Also known as JUKE BOX JAMBOREE. Barny Pearl(Michael Granger)is a gangster that rules jukeboxes and forces his way into the Disco Records Company. Mack Adams(Paul Langton),the company's owner, is forced to turn over half of the company; this angers Johnny Conroy(Johnny Desmond), the label's top seller, who is not going to give up any percentage of his royalties...turns his back on topping the charts by heading south to the islands.Adams is convinced by his assistant Marti(Merry Anders)to search for Conroy and bring him back to start making records again. When Conroy is found, he is surrounded by island music called calypso. Brilliant idea...bring the new found music back to America and start a new musical sensation. Johnny's fan clubs and radio stations rekindle his career.Besides Desmond, there is music by The Treniers, The Hi-Los and The Terriers and others like Maya Angelou. A few of the songs featured: "The Banana Boat Song", "Calypso Joe", "Trinidad Hubbub" and the title tune.Other players in the cast: Meg Myles, Joel Grey, George E. Stone and Pierce Lyden.

I recently saw this film mainly because of Johnny Desmond. Johnny got his start with the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band during World War 2. After the war, he became a television favorite, appearing on "The Breakfast Club" and dozens of other variety shows. Here he plays Calypso Johnny, a popular singer whose partners in a record company are being bullied by a jukebox owner gangster. Hmm. About the same time this film was made, Frank Tashlin directed "The Girl can't Help It", a story about a gangster strong-arming a musician to make his girlfriend a star. Another coincidence is the appearance of the great Treniers in both films. Joel Grey is very good in this film. It's also a treat to see a young Alan Arkin and his group The Tarriers perform the original "Banana Boat Song" which he wrote. it would make a fun compilation to show these films back to back.

The plot is representative of what often times happens in the music and film world. Who is who contacts, sponsors who can drop money into a record label or film production can frequently try to overtake the direction. The story is about the struggle to do what you believe in.What I found most interesting was the selection of music. Finding Maya Angelou singing and dancing was quite a treat. This was her first film, I prefer her as a poet. Also The Treniers a long forgotten 50's rock/blues/jazz group and the Hi Los/s with theirbeautiful harmonizing voices. The dance numbers focused on calypso of course, but cheesy… All in all a C movie but by watching it I was able to revive a connection to the music of the 50's era.

Another Sam Katzman Special which somehow manages to work. A mobbed-up jukebox operator goes into the song production business and turns out to have a knack for finding talent.A large part of the movie's success is due to the effective and subtle camera work of Benjamin Kline, a man who worked as cinematographer for fifty years, for talents as diverse as Tom Mix and the Three Stooges. In this one he gives you a lot of long, leisurely takes with a slowly moving camera during the story scenes and then switches tempo effectively for the musical numbers.A kind word should also be reserved for director Fred Sears, who averaged five movies a year and had a busy acting career going -- and died in his mid-forties the year he made this. The decent performances he gets out of poor actors indicates, as few others of his cheapjack movies do, that had he lived longer, he might have turned into a very good director.There's also a chance to play 'spot the talent'. Try to find Joel Grey a decade before his Broadway breakout in CABARET and even Maya Angelou. It's amazing the talent that Katzman could pick up on the cheap -- even when he couldn't think of what to do with it.