In the 1940's nightclubs, restaurants, and bars would often have Panorams available for their patrons.  These offshoots of the nickelodeon were coin operated, rear projection, movie displays that played "soundies", films with audio.  Drop in a coin and you would be treated to a three minute short, often a musical.  These appeared in 1940 and were fairly popular with over 10,000 of the machines located across the US at one time.  By 1946 however wartime shortages spelled doom for the novelty machines and they have since faded from memory.  But what about the films that were shown on these contraptions?  Many of them still exist and now Acorn media has gathered together a selection of soundies as well as some television appearances and theatrical shorts by Jazz greats and released it as Jumpin' & Jivin' Volume One.

Many of the 27 songs presented here will be recognizable to the general public, and artists presented are a Who's Who of Jazz.  With appearances by Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Count Basie, and the incomparable Lena Horne, just to name a few, this is an excellent selection of great musicians.

The biggest strike against this set is that nearly all of the songs are lip synced.  While most of the acts do a good job, it's still obvious that what you're hearing isn't what the musicians are playing.  The worst example of this occurs when Anita Day claps to keep the beat while singing Let Me Off Uptown.  The problem is that the claps aren't on the soundtrack.  Even though the performances are dubbed, the musicians go through the motions as if they mean it.  It is fun to see Dizzy Gillespie up on stage, and Lena Horne is mesmerizing.  (I don't know if anyone has ever noticed this before, but Ms. Horne was rather attractive...)

Unfortunately, these clips have not been restored, and they are showing their age.  I'll go into more detail in the technical part of the review, but it's too bad that the money couldn't be found to clean these up a bit.

The 27 songs presented in this set are:

Minnie the Moocher - Cab Calloway
Honey Chile - Louis Jordan
Aint' Misbehavin' - Fats Waller
Take Me Back Baby - Count Basie featuring Jimmy Rushing
My Little Cousin - Teddy Powell
Let Me Off Uptown - Gene Krupa featureing Anita O'Day and Roy Elridge
Take the 'A' Train - Delta Rhythm Boys
Rag Mop - The Treniers
Tillie - Louis Jordan
Basin Street Boogie - Will Bradley
Your Feet's too Big - Fats Waller
Oop Bop Sh Bam - Dizzy Gillespie
Ding Ding Baby - Lionel Hampton
Unlucky Woman - Lena Horne
Rhythm in a Riff - Billy Eckstine
Sans Culottes - Teddy Powell
Sophisticated Lady - Duke Ellington
Blues in the Night - Cab Calloway
It's Rock, It's Roll, It's Swing - The Treniers
Buzz Me - Louis Jordan
Honeysuckle Rose - Fats Waller
Boogie Woogie Dream - Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons
The Anvil Chorus - Al Donahue
Dixie Jump - Ralph Flanagan
Airmail Special - Lionel Hampton
Class in Swing - Artie Shaw

These 27 songs run a total of 85 minutes and come on a single sided DVD which is housed in a standard keepcase.

Audio:

The audio to these clips haven't been cleaned up at all, which is too bad.  While the songs are all easy to hear, there is background noise in just about every track.  The hiss and hum never overpower the number, but the noise is easily noticeable.  (The hiss was pretty bad on It's Rock, It's Roll, It's Swing by The Treniers with a lot of crackling through the song.)  The dynamic range is rather limited too, but that's due to the limits of the recording technology of the time.  There is a touch of light distortion on a couple of tracks and the occasional dropout is present too.  These don't ruin the disc, but it would have been nice if some restoration had been preformed on these tracks.  Overall this disc sounds about what you'd expect for unrestored footage from the 1940's.

Video:

Like the audio, the video hasn't been restored at all.  The clips are a bit rough, but all are generally clear.  Some of the songs have a very low contrast, others are faded by time, and every one of them has dirt spots, scratches, and other print damage.  Generally the contrast is rather poor with details lost in any black area and whites tend to bloom.  Dropped frames are also a problem as this effect both the audio and video.  While these clips don't look outstanding they aren't horrible.  Every one of them is watchable and a couple look pretty good.

Extras:

There are no extras, though there is a nice 4 page insert with information about the performances and the musicians appearing on the disc.

Final Thoughts:

This is a hard one to grade.  While it's fantastic to see some of these Jazz greats performing, they are mostly lip synching.  On the other hand they are giving a good performance, and you don't hear people complain that Gene Kelly was synched in Singin' in the Rain.  Then again there is the fact that the audio and video are a little rough.  Jazz fans and people interested in early film will surely want to pick this up, and for them it is recommended.  Casual fans will be happy with a rental.