Cheap Birth of the Blues (Video) (Victor Schertzinger) Price

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Customer Reviews of Birth of the Blues

Fun fictionalization of the history of New Orleans jazz
Bing Crosby and Jack Teagarden lead the Basin Street Hot Shots, the (fictional) first all-white jazz band in New Orleans. Goofy and slow in parts, but god clean fun. Lots of weird racial stuff -- it's worth it, though, just to hear Mary Martin say, "I want to learn to sing like the colored folk." This is a fairly starry-eyed reading of the history of jazz, cleaned up a bit for a mainstream audience, but definitely with the best of intentions. Good clean fun, and a nice chance to see one of the best jazz musicians -- Teagarden -- strutting his stuff alongside one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, Der Bingle himself.

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MARY MARTIN AND DER BINGLE
The purpose of Paramount's BIRTH OF THE BLUES was to show the orgins of American jazz in New Orleans. It briefly introduced a black band patterned after the historic Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band that used to serenade the pleasure palaces of Basin Street. Then it dwells at length on Bing's efforts to organise his own eight-piece outfit, patterned after the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, which was one of the first white bands to play in respectable quarters. Historically, this is all too sketchy to be important, but musically, the picture is tops. A highlight is Crosby's lantern-slide rendition of BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON. This wasn't the first time that Paramount's president, Barney Balaban regaled his public with lantern-slide songs. In 1913, when Balaban built the little Kedzie Theatre in Chicago, first of his nationwide chain, his brother and sister played violin and piano accompaniments to such slides while Barney collected dimes at the door. As a partner for Crosby, Paramount again recruited Mary Martin; she never looked better than she did here and her singing is great - they made a crack musical team. Jack Teagarden's band did the instrumentals in this frolic from 1941.