MOST FAMOUS FOR HIS CHARACTER the Little Tramp, Charlie Chaplin believed that “talking” films were just a passing fad. The 1936 comedy classic Modern Times was one of the last silent films, and the only time we hear the Little Tramp’s voice as he, at the behest of the film’s heroine, an orphan played by Chaplin’s wife Paulette Goddard, performs a song and dance number to stall the cops. The performance works, but don’t try to understand the lyrics – they’re a nonsensical pastiche of several languages, revealing exactly how unimportant words sometimes are.

MAX FLEISCHER PRESENTS Minnie the Moocher (1932), featuring Betty Boop and Bimbo, with Cab Calloway and his Orchestra.

Walt Disney this is not. Max Fleischer, born in Poland and raised in New York City, was generally uninterested in the pastoral aesthetic of round-eared, anthropomorphic mice schoonering paddleboats down the countryside. Made only four years after Steamboat Willie, Fleischer’s work contained references to immigration (the parents in the beginning of the cartoon), drug use (Calloway’s sung reference to Smoky the Cokie), alcoholism (the skeletons drinking tainted Prohibition-era hooch, then wilting and dying), and, of course, sexuality (Betty the flapper, herself).

Check out the Walrus Ghost in the cave – in actuality, a second appearance by Cab Calloway, whose dance was captured on film and then traced over by the animators. The process, called Rotoscoping, was invented by Fleischer.

Janis Joplin performing “Get It While You Can” with the Full Tilt Boogie Band on The Dick Cavett Show, June 25, 1970.

THOUGH SOME OF THE KIDDIES might prefer Lang Lang’s thunderous, somewhat comical phrasing (and facial expressions), I’m mostly a classicist when it comes to classical music, and thus have tended towards the work of Byron Janis. Above is some Youtubage of Mr Janis performing one of my favorite pieces, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de l’ORTF. So spectacular is this 1968 performance that it might very well be worth owning.

I love Bert Stern’s film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, even writing about it here, and thought, what better way to close out a decade than with the last musical act from the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Mahalia Jackson performing “Everybody Talkin’ ‘Bout Heaven” and ”Didn’t it Rain,” and then closing out the festival with the Lord’s Prayer. In many ways, her performance seems like a very appropriate close to 2009, and a wonderful way to ring in 2010.

From one of the greatest concert films of all time, Martin Scorcese’s The Last Waltz, here is the studio rendition of The Band’s “The Weight,” performed with the Staple Singers.

Because people were so much cooler in olden times!