022.
Books on the list are chosen for their “excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as an important—often the first—treatment of their subject.”
According to the ALA Choice website, “The list is quite selective: it contains approximately ten percent of some 5,000 works reviewed in Choice each year.”
Librarians: If you’re adding the book to your collection, I’d love to hear about it. And thank you.
One of the first reviews for Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time will appear in the November 2022 issue of Choice, the American Library Association magazine.
The review is brief, pithy, and positive. Hitting just about all the bases, it calls the book “a fascinating resource for those interested in film, jazz, performance, WW II, race, Black film history, and socio-cultural history.”
“In this comprehensive work, Delson locates Soundies within cinema history” while building the case that Soundies “impacted the social and cultural fabric of a racially divided America” and “played a role in advancing the country’s racial politics even when the country seemed reluctant to do so.”
Summing it up, the review had one final word on the book: “Essential.”
Co-Hosting Soundies on TCM (Turner Classic Movies)
John Shadrack Horace and Johnny Moore’s 3 Blazers in “Along the Navajo Trail” (1945), one of the Soundies I’ll introduce on TCM on Wednesday night, September 7
Mark your calendar and save the date! On Wednesday, September 7, I’ll join Turner Classic Movies host Dave Karger to introduce 3 programs of Soundies, paired with 3 different feature films.
At 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, we’ll talk about “Soundies–Before They Were Stars,” featuring Dorothy Dandridge, Ricardo Montalban, a teenage Doris Day, and others, followed by Day’s big breakthrough movie, “Romance on the High Seas” (1948).
At 11:30 p.m. Eastern time, it’s “Soundies–Battle of the Band Leaders, Part One,” with classic Soundies by Gene Krupa, Cab Calloway, Stan Kenton, and others, leading into “Orchestra Wives” (1942).
Closing the night at 1:30 a.m. Eastern (10:30 p.m. for the West Coast crowd), “Soundies–Country Classics” features a terrific duet by Carolina Cotton and Merle Travis, and a rare Soundies find: “Along the Navajo Trail, starring John Shadrack Horace and Johnny Moore’s 3 Blazers, followed by “Your Cheatin’ Heart” (1964).
Two weeks later, Dave and I will be back with another Soundies night on September 21.
