Music: Bela Lam & Family - Poor Little Benny (1920's field recording)

Virginia native Zanddervon Beliah Lamb, renamed Bela Lam by Okeh Records, performs the song Poor Little Benny with wife Rose Meadows.

With Bela’s brother-in-law Paul and son Alva, they became local favorites near the Blue Ridge Mountain region in the 1920’s, eventually being called to New York City to record six songs.

Influenced by the local religious music of the day, Bela Lam & the Greene County Singers, as they would come to be known, are notable for their shape-note harmonies, highly influential during the period

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New Year Redux: Walkin' Home, Again - 1920's Girlie Film

A bevy of flappers prances around the beach, having such a good time they can't help but strip to their skivvies. A ragamuffin, who watches them from behind a rock, swipes their clothes as they play carelessly in the waves.

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Foldin' Bed - Whistler & His Jug Band ca. 1930

Whistler & His Jug Band came up out of Louisville, Kentucky, and became the first recorded jug band, according to R Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country. They recorded at least twenty-one songs between 1924 and 1931. The names of the musicians remain unknown.

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Ted Weems with Flappers

You know you've made the Big Time when you're leading a band that's accompanied with a chorus line of perky flappers.

But then again, if you're Ted Weems in the late 1920's & early 1930's, this is the life of a famous radio bandleader.

It's just another day at the beach on the Eastern Seaboard during the Jazz Age, perhaps in Coney Island or Atlantic City.

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The King of Kings - 1927 DeMille Film Trailer

A preview of Cecil B. DeMille's upcoming film, The King of Kings ... "the picture that will live forever."

DeMille hypes his 1927 spectacle, "magnificently portrayed by an inspiring cast of 5000 players," by stressing the epic proportion of these biblical episodes rather than the story itself.

Both producer and director of King of Kings, DeMille also was a prolific editor, writer, and actor. With a larger than life persona, he was famous for being famous, often playing himself in other people's movies. You remember his cameo in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd ...

"Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

Burlesque: Walkin' Home, Again - 1920's Girlie Film

A bevy of flappers prances around the beach, having such a good time they can't help but strip to their skivvies. A ragamuffin, who watches them from behind a rock, swipes their clothes as they play carelessly in the waves.

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Vaudeville / Music: A Few Moments with Eddie Cantor

Stage, radio and film star Eddie Cantor puts on a classic vaudeville routine, including a few jokes sandwiched between breaking into song.

One of the biggest entertainers of the early 20th century, the type self-deprecating humor he helped define can still has influence today with comedians such as Letterman, Conan and Jon Stewart.

Musical numbers include the daffy "Oh, Gee, Georgie" and the irreverent "The Dumber They Come, The Better I Like 'Em," arguably a classic even by today's standards.

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Music: New Orleans

Newsreel documentary from the 1920's with photography and animations illustrating old New Orleans, the Crescent City, at work and at play.

Duelling oaks. Influences of colonial France and Spain. Iron grille work. The old townhouses surrounding open courts.

New Orleans, the industrial city, where ports and depot junctions distribute throughout, and out from, the heart of America.

Culture shipped to & from the world.

And, of course, Mardi Gras, Jazz age style.