Blue Melodies

by Chris Dashiell

Long ago, before there were music videos - hell, before there were
videos - there was the jazz short. Paramount specialized in them in the early 30s, and there were other little outfits that churned them out, often for the black theaters. Kino Video (an organization without whom I might die) released a compilation series of these shorts, and I had the pleasure of seeing one of them, called Blue Melodies - eight little relics of jazz, mostly from Paramount. 

Not all of them are memorable - I'll only mention the ones that stand out. First there's Duke Ellington in Symphony in Black ('35), an exquisite three-part work, each part telling a mini-story, with the tuxedoed Duke conducting his orchestra in the framing device. One of the stories features a rare film appearance by the (19-year-old) Billie Holiday. Later in the video, Duke appears again in Bundle of Blues ('33), two up-tempo numbers, one of them featuring some very hot dancing from two women performers - probably too hot for white audiences of that time. In between is a real treasure - "Stormy Weather" sung by Ivie Anderson. 

None of these shorts is a marvel of cinematic style - the budgets were too low for that. But it's fascinating to see musical legends captured on film when they were so young, and most of the music is top notch. The bizarre award goes to Her Future ('30), where an impossibly youthful Ethel Merman is brought to trial in a surrealistic courtroom for having too much fun. She sings - belts out - her defense quite nicely. There's also a Bing Crosby short at the end - Blue of the Night ('33). Crosby could sing great jazz, but this offering is pure cornball with barely a blues chord in sight, some silliness about Bing stealing a girl from fussy Franklin Pangborn, who falls backward into a pool. 

The rarity: St. Louis Blues ('29), an independent production that is the great Bessie Smith's only film. Bessie plays a poor put- upon victim of love who is mistreated by a cheating, lying, no- good womanizer. Notorious for its scenes of drinking and gambling (this is before the clamping down of the Code, of course), it is also frustrating and sad in that Bessie has her face turned sideways away from the camera for most of the film - what was the problem? She doesn't sing enough, either, but when she does it's great. But the best treat of all, and the most enjoyable on its own terms, is Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party ('35). Cab and his band put on a nightclub show, then afterwards they go to his private home and proceed to tear that up too. Calloway's jive patter is a scream, and the music and dancing is absolutely tops. The only other time I'd seen him was in one of those Hollywood revue films - I think it was Intenational House - where he did his great "Reefer Man" number. There is a reefer reference or two in this short, too - it's hilarious that white folks must have had no idea what he was talking about, otherwise he wouldn't have been singing about reefer in a Paramount film. Anyway, the man was born to star in the movies, but he lived in a time when "Negroes" weren't allowed to be "stars." This short shows him at his raw best - twenty years before there was a word for it, he rocked.  

Chris Dashiell

Cinescene, 1999