Incredible Sonovox – Kay Kyser – 1940 film “You’ll Find Out”

This awesomely strange 1940 film demos the incredible Sonovox – a electroacoustic precursor to the vocoder.

And it even swings. For a moment.

via MisterScott99:

The Sonovox consists of one or two louspeakers placed on the throat that play the source sound. The performer whispers the words while the speakers stand in for the voice box.

Used for the talking train in Disney’s Dumbo, uncountable radio promos. A tube-in-the-mouth version Talk Box was used by Frampton to make his guitar sing, and all-electronic Vocoder versions are still used in current pop music.

A little Santa Claus Talkbox via mootbooxle, with a semi-random video collage.

A couple of days ago, we posted a freakishly weird talking guitar video from 1962, because it demonstrated how guitarists were making vocoder-like talkbox sounds a long time before they had a mainstream electronic music context. 

Electronic music artist Richard Lainhart left a comment on that video, noting that Alvino Rey was doing crazy talkbox stuff back in 1939 – in a big band context. That’s thirty+ years before vocoder and talkbox effects were common in pop music and sixty years before Daft Punk. 

According to Big Band Library, “When Rey formed his own band in August 1939, his amplified pedal steel guitar was his featured instrument, and an off-stage vocal microphone plugged into it with a Sonovox made it seem as though the guitar could ‘talk’.”

Vocoder-like effects have a long history, and Alvino Rey’s take on the St Louis Blues, while dated, is still pretty awesome. 

If you’ve got any more info on this signal flow, leave a note in the comments.