User Reviews

This is so different from the musical shorts from a decade earlier. There's a narrator talking about Kenton's career. Also, the music is different from the Big Band music of the 30s - it seems to be a bluesier type of jazz, a precursor of the jazz that would become more common in the 50s.

June Christy is a good singer, but apparently, she's pretty much forgotten. Gene Howard, another singer, seemed OK, but he seems pretty wooden on stage.

The last number has Jerry (?) Gale dancing. SHE (the credits has her appearing as HIMself) doesn't really bring much to this musical short - she does some ballet-type moves and her dancing seems based on the music being played.

For the most part, this is a decent introduction to Stan Kenton and the music he and his band were making just after WWII. If you are familiar with Kenton's music or just like jazz, this is a good short.

Here's an anthology of some of Kenton's well-known songs in the era. Pitched as a history of his professional career, it takes him about forty seconds of screne time to go from a piano player scrounging jobs to leading his own band. His first gig was at age 16 (he was born in 1911) at a local diner for 50 cents a night plus tips. His formed his own band in 1940, and led it into the 1970s, more as an arranger than a piano player.

Wjem o was growing up, he was famous for his big bands with big arrangements: "The Wall of Sound". As one critic put it, Kenton's band didn't swing, it blasted.

There's a lot of loud blasting going on in this short, but it's brpetty good 1940s swing.

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra (1948)

*** (out of 4)

Warner produced all sorts of "(Fill in Artist Name) and His Orchestra" shorts in their day but this one here is somewhat different as we not only get music but the history behind the music. This short takes a look at the career of Stan Kenton, who started playing at minor dances before building his music up into one of the biggest bands of his day. This shot does a pretty good job at giving us this brief history but the main thing here is the music. This is the first short I've seen from the series that gave us a history lesson and I must admit that it was a nice touch. We get several nice tunes including "If I Could Be With You", "Somebody Loves Me" and "Kenton Blues", his breakout number. The best song is the rocking "I Been Down to Texas" with vocals by Gene Howard. Fans of the old days of jazz will certainly want to check this film out when it pops up on Turner Classic Movies.

This is one of the newest of the Vitaphone shorts--known as a "Melody Master". These later musical shorts generally had been more straight forward and had simpler sets and no real story to tie it all together--just a famous band of the day doing their stuff. However, starting during the war years these shorts began to have a narrator and purported to give a bit of background on the band leader. But, like so many of these latter-day shorts, the background information is very, very limited.

Stan Kenton's style was a bit more jazzy than most of the rest of the bands in the series. In fact, they also seemed a bit more like an orchestra than a typical big band group as well. As for Kenton, he played the piano throughout the short and it featured some very ordinary music and singing. In fact, absolutely nothing stood out about this short...nothing. Pleasant but far from outstanding.