Soundies

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Soundies were short three-minute music films (but also comedic skits) that were produced in the United States between January 1941 and 1947 . They were put together on film rolls and played on special film jukeboxes . They were sort of a precursor to the 1980s music video .

The experiments of the engineers Orlando E. Kellum and Lee de Forest , who developed image-sound coupling techniques in film in the early 1920s and produced a number of music films, resulted in the first musical short films such as Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake Sing Snappy Songs and Ben Bernie and All the Lads . The subject of the later soundies were all types of music, from classical music to country to big band swing. Often there were also dance interludes. Examples of musicians who made soundies are Fats Waller , Lena Horne , Count Basie , Cab Calloway , Duke Ellington , Louis Armstrong , Meade Lux Lewis , Jimmy Dorsey , Kay Starr , Doris Day , Dorothy Dandridge , Anita O'Day , Gene Krupa , Nat King Cole . In total, over 1800 such soundies were produced. They are an important source of film and image material on jazz musicians, which (especially as far as many African-American jazz musicians are concerned) are otherwise hardly documented. Many of the soundies are also new in video compilations.

There were two main manufacturing companies, Soundies Distributing Corporation of America and RCM Soundies (RCM for Roosevelt, Coslow, Mills, active until 1947). The most popular jukebox for playing these films (after throwing in 10 cents) was the Panoram from Mills Novelty Company of Chicago, a leading jukebox manufacturer. They stood z. B. in restaurants, bars, rest stops and night clubs. There were eight films on each of the film reels. They were projected onto a small screen on top of the box through a series of mirrors.

Although they were only produced until 1947, they in some way had successors in the Snader Telescriptions , named after the California real estate and television entrepreneur Louis D. Snader who introduced them. They were three to five minute music films that were used in 1951/52 as a break filler in television programs.

literature

  • Scott MacGillivray, Ted Okuda: The Soundies Book: A Revised and Expanded Guide . 2007
  • Jürgen Wölfer: Jazz in Film . In: Handbook of Jazz . Heyne 1979.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. u. a. Edwin M. Bradley: The First Hollywood Sound Shorts, 1926-1931 . 2005, p. 393; David Lee Smith: Hoosiers in Hollywood . 2006, page 465; Jazz on Film and Rebecca D. Clear: Video in the Library of Congress . 1993, page 117; Tim Brooks: Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 . 2004, p. 381.
  2. ↑ where the Mills stands for the manufacturer of one of the jukebox systems. RCM was founded in Chicago in 1940 with the participation of James Roosevelt (the son of the US President). From 1942 the musical director was the composer and arranger Hal Borne.