Tal Henry and His North Carolinians (1929) User Reviews

Worth a look...and listen

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 30 January 2012]

In the 1920s and 30s, Vitaphone (a division of Warner Brothers) made a huge number of musical shorts. However, over the decades, they fell into obscurity and were pretty worthless. Fortunately, in recent years, the films have been restored and, most importantly, the separate audio track (which was made on a recorded disc) has been matched up with many of these films. As a result, several mega-collections have recently been released. Though they are of very, very limited appeal to the average viewer, it's nice to see that someone cares about preserving these for the future--to keep a nice piece of our history.

Like so many of the early Vitaphone musical shorts, the band featured in this one is pretty much forgotten today--though it's a shame, as I found myself enjoying it very much--in particularly their first number (which sounded like the sort of music you'd hear in an older Woody Allen film). Very peppy and heavy on the clarinet--almost like merging klezmer and big band music. For more on Tal Henry, check out the wikipedia page--it's quite interesting.

An enthusiastic performance by Tal Henry and his band

[Paularoc · 5/10 · 5 March 2013]

I recently acquired a mega set of the Vitaphone Calvade of Comedy - a set of beautifully restored sound shorts. I typically do not recognize the orchestras and that's the case with Tal Henry and his North Carolinians. Nor did I know any of the musical numbers (for example, Come on Baby and Shame on You) they played. Henry was very well known at the time with an active career that lasted over two decades. His orchestra plays with great enthusiasm and the last number is quite the toe tapper. Nonetheless, the short was only of mild interest albeit important to the history of American popular music. At 11 minutes, it is watchable but the band's style isn't sufficiently riveting to warrant spending more time than that watching them perform. It just wasn't visually interesting enough. And for me, it wasn't that riveting to listen to either.

Decent Short from Warner

[Michael_Elliott · 12 September 2011]

Tal Henry and His North Carolinians (1929)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another early sound short from Vitaphone and Warner is the only film appearance by its star Tal Henry. Henry and his band perform three songs -- Come On, Baby!, Shame On You and Milenberg Joys -- and come off pretty well. If you've seen enough of these Vitaphone shorts then you know that many of the earlier ones featured musicians that even many music buffs don't remember. I'm not music buff so I'm not certain how well-known or respected Tal Henry is but the music here is at least catchy. I thought the band was extremely good, lively and they at least appeared to be giving it their all. Henry, on the other hand, seemed a tad bit lost at times and you can clearly see this whenever it's time to address the camera. Just check out the first time he turns from his band to speak to the camera and it really doesn't seem as if he's nervous or just extremely shy at having to talk. Either way, the music is enjoyable enough so fans can at least kill 9-minutes.