Plot
Clean Pastures opens in Harlem, New York City, where African American caricatures gamble, drink, and dance in a sea of bars, clubs, and dancing girls. In Heaven, known as "Pair-O-Dice", a black Saint Peter reads the headline, "Pair-O-Dice Preferred Hits New Low As Hades Inc. Soars". The angel rings an angelic Stepin Fetchit with enormous lips—probably a reference to Oscar Polk's performance as Gabriel in The Green Pastures— and orders him to rectify the situation. Gabriel descends to Harlem and stands by a sign (modeled after James Montgomery Flagg's World War I Uncle Sam poster) that reads, "Pair O Dice Needs You! Opportunity, Travel, Good Food, Water Melon, Clean Living, Music, Talkies". Nevertheless, the denizens of Harlem continue with their iniquity.
Angels, caricatures of jazz performers Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, and Jimmie Lunceford, tell Saint Peter that to get people to paradise he will need "rhythm" (the short's credits list no voice actors, but a member of the all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds —possibly Leroy Hurt—provides the cartoon's celebrity impressions). The musicians go to Harlem and break into a performance of "Swing for Sale", and the Harlemites flock to listen. The film's climax takes on the characteristics of "a revivalist camp meeting" as the band makes its way to Pair-O-Dice, and people follow them in droves. The newcomers receive their halos, and in the cartoon's final gag, the Devil himself asks to be admitted.
Clean Pastures is a musical film, which means that it shifts between musical and non-musical sections, both of which are integral to the story. Carl Stalling's musical score makes use of both public-domain music and songs owned by Warner Bros. Stalling's music "supplies both the foundation for the story and the driving force behind the animation." Music is of such importance that characters in Clean Pastures dance about even when no performers are pictured. The all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds performs the backing vocals for these songs.
A choir of a capella, black male voices opens the cartoon with "Save Me, Sister, from Temptation", a song from the 1936 Warner Bros. film The Singing Kid featuring Al Jolson. Thus, Stalling establishes one of the cartoon's themes, that sinners may be redeemed, from the opening credits. As the scene shifts to Harlem, the jazz standards "Nagasaki" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" accompany the bevy of African American vices. Caricatures of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Al Jolson perform snippets of the blackface tunes "Old Folks at Home" and "I Love to Singa". However, the short's major number is "Swing for Sale", performed by caricatures of popular black jazz performers. The short ends with a jazzed-up version of James A. Bland's minstrel spiritual "Oh! Dem Golden Slippers".
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