This video is my favorite thing at the moment

I was searching for old videos to better imitate the sound of a vintage broadcast, and accidentally stumbled upon this.

It’s a Sonovox, which is sort of a proto-vocoding device–though it’s actually closer in principle to the “talkbox” effect made famous by Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do.” The music from the performance would be piped into small speakers, which the performer holds up to his throat–in effect replacing his vocal chords. He mouths the words, and the sounds take shaped based on the natural formants produced by his mouth and throat.

I just love how anachronistic is it to hear this Daft Punk-esque effect in the context of a 1940s big band.