This is a mixture of movie cartoon with real life footage of the Mills Brothers quartet. The only musical instrument used is the guitar but the Mills Brothers create the illusion of other instruments (tuba, trumpet and saxophone) by using their voices and hands in clever ways. There is a 'bouncing ball' karaoke section in the middle where cinema audiences of the day would have sung along to the the song 'I ain't Got Nobody'.
KS3/4 idea: This is an interesting historical example of the earliest days of animated cartoons. There is no real storyline to the cartoon and there are frequent changes between cartoon and real camera shots of the musical performers. This may seem puzzling now, but would all have seemed exciting and new to audiences at the time, especially as films with soundtracks had only recently been invented. As a modern contrast to the Mills brothers' extended vocal techniques you could try getting KS3 pupils to devise a voice-only soundtrack to a section of cartoon footage, but allow them to use modern electronic processing equipment/software to create new effects.
Resource type: This is a Video resource.
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