On today’s date in 1927, a landmark film title The Jazz Singer received its premiere showing at the Warner Theater in New York. The Jazz Singer starred Al Jolson and is usually credited with being the first “talkie”—the first motion picture to successfully incorporate prerecorded music and spoken dialogue. Both the music and dialogue were recorded using the Vitaphone process, essentially a set of disc recordings synchronized for playback with the film’s projector.
The previous year, the New York Philharmonic had participated in the first Vitaphone projects, recording Wagner’s Tannhauser overture as the first-ever “music video,” and performing the soundtrack for an otherwise silent drama titled Don Juan, starring John Barrymore.
Within a decade, Hollywood orchestras would be recording the classic film scores of European émigré composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, and within two decades American composers like Aaron Copland and Bernard Herrmann would be writing their memorable film scores as well.
But back in 1927, all of that was well in the future, and, as one of Al Jolson’s lines in The Jazz Singer so prophetically put it, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
Felix Arndt (1889 – 1918) An Operatic Nightmare (Desecration Rag No. 2) - Paragon Ragtime Orchestra; Rick Benjamin, cond. Newport Classics 60039
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897 – 1957) The Prince and the Pauper film score - National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, cond. RCA/BMG 0185