The Blu Ray release of Jezebel, which I just reviewed, had an interesting special feature that I’ve seen a couple of times before. It was called something like A Night at the Movies and if you selected it, it would play a period newsreel, this musical short featuring Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra and a cartoon before then going directly into the movie. It’s obviously meant to mimic the experience of going to see a movie back in the olden days and it’s a cool idea.
This short features Dorsey and his band performing a few songs and, since the whole thing is less than ten minutes, they move at a pretty fast clip and keep the energy up. The singers are just okay, but the band itself is pretty good. There’s a really good drum solo by Ray McKinley. This isn’t great, but it’s pleasant enough at just nine minutes and change. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – at under ten minutes, this recording of Dorsey’s big band performing a few of their hit songs is pleasant enough without being particularly striking or memorable. 2 ½ stars.