And by music “video” I mean a single song-length film that is an artistic “abstraction” (if that is the right word… in short, not live sets) of the song featured in the video. I remember that old Bob Dylan thing where he has all those cue cards that he flips through as the song is playing, and iirc that was about 1966 or so (making it the earliest video I know about), but I wonder if there is anything earlier.
And there wasn’t an actual answer, other than they go back a long way. You might be able to find it with the search engine, though.
I remember seeing during one February (aka Black History month) on AMC, when they show a lot of the forgotten films of the Black film makers, one of the “filler” scenes between movies was a video. It looked to have dated no later than the early 50s, and quite possibly the 1940s. I don’t remember the performer, but the name of the song was “Take Me Back, Baby,” and the video was a small film of the singer who keeps showing up at his ex wife/girlfriend, singing the song which asks her to take him back.
That is simply the oldest one that I have seen. They almost certainly go back even further.
Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer — that was, what, 1927?
Yeah, it really depends on your definition. I remember Casey Kasem (THE authoritatie source for EVERYTHING) saying there were coin-operated music video machines in the '30s, and he cited those as the earliest.
How about opera?
– Beruang
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“Back in 5 – Godot”
The actors in the video I mentioned were all black, the vocalist looking like (but was not) Spencer Williams’s “Andy Brown.”
Beruang wrote:
I remember Casey Kasem (THE authoritatie source for EVERYTHING) saying there were coin-operated music video machines in the '30s, and he cited those as the earliest.
A jukebox enthusiast in Pennsylvania who only identified himself as “Mike” made this contribution to a jukebox board.
*“Soundies were, indeed, the music videos of their day. Running about three minutes in length on motion picture film, they ranged in subject matter from big bands and vocals to dance routines and novelty acts. The era of the Soundies began in 1941 and was over by 1948. Highly collectible today, Soundies were rear-screen projected in jukebox type machines, most notable of which was the Mill’s Panoram. A dime deposited in the machine would activate a projection device to show a three minute musical treat.” *
16mm films made for that Mill’s machine catered to all tastes.
The soundies themselves were the sound version of coin operated video (actually film) machines that had been around for quite awhile. The first machines were called “Nickel in the Slot”, showed primarily primitive porn (usually topless women doing mundane things), and were the first coin machine arcades. At one point these were so popular that the US mint had to increase production of the nickle to meet the demand these machines created. Some of these are collected on the “Landmarks of Early Film” DVD. (It’s a great collection; you get A Trip to the Moon and The Great Train Robbery and the first cartoon in history, Windsor McCay and his Moving Comics).
Depends on how strict you want to be in your definition of music video. Based on your definition, Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan is the earliest one I can think of.
The Beatles had a video for “I Feel Fine” which came out in late 1964. And what was “A Hard Day’s Night” if not one long music video? But if we go that route, we’d have to accept “Jailhouse Rock” as well…
The definition was “a single song-length film that is an artistic abstraction.”
I’ll hang with the Mill’s machine products. While there were a number of live sets with orchestras like Cab Calloway (he and the orchestra were the show) there were abstractions with musicians like Fats Waller.
Thanks!
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “artistic abstraction”.
If you mean an abstract interpretation of a song by the artist who wrote it then I don’t know.
If you just mean an abstract interpretation of a song by anyone then according to MTV there was some german guy who produced animated abstract designs which he set to music back in the 1920’s. According to the Fantasia DVD this is supposedly where Disney got his idea for his “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” segment.
I think I remember seeing that Ricky Nelson’s Travelling Man (gawd, I hope that was Ricky Nelson 
) was one of the first (if not first) bonafide videos. Basically he was standing there singing with stock video running in the background of cruise ships, airplanes, etc. The style is actually quite similar to many of those low budget ones you still see today but it was in B&W.
Haven’t seen the Fantasia DVD, but they were probably talking about Oskar Fischinger–his stuff is certainly better than that Bach sequence.