“I’m Thirsty For Kisses Hungry For Love”
Nat Shilkret And The Victor Orchestra; Dick Robertson, vocal
(Victor 21908-A) February 7, 1929
Here is one of many recordings recently added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist. I think it has a rather catchy tune.
The song was introduced in the 1929 film Why Be Good?, which was released during the industry’s transition from silent films to full sound. Wiring and equipping theaters for sound was expensive, and many, particularly in smaller cities and towns, had not yet been converted.
To ensure the widest possible distribution, the film was produced in a hybrid format. The story was filmed as a silent movie with no spoken dialogue, allowing it to be shown as a conventional silent film in locations still without sound. However, for audiences in theaters equipped with the latest Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology, the storyline was accompanied by a musical score, and there were song and dance scenes where the sound and film were fully synchronized.
For many years, until a copy was discovered in Italy in the 1990s, the film was believed to be lost, with only its soundtrack surviving on the much more durable Vitaphone discs.
Nathaniel Shilkret was the director of the Victor Talking Machine Company’s in-house studio band. He made recordings across a number of musical genres from jazz and dance band music to classical, salon and Latin American music.
Dick Robertson was one of several highly prolific freelance studio vocalists of the era who were not exclusive to any particular label and appeared on recordings with both name bands and various labels’ in-house bands.