BIRTH OF THE BLUES (1941)

One of the less interesting Bing Crosby musicals from his heyday in the 40's. Set in the unspecified past in New Orleans, Crosby plays a musican who is set on starting up the first all-white blues band (!?). He and his gang of part-time musicians hear of a "hot" cornet player from Memphis (Brain Donlevy) who has blown into town and right into jail, so they all leave they day jobs, get Donlevy free, meet up (quite improbably) with Mary Martin (a "hot" girl singer) and together get a good start on bleaching out the blues. Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson is Crosby's loyal sidekick, Carolyn Lee is Martin's nine-year-old aunt (!?), and some real musicians (Perry Botkin and Jack Teagarden among them) make up the band. I'm hardly an expert on the blues, but most of the music in the movie sounds nothing like the blues, except for a nice sequence when Anderson seems to be on his deathbed; the band plays "St. James Infirmary" and his wife Ruby Elzy sings "St. Louis Blues." More often, the songs are vaguely "hot" arrangements of songs like "Wait Til the Sun Shines Nellie" and "Melancholy Baby." The numbers are fine, but they sure ain't the blues. J. Carroll Naish and Warren Hymer also appear, and Cecil Kellaway has a cameo. Aside from the opening buisness with Donlevy, the rest is fairly slow going. Botkin's name was familiar to me from seeing it on album jackets in the 60's and 70's; he did musical arrangements for, among others, The Lettermen, the Friends of Distinction, Carly Simon, and Harry Nilsson, including one of my favorite albums of all time, "Pandemonium Shadow Show."