Basin Street Revue (1956)

★★★★★ · Amazing find, thanks for posting · Eklectic1again · 2013-06-19

I saw parts of this movie at least three times on local Public Access TV over the last three-four months, and couldn't figure out what I was watching. I hoped it was a TV show from the mid-50s, something unique, a one-off, that had been broadcast from Philly or Detroit, although it seemed more and more to me like a Harlem production as I watched it. I never was able to see it right from the beginning, and the local Public Access channel does not broadcast names of shows; it's primitive that way. You just have to guess what you're watching. Anyway, today I started writing down names of acts on…

★★★★ · Black Musical History Lesson · bobsluckycat · 2012-03-24

Technical garbage and all that aside, this little musical gem features a handful of very talented Black singers and musicians of the day and sad to say they were not show-cased much outside of this film and a few more like it, and it probably did not play beyond the segregated theatre venues of the day. Enjoy the performances for what they are and for the most part they are just great. Sarah Vaughn is probably the finest pop/r&b singer from that period. She does two throwaway songs. Much,much later Cab Calloway and Nipsy Russell would come back to the fore-front in block-buster films in the…

★★ · Basin Street Revue · DavidMcGillivray · 2012-02-11

One of three similar variety bills (the other two are also on IA)featuring leading black jazz, r&b and rock 'n' roll performers of the mid-50s. Despite the claim that they were shot at New York's Apollo Theatre, they were almost certainly shot without a live audience in a TV studio. For some reason this is a cut version of a 58 minute feature. Nat "King" Cole is one of several billed acts who don't appear; nor does top of the bill Count Basie! Instead the show closes with Cab Calloway. The complete version is in the British National Film Archive. Tech credits are pretty basic. Note how the…