I'd been waiting a while now for this one to come around on TCM and the other night I was rewarded for my patience. This film is the middle entry of three movies by black singing cowboy Herb Jeffries (billed here as Herbert Jeffrey), in which he portrays the character Bob Blake. In terms of plot, it's virtually identical to "Two Gun Man From Harlem", in that it involves Blake and his partners going up against a villain who wants to swindle a woman and her brother out of their ranch land. In both stories the baddie had the siblings' father killed.
A humorous gimmick runs throughout the story whereby Blake's main sidekick Dusty (Lucius Brooks) gets hoodwinked by ventriloquist Slim (F.E. Miller) into buying a twelve dollar mule. Dusty's luck runs about the same the rest of the way, at one point he literally loses his shirt, and it looked like everything else, to a crooked card sharp. The ventriloquism gag comes into play one more time in the film's finale, resulting in an abrupt but successful shootout between the good guys and the bad guys.
There's an interesting scene early in the story when Blake and his pals enter a saloon full of black cowboys and it sounds like the entire assemblage breaks into song. However if you watch any of the cowhands as the camera pans the tables, you won't see any of them singing. I would imagine the chores were handled by the credited Four Tones who side-kicked Blake in the film, along with unseen back-ups off screen. At least it sure sounded to me like a hall full of singers!
If your approach to these pictures is one in which expectations run high for a thrilling shoot 'em up, one is bound to be disappointed. The novelty here is in watching an all black cast Western led by the versatile Herb Jeffries, a crooner that could have held his own with the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Eddie Dean. In fact, Jeffries' talent was such that he chose to pass on a few more planned pictures after completing "Harlem Rides the Range", he signed up with the Duke Ellington Band shortly after.
One final thought occurred to me as I took a look at my reviews of the other two Jeffries' films I mentioned. It turns out in "Two Gun Man From Harlem", his character Bob Blake wore only one gun! But here he's wearing two, so it seems to me they could have reversed the titles and they would have been all set!
A humorous gimmick runs throughout the story whereby Blake's main sidekick Dusty (Lucius Brooks) gets hoodwinked by ventriloquist Slim (F.E. Miller) into buying a twelve dollar mule. Dusty's luck runs about the same the rest of the way, at one point he literally loses his shirt, and it looked like everything else, to a crooked card sharp. The ventriloquism gag comes into play one more time in the film's finale, resulting in an abrupt but successful shootout between the good guys and the bad guys.
There's an interesting scene early in the story when Blake and his pals enter a saloon full of black cowboys and it sounds like the entire assemblage breaks into song. However if you watch any of the cowhands as the camera pans the tables, you won't see any of them singing. I would imagine the chores were handled by the credited Four Tones who side-kicked Blake in the film, along with unseen back-ups off screen. At least it sure sounded to me like a hall full of singers!
If your approach to these pictures is one in which expectations run high for a thrilling shoot 'em up, one is bound to be disappointed. The novelty here is in watching an all black cast Western led by the versatile Herb Jeffries, a crooner that could have held his own with the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Eddie Dean. In fact, Jeffries' talent was such that he chose to pass on a few more planned pictures after completing "Harlem Rides the Range", he signed up with the Duke Ellington Band shortly after.
One final thought occurred to me as I took a look at my reviews of the other two Jeffries' films I mentioned. It turns out in "Two Gun Man From Harlem", his character Bob Blake wore only one gun! But here he's wearing two, so it seems to me they could have reversed the titles and they would have been all set!