Earlier than MTV and the age of tv, there have been Soundies. First showing in 1941, these three minute black-and-white movies featured artists of the Large Band, Jazz and Swing period, like Duke Ellington, Depend Basie, Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, The Mills Brothers, Les Paul, Cab Calloway, and Fat Waller. The Soundies helped launch the careers of Doris Day, Nat King Cole, Liberace, and Dorothy Dandridge, amongst others. Seen for a dime by a particular machine known as a Panoram, a film jukebox, these forerunners to the music video could possibly be seen in nightclubs, roadhouses, eating places and different public venues throughout the U.S. These traditional movies stay as wonderful time capsules of music, social historical past, well-liked tradition, and inform the story of a crossroads in our nation, when the uncertainties of battle, race relations, and rising applied sciences mixed to write down some of the influential chapters in our nation¹s historical past.
