By Charles J. Gans
ASAP

Decades before anyone started wanting their MTV, in the years just before the first TV shows were broadcast, Americans were putting their dimes into video jukeboxes and watching music videos.

At least, they were watching the precursor to videos -- a long-overlooked form of entertainment called "soundies."

"The producers of soundies films were way ahead of their time," said Grammy-nominated pianist and singer Michael Feinstein, who is hosting a two-hour special, "The Soundies: A Musical History," airing on PBS stations in March. "They are the beginnings of the lineage that has led to MTV whether the creators of MTV know it or not."

A still photo from a soundie featuring Louis Armstrong. Associated Press

Though made on a shoestring budget, the soundies of the 1940s have much in common with the latest high-tech music videos in that they focused on a single song with a bit of a story line sometimes thrown in.

There's dancing -- Arthur White's Lindy Hoppers with their acrobatic flips seen on Duke Ellington's "Hot Chocolate" soundie could outstyle the break dancers in any video from the '80s. And there are even booty calls -- witness the chorus girls draped over Fats Waller's piano as he sings his double entendre-laden "Honeysuckle Rose."

Soundies were first produced in 1940 after the Chicago-based Mills Novelty Co. launched a musical revolution by perfecting the technology for an audiovisual jukebox called a Panoram -- a refrigerator-sized, coin-operated machine with an 18-by-22-inch screen and a 16 mm rear projection machine that could play a reel of eight three-minute black-and-white film clips.

As many as 6,000 Panorams were sold to bars, nightclubs, restaurants, pool halls, hotels and even military bases across the country, enabling many viewers to see their favorite performers for the first time -- performers they could only hear on the radio or catch on tour in larger cities.

"The soundies reflect this incredibly democratic view of music," said Los Angeles-based music film archivist Mark Cantor, who appears in the PBS documentary along with such guests as Wynton Marsalis, Hugh Hefner and Leonard Maltin, and soundies performers like guitarist Les Paul. "We see some of the great jazz bands -- Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Cab Calloway -- when they were most popular and influential at the heart of the so-called swing era, when you can equate jazz music to rock and roll today as the music of young people.

"But the people at Mills Novelty Co. also realized that if they were going to make this work, they had to reflect all the musical tastes of America from coast-to-coast ... so you also have Irish ballads, Russian balalaika music, Hawaiian music, cornball music," he said.

CULTURE AND RACE

Nearly 1,900 soundies, mostly filmed in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, were distributed between January 1941 and March 1947 -- with a new reel of eight soundies released each week.

Today, they present a scrapbook of that era's social history and popular culture with everything from the risque burlesque of a feathery fan dance to spoofs of Nazis in Spike Jones' "Der Fuehrer's Face" -- and even patriotic propaganda made for the Office of War Information, such as singer Frances Faye's "I Shut My Mouth for Uncle Sam," aimed at discouraging loose chatter that might help the enemy.

The soundies also offer a snapshot at the nation's complex and evolving attitude toward race during the 1940s.

They included some of the first film footage of black and white musicians performing together, a harbinger of the civil rights movement a decade later. Drummer Gene Krupa's big band soundie "Let Me Off Uptown" featured white singer Anita O'Day accompanied by black trumpeter Roy Eldridge.

But more often the soundies show even the greatest black artists dealing with degrading racial stereotypes. Louis Armstrong's "Shine" has him singing and playing trumpet with cutaways to shoeshine boys polishing the shoes of chorus girls. And Dorothy Dandridge, who later became the first African-American nominated for a best actress Oscar, sings and dances in "Jungle Jig" clad in a skimpy two-piece outfit and feathery headdress -- and accompanied by African drummers, and a cook who uses his trombone to stir a kettle with a scat-singing missionary cooking inside.

"The '40s was a time when racism was pervasively in effect ... and I often wonder what went through the minds of the performers as they were asked to don certain garb or assume certain personas that clearly were distasteful, and that is part of the soundies," said Feinstein. "And yet ... the pure jazz performances are the saving grace and they transcend the unfortunate trappings."

SOUNDIE STARS

Some soundies stood out for paving the way toward major musical trends.

On the PBS show, alto saxophonist-singer Louis Jordan, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who influenced Chuck Berry and James Brown, can be seen playing "Jumpin' at the Jubilee," a jump blues tune considered one of the building blocks of rock & roll. Country guitarist Merle Travis, whose followers included Chet Atkins and Doc Watson, appears in a soundie singing "Why'd I Fall For Abner," with blonde yodeling cowgirl Carolina Cotton.

Other soundies offer a chance to see some of the earliest known film footage of performers who later became stars: Hollywood girl-next-door Doris Day singing with Les Brown's big band; balladeer Nat King Cole; Cyd Charisse, the dance star of musicals like "Singing in the Rain"; and flamboyant pianist Liberace.

And there are soundies that feature some iconic pop culture figures, from a sultry Yvonne De Carlo, who would later play the vampish Lily Munster in the 1960s cult TV comedy, "The Munsters," to Mel Blanc, voice of Bugs Bunny (among others), portraying a hiccuping drunk in the Spike Jones comedy number "Clink! Clink! Another Drink."

MAKE WAY FOR TELEVISION

Wartime restrictions hindered the mass production of the Panoram machines, and as the novelty of the soundies wore off, the Mills company began losing money. The last new soundie reels were distributed in early 1947; as TV networks began broadcasting into American homes, soundies quickly became forgotten.

Feinstein, a soundies collector whose Manhattan town house is decorated with original posters of 1940s Hollywood musicals, wants the medium to be remembered.

"I am thrilled that the soundies exist because they are important to share with young audiences," he said. "For a generation weaned on MTV to be able to see performers is very important. ... Many young people hear songs sung by contemporary artists and don't have any idea that they're old songs.

"My hope for the soundies documentary is that it will acquaint more people with the great music of the past and will spur them to listen to more of it and appreciate it."

asap contributor Charles J. Gans is an editor for the AP International Desk who frequently reports on jazz for the AP.

Want to comment? Sound off at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .