SwingDJs

I was looking through the Movie list on Netflix and came across a new release called "Best of the Big Bands: Artie Shaw and Friends".

This DVD is awesome. It has collections of old Soundies and Movie clips from Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Krupa, Jimmy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, Jo Stafford, Anita O'Day, Roy Eldridge...

I'm thinking of ripping some of the audio and using to DJ from... of course I guess that means I need to buy it after I return it to Netflix. The Shaw material is the best quality quality. It of course features the "Lady Be Good (Double Mellow) clips with the shag dancers. Actually all of the Vitaphone Soundies The best qualify I've ever seen on any video of the era. Some of the others are of mediocre video/audio quality, but it looks like the source tapes were at fault.

There's also this odd Barnet Clip that features bizarre acrobatics. It's hard to explain unless you see it.

• Netflix Link
  Link on Amazon

It's weird you mentioned this...I saw this with a friend like 2 weeks ago, we were psyched we thought it was going to be a documentary on Artie Shaw (ala Benny Goodman Kingdom Of Swing, which f**king rocks by the way) but instead it turned out to be soundies and Snader Transcriptions all of which have all been released in some form or another...in fact they cut up Artie Shaw's Symphony of Swing and put it in all different order, I guess if you've never seen any of this it's worth getting but like I said better quality prints "in their entirety" can be found elsewhere...no new swing dancing anywhere and that acrobatic stuff if you can call it that is cornball to the third power...

nah, wasn't for the dancing. I enjoyed the soundies. I guess it's because I only had the Artie shaw clip (Lady Be Good), and none of the others.

I've only collected dance clips in the past, and no soundies, so i think it's a good starting point if you don't have any.

I haven't watched the exact DVD you are speaking of, but being a big collector of jazz and swing videos, I'm certain it was good.

I started a thread a few weeks ago regarding the label I think the video you are refering was released under:

Storyville Label

I have since bought about 3 of these DVDs and are all excellent and much better quality than the Idem label which has some of these also released.

If you see the Storyville label on a DVD, don't hesitate to get it. The price is much cheaper than Idem and the quality from what I have watched is much better.

FYI