“If I Had A Talking Picture Of You”
Earl Burtnett And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra
(Brunswick 4501) August 9, 1929
“Sunnyside Up”
Earl Burtnett And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra
(Brunswick 4501) August 9, 1929
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings of songs from the very successful 1929 musical film Sunny Side Up. It was one of the early big-budget movie musicals and came out when not all theaters had converted to showing the new talking pictures.
Note that on the label image above, Brunswick misspelled the name of the film in both its listing of the film credit and its title song as “Sunnyside Up.” I have preserved that misspelling here and on the title/artist information displayed when it plays on Radio Dismuke to accurately reflect what is on the record’s label.
Both of the songs here were popular and widely recorded.
Some might recognize the song “Sunny Side Up” from the recording made by Johnny Hamp and His Kentucky Serenaders played during the closing credits of the classic 1973 film Paper Moon, the story of which was set in Depression-era Kansas and Missouri. The lyrics on this version are different from those on Johnny Hamp’s and most other recordings of the song.
The lyrics on “If I Had A Talking Picture of You” are enjoyable in that they are topical to a period when sound films were the latest technology that people marveled over.
Other highly successful songs from the film, which you can hear multiple versions of in Radio Dismuke’s playlist, are “Turn On The Heat” and “I’m A Dreamer, Aren’t We All.”
I could not find any information on who provided the uncredited vocals on these recordings. Paul Gibbons was one of the vocalists with Earl Burnett’s band during this period, and, after listening to a few other Burnett recordings where Gibbons provided the vocal, I suspect he was probably the vocalist on these as well. But my ears aren’t the best at making such comparisons, and I am reluctant to state definitively that it was, indeed, Gibbons.