Earl Burtnett and His Biltmore Hotel Orchestra

Earl Burtnett and His Biltmore Hotel Orchestra (1928)

*** (out of 4)

Vitaphone must have really enjoyed Earl Burtnett because they made four shorts together in 1928 and this here was the first. Burtnett introduces the musical numbers as well as the musician doing the tune and for the most part I thought this was fairly entertaining. "Miss Annabelle Lee" was the final number and probably the highlight of everything but the other numbers are well worth listening to. As with many Vitaphone shorts, the set was pretty simple as there's one camera capturing the men as they played. Visually there's certainly nothing ground-breaking here or anything that really jumps out at you but this is to be expected since the studio was basically just wanting to get the audio recorded for the new sound rage going through America. Fans of the Vitaphone shorts will certainly want to check this out as well as those who enjoy music from this period.