Nowadays when we think of musical shorts, we tend to think of MTV videos. The older and more seasoned may be aware of the soundies of the 1940s, and before that of the many shorts produced by Warner Brothers' Vitagraph division in Brooklyn. But with the coming of sound in the late 1920s, most of the major studios figured out how to handle the new technology by means of shorts like this one: unsophisticated camerawork -- imposed by a static sound system -- and good music.
Roesner ran a popular west coast band, and he had some good talent in it. Jimmy Dorsey appears here on the saxophone, Jimmy Lytell on the clarinet, and Miff Mole plays the trombone. The band offers "O Sole Mio" and "Angela Mio", and then a short jam session titled "Hottest Man In The Band." There seems to be some confusion about what makes a solo hot, but I award the palm to Lytell.