If you are a regular listener to "The Big Band and Swing Podcast" you are quite familiar with Soundies. I enjoy playing the audio tracks from those great little films because they captured some fantastic footage from the Big Band Era. Another outlet that provided that type of historical footage was Snader Telescriptions. These "films" were recorded about a decade after Soundies and are frequently lumped in under the category "Soundies". I've been guilty of that as well. So I guess it's time to set the record straight.
Snader Telescriptions were produced in the early 1950's and they were made for Television broadcast.
Soundies were filmed in the early to mid 1940's and distributed through a national network of Panorams which were a type of visual jukebox.
They were both produced in a similar manner so it's easy to be confused. They were made on extremely low budgets but they featured some great artist and performers of the day. I've included a very informative short video documentary below that chronicles the history behind Snader Telescriptions. It's really quite good. Also, if you want to dig deeper about Snader Telescriptions, there is a fantastic article about the subject found on the Peggy Lee Discography website written by Iván Santiago-Mercado. Click here to read that article.
When you get down to it, each provides some very entertaining footage of the music we love! Here's that documentary I mentioned:
Watch: Short Video Documentary about Snader Telescriptions
Remember, you can hear the audio tracks of some of this great footage on "The Big Band and Swing Podcast."
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