Independence Day 1940

Strike up the band.

Let's celebrate the great day on which the Declaration of Independence was signed ...

July 4, 1776 ...

Be happy ...
Be glad we are living in the good old USA
Land of the free ..
Home of fair play

July 4th, 1940.

PS: Get Well Soon.

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Marijuana aka "Marihuana!" - 1930's

A trailer for a nudie film that masquerades as an anti-'marihuana' morality tale.

Watch wild & reckless youths lose their souls to the devil's weed.

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Propaganda: Propaganda Techniques

Educational film to teach viewers about the dynamics of propaganda, made in the in the late 1940's or early 1950's.

A teacher dissects the processes in which propaganda works to an eager student.

In it are moments of classic hokum, but curiously many of the techniques ring true today.

Beware of Propaganda.

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Music: Hawaiian Hula Song with Steel Guitar

Hawaiian Hula Song, a classic. A seductive beauty does the hula while a duo play on guitar and slide. During the last third of the song, the rhythm picks up, becoming swingy.

Where Hawaiian traditional and American Jazz meet, practically western swing.

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Louis Jordan - How Long Must I Wait for You

Louis Jordan performs "How Long Must I Wait for You" with his Timpany Five. Considered by some to be no more than a long running novelty act, back in the day he battled Chick Webb and conceived lyrics with wit that rivals Dylan or any modern-day rapper.

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The Towers - 1957

A color documentary which examines the creation of the Watts Towers and the Sicilian immigrant and visionary Sabato Rodia who realized them. This film contains intriguing footage of mid-1950's Watts, the neighborhood where greats like Charles Mingus amongst many others grew up.

Independence Day 1940

Strike up the band.

Let's celebrate the great day on which the Declaration of Independence was signed ...

July 4, 1776 ...

Be happy ...
Be glad we are living in the good old USA
Land of the free ..
Home of fair play

July 4th, 1940.

PS: Get Well Soon.

Greenwich Village Sunday - 1961

Take a stroll through the streets, parks and neighborhoods that make up Greenwich Village. Before Washington Square became the NYU undergrad film school back lot, the area was known for it's street art, spontaneous hootenannies, poetry jam sessions and neighborhood fairs. Take a walk around the Village before it became too cool for you.

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To Hear Your Banjo Play - 1947

Folk master Pete Seeger narrates Alan Lomax's documentary on the evolution and appreciation of American folk music. Special cameo performances include Woody Guthrie and Brownie McGhee, amongst many others.

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American Gothic Cornflakes

Amazing to think that professional people got paid to cook up masterpieces such as Gothic American Cornflakes. But are times really different today, forty years later?

The recipe is quite simple, really. Take one part cornflakes, one part current youth culture cliché, throw in a little General Mills dough, then marinade in Madison Avenue saccarine and ... VOILA! the old-fashioned, half-baked Saturday morning scrapple of which almost anybody can reminisce.

In this case, the lyric "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land" has been conveniently re-written as "Eat country cornflakes!" The repetition is enough is enough to make any sadistic psychological interrogator proud.

One wonders if this is the culmination of the visions of Grant Wood and Woody Guthrie. One wonders ...
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Esso Extra

"Everyone likes that little something extra …

A dozen rolls and the baker tosses in an extra one to make it a baker’s dozen.

The butcher throws in an extra bone for the bow wow.

Every locality has a different name for it.

Way down in east in New England they call it 'something to boot.'

In the Deep South they call it 'lanya'
At your neighborhood service station they call it Esso."

AKA Exxon.

And the little “something extra” today, in 2007?

The exorbitant price of gasoline, while the oil cartels make record profits.

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Bill Powers - Caroline

In this re-discovered clip, the classically trained Bill Powers sings an operatic rendition of the song Caroline. A performer with with few if any informative references online, he is accompanied by the similarly under-appreciated member of the Brown Sisters on piano.

A nice complement to the Brown Sisters.

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Soundie: How to Yodel

In this vintage performance, the yodeling is entirely live and more contemporaneous, with a decidedly rockabilly slant.

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Soundie: Rosalie Allen - Chime Bells

Who doesn't love a great yodeler?

It's Rosalie Allen, who taught herself to play music as a child in Pennsylvania on her brother's guitar. Involving herself with radio, she scored her first hit covering Patsy Montana's "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart."

In this piece, Rosalie sees her beau off to war, a scenario the world has seen a little too much of lately ...

Later, Rosalie Allen would become a popular County & Western DJ in NYC through the 1950's, and later opened up her own retail C&W music shop.

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Propaganda: The Enemy Agent & You - 1960's Counterespionage Film

Cold War counter-spy instructional film created to convince government officials traveling with top secret info to watch their backs.

Watch hapless G-men get seduced and setup for blackmail by treacherous Soviet she-spies.

Includes clandestine spy gadgets a la James Bond and jarring, film noir-esque music.

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Music: Skeets McDonald - What a Lonesome Life it's Been

Skeets McDonald plays his classic country tune "What a Lonesome Life it's Been" in a rare televised performance from 1959.

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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - 1974 Trailer

Trailer for Sam Peckinpah's 1974 surreal slaughter-piece 'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,' staring the great Warren Oates.

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Music: Tell Him No - authentic Rock & Roll, 1959

Billy Mize and Cliff Crofford's harmonies for "Tell Him No" typify the Bakersfield Sound.

From a local television broadcast out of Compton, California in the late 1950's.

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Music: 1940's Hollywood Pop - Jimmy Wakely

In this clip, fictitious, watered-down pseudo-western-swing act Jimmy Wakely & the Sunshine Girls perform "You Are My Sunshine."

Jimmy Wakely was a Hollywood B-Western personality. With his career zenith during the studio system, Wakely would star in cowboy matinees and be featured in a comic book series.

"You are my Sunshine," one of the most covered songs of it's day, is arranged here with an early manufactured pop sensibility. Including a Western swing rhythm section, Andrews Sisters' styled harmonies, and a crooner leading a very stiff Hollywood studio orchestra, the arranger has achieved a quintessential triumph in banality.

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