Panoram “Soundie” with Anita O’ Day on screen

Most people under the age of 60 might presume that the age of the music video arrived with the launch of MTV in the summer of 1981.

Not true.

Between 1940 and 1946, jukeboxes called “Panorams” became a common feature in bars, nightclubs, and restaurants in larger American towns and cities.

A “Panoram” jukebox used rear projection to show short 16mm films of music performers lip-syncing to a separate audio recording.

Films were pre-loaded and played in rotation order, so any viewer who parted with their hard-earned dime could only hope that the next film in line was worth the money.

Because “Soundies” were not covered under film censorship laws, some bars and nightclubs included short burlesque reels among the numbers on rotation – a surefire way to get soldiers on leave during WWII to take a chance and part with more coins.

Post-war prosperity saw an increase in TV ownership, and a host of new musical variety shows (like The Ed Sullivan Show) soon put paid to the brief heyday of the “Soundie”.

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Here is one such “Soundie” from 1942, featuring legendary jazz drummer Gene Krupa‘s band, with the astonishing, amazing Roy Eldridge on trumpet, and the criminally neglected and hyper-charismatic Anita O’ Day on vocals.

Nothing, but nothing, represents the hope and promise of the “best possible America” like jazz music.

It is a gross over-simplification, but for people new to the genre, it will work to say that jazz sprang from a sort of trinity of traditions:

First and foremost, from Black and mixed-ethnic “Creole” New Orleans music.

Second, from the popularity of military bands and marching music from the late 19th and early 20th century.

Thirdly, from an eclectic admixture of southern blues, Kansas City and Chicago blues, ragtime, boogie-woogie, Carolina Piedmont music, and Southern Appalachian old-time or “proto-country” music.

In this age of heated identity politics, it is difficult to explain any complex cultural phenomenon without someone shouting “cultural appropriation”.

It is even more difficult to explain that while every single American musical form has African-American musicians and traditions contained within its roots, we should not describe any American musical genre as “belonging” to one color of people. Music belongs to anyone who loves it or shares it.

Gene Krupa was the son of Polish immigrants from New York, who learned drums from a German/Dutch descendant of men who played the snare drum as a military instrument.

Roy Eldridge was the African-American prodigy son of a wagon teamster and a piano-playing mother from Pittsburgh.

Anita O’ Day – who took her stage surname from the Pig Latin for “dough” – can be found on a Wikipedia page described as the daughter of Irish immigrants. Except that whoever wrote her Wikipedia bio is wrong.  Anita O’ Day was born Anita Belle Colton in Kansas City, Missouri (or Chicago) to parents known to this blog as “Old Mix Americans” – people of often indeterminate or mixed-ethnic ancestry from pre-Revolutionary War Virginia, North Carolina, and Southern Appalachia in general.  She left home at 14 because of “her father”.  Good grief.

A long article could be written about the travails of each of these people.

Racism.  Sexual abuse.  Being blacklisted in some quarters for allowing a “white girl” to dance with a Black man.  Alcohol and heroin addiction.  Hard time just for smoking a “jazz cigarette”.

The underclasses often do what they do simply to survive living inside their own headspace in a harsh, hard world.

“Judge not lest ye be judged…”

Amid the insanity of a world at war, these Americans chose the joy of music over hatred and prejudice.

Play it loud for New Year 2025.  We need a joyful soundtrack to survive what’s coming.