Let's Make Music

Frances Carroll & 'The Coquettes'

1940

Bandleader Frances Carroll leads The Coquettes, an all-female band, in several swing tunes.

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra

1947

A brief history of Stan Kenton's musical career from taxi-dance gigs to his successful big band orchestra.

Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott

2010

His filmmaker son probes the professional and private lives of his remote but fascinating father: bandleader, composer, inventor, and electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott.

The Eddy Duchin Story

1956

The life story of the famous pianist and band-leader of the 1930s and 1940s.

Flying Down to Rio

1933

An American bandleader woos a Brazilian beauty who is already engaged to his employer. His friends try to help him, while learning the local dance, The Carioca. The first pairing of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, and their only pre-Code film.

You'll Find Out

1940

The manager of Kay Kyser’s band books them for a birthday party bash for an heiress at a spooky mansion, where sinister forces try to kill her.

Indochine, une révolution musicale

2024

Henry Busse and His Orchestra

1940

This one-reel musical short, part of the WB/Vitaphone Melody Master series, features the music of trumpet-player and orchestra leader Henry Busse and his Orchestra, playing their own arrangements of various popular songs of the time...or in the Warners' song library. Those include "Wang Wang Blues," "Hot Lips" and "Along the Santa Fe Trail."

Keeping Time

2023

A meditation on what it means to maintain continuity with the past — told through the kaleidoscopic journey of a young drummer who must learn how to guide a multi-generational band into the future after being named their new bandleader.

Zappa

2020

With the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.

Something to Sing About

1937

James Cagney has a rare chance to show his song-and-dance-man roots in this low-budget tale of a New York bandleader struggling with a Hollywood studio boss.

Orchestra Wives

1942

Connie Ward is in seventh heaven when Gene Morrison's band rolls into town. She is swept off her feet by trumpeter Bill Abbot. After marrying him, she joins the band's tour and learns about life as an orchestra wife, weathering the catty attacks of the other band wives.

Pacific Paradise

1937

In this MGM Miniature Musical, Harry Owens and his orchestra perform several song numbers.

Frank Zappa: The Broadcast Archives

2008

Frank Zappa - The Broadcast Archives is a collection of live performances from the master of experimental and comedy rock. These Saturday Night Live performances demonstrate the musical genius and the progressive jazz-rock arrangements that were the signature of the phenomenal Frank Zappa. Featured tracks include: Peaches En Regalia I Am The Slime Purple Lagoon Dancing Fool The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing St Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast

Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words

2016

Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.