Carolina Blues

Band Leader Kay Kyser and his big band return to America after a long stint playing for the troupes. He wants to take a break but his publicist convinces him to do another show for plant workers. His regular singer needs time to get married. He reluctantly accepts Julie Carver (Ann Miller), the plant owner's daughter, as her replacement.

It's a bit of song and dance during the war years. The writing isn't much. The acting is fine. There isn't much of anything other than the musical breaks. It may as well be a concert show. It's a waste of an hour although that was needed back then. People just needed a break and that's what this is.

Just like Swing Fever--released in the same year--Carolina Blues features the corny persona of Kay Kyser. The guy has as much charisma as Bing Crosby, which is to say not much.

Here again, Ann Miller does not get enough time on the dance floor. She is so fresh faced in these early films; if only they had featured her talents more.

I still have not figured out which band member sports bangs and again plagues this movie with his senseless, humorless bits.

Some of the music by Styne and Cahn is really disappointing. The lyrics are silly--and not in a good way.

The best part of "Carolina Blues" is the title music, a very swinging instrumental of "There Goes That Song Again", ending with a close-up of Kay conducting his band. Story line is not all that compelling, and Victor Moore's comedic contributions are many and mostly ineffective(however, he WAS pushing 70 at the time, so the physical bit he tries to do, I'm sure, was quite difficult). A plus is the several accurate references to Kay's hometown of Rocky Mount and surrounding areas, along with playing a show in a local tobacco warehouse. In eastern North Carolina, on the too-rare occasion that a big band did come to town, tobacco warehouses were just about the only facilities big enough to host their dances. According to Steven Beasley's new book on Kay, Kyser himself did play a date at a tobacco warehouse in Rocky Mount, 4 years earlier, as part of that town hosting the world premiere of his first movie, "That's Right, You're Wrong". So, there is a bit of a thrill for this eastern Nawth Cahlinian in hearing places and things from our neck of the woods mentioned in a movie.

Out of the 7 feature films starring Big Bandleader Kay Kyser, i rate this one dead last. I hate to say it, as I've commented on other Kyser films, and am a BIG Kyser enthusiast, but this, his one film for Columbia, and as it turned out, his last feature, is just embarrassing. It wasn't his fault. It was that Columbia had NO idea what to do with him. Kyser started w/ RKO in '39, did 5 features there, and was very successful. Then one for MGM, SWING FEVER, which was not very good, but better than this. But i digress...I don't know if it's just my 16mm transfer to vhs, but the production values seem cheap, as in dark lighting. The great band doesn't get enough to do, and though Ann Miller is good, comic relief Victor Moore practically chews the scenery. In a scene in a taxi, you can see Kyser mouth the other actor's line as he delivers it. The first 3 Kyser films are priceless in my book, as the freshness and heart are so very apparent. But this really drags. Thank God Ish Kabibble (Merwyn Bogue)is in fine, dumb-as-a-brick form.

I like neither Kyser's screen persona nor his bland style of swing, so wouldn't ever recommend going to a film to see him. But he sometimes had a talent for pepping up his films with good specialty acts.

The show-stopper in this film is the "Mr. Beebe" number, featuring Harold Nicholas (without brother Fayard), supported by a number of other top black singers and dancers including The Four Step Brothers, Marie Bryant, June Richmond, and others I can't identify. Kyser's band with Ann Miller singing briefly introduce the number, then leave the set - typical for the era, the scene was clearly designed so that the black performers could be edited out when the film was shown in the south.

The disappointment is that all that talent, including Ann Miller, is given very little footage to show their stuff. Miller's only tap number is hacked by some dialog. Harold Nicholas is brilliant, but the other singers and dancers in the number only get to do quick cameos.

The Kyser personnel do get to do a couple of other cute numbers. Significantly, these occur informally, when Kyser isn't directing or arranging them.