The Swing Book

by Degen Pener

  Also in 1993, two more dance-oriented and increasingly popular bands, the Bill Elliott Orchestra and the Eddie Reed Big Band, played their first gigs in the Los Angeles area. Influenced little by rock, both musicians had consciously modeled their groups after big band leader Artie Shaw’s more traditional swing orchestra of the late 1930s. Elliott soon began performing regularly for swing dances at Erin Stevens’s Pasadena Ballroom Dance Association. Dancing also began to take off in San Francisco around this time; the local Lindy group Work That Skirt came together in 1994. And dancers began to meet up with musicians in even more out-of-the-way places like Ventura, California. Terri and Lee Moore (who had learned swing dancing at the Pasadena Ballroom), of the now world-renowned aerials troupe the Flyin’ Lindy Hoppers, moved to Ventura in 1994 and heard some jumping swing music in a small local club called Nicholby’s. “Here was Big Bad Voodoo Daddy on this stage and everyone was sitting and watching. No one was dancing and they were like ‘This is freakin’ wrong,’” says Terri’s twin sister, Flyin’ Lindy Hopper Tammy Finocchiaro. “They came out and Lee just pointed at me,” says BBVD’s Scotty Morris. “They lit the house on fire and we were like, Where did you learn that? We had never seen swing dancers before.”

  The scene had now fully formed, with the style, music, and dance all together. But even by then, it was still relatively underground. “For the first four or five years, it was only San Francisco and Los Angeles. Both cities had a ton of bands and we’d just send them back and forth,” says Michael Moss. The original scene at the Deluxe had been thirty or forty people. Each time the crowds grew, from two hundred people to six hundred people to more than a thousand, the pioneers of the swing revival would end up slack-jawed at its rising popularity. At the Derby, where Big Bad Voodoo Daddy eventually took over the Wednesday slot from Royal Crown Revue, lines soon snaked around the block. “There was a line starting at 7:00 P.M. and it was there until one in the morning,” says BBVD’s Glen Marhevka. “People would order pizza in line and have it delivered.” The more swing grew, the more wonderfully unbelievable it was to the people at its core. But even this popularity turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. Swing was about to be discovered nationally and picked up by the media. It would never be the same.

  NATIONAL SUCCESS

  The mainstream swing snowball—fueled also by the popularity of the revived cocktail culture—began rolling with the release of the Jim Carrey movie The Mask in 1994. Featuring a zoot-suited Carrey dancing with Cameron Diaz to the Royal Crown Revue’s “Hey Pachuco!” at a forties-style nightclub, the movie was the first to demonstrate neoswing’s crossover appeal. Soon newspaper and magazine stories began to cover the phenomenon, usually taking an incredulous approach to the fact that swing had returned and treating it like just the latest pop culture novelty trend. Some fad. In 1996 the hot indie film Swingers premiered, starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. It featured Big Bad Voodoo Daddy performing their original song “You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight (Baby),” a snazzy collection of retro clothes, and some scenes of spot-on dancing. A year later the Squirrel Nut Zippers—a band that’s been lumped in with the swing revival though their sound is more of a twenties hot jazz vibe—saw their 1996 single “Hell” become a hit on alternative rock stations, a surprising development that was credited with opening the radio waves to even more retro music. Benefiting from that entrée in 1998 were “Jump, Jive, an’ Wail”—a cover of Louis Prima’s classic by the Brian Setzer Orchestra (which the former Stray Cat had put together in Los Angeles in 1993)—and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ original song “Zoot Suit Riot.” Both singles not only became huge radio hits, but also had videos in heavy rotation on MTV. “This is the most awesome thing I’ve ever been in front of,” said Setzer at the time. In particular, Setzer’s video, which featured such hard-core dancers as LA’s Sylvia Sky-lar and San Francisco’s Cari Seiss, slickly captured the style, dancing, and music of the scene all in three minutes. Ska bands, who with their emphasis on horns were another early influence on the revival, now started morphing into swing bands. “Kids that drove Vespas and wore porkpie hats are now putting on zoot suits and playing Benny Goodman,” says Jay Siegan, a manager of such swing bands as the New Morty Show and Blue Plate Special. Venues like the Lawrence Welk Resort Center in Branson, Missouri, started jumping on the swing bandwagon, promoting their forties-revue shows as part of the new craze. Vintage prices went through the roof. Pretty soon Setzer’s third album, The Dirty Boogie, had sold two million copies, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (even without a radio hit) and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies each sold a million records. Within the course of six months, swing, the music that people started doing again simply because they loved it, was big business. “It was an impossible dream. Who would ever have thought that a band could make money playing swing music on MTV? No way. Forget about it,” says Michael Moss.

  * * *

  Ten years of Swing: A Timeline

  1989

  Royal Crown Revue, the pioneer band of neoswing, forms in Los Angeles

  The Club Deluxe, ground zero for the retro scene in San Francisco, opens

  Midsummer Night Swing, a month of outdoor dance nights, debuts at Lincoln Center in New York

  When Harry Met Sally, with its Harry Connick Jr. soundtrack, is released

  1990

  Five Guys Named Moe, the musical based on the life and music of Louis Jordan, has its world premiere in London’s West End. The show plays 445 hit performances in New York when it opens there two years later

  1991

  Café du Nord opens in San Francisco, becoming the weekly home of singer Lavay Smith

  Royal Crown Revue plays its first shows in SF at warehouse speakeasy parties, then at the Deluxe

  Big Bad Voodoo Daddy forms in Ventura, California

  Nathalie Cole releases “Unforgettable,” her “duet” with her father, Nat

  1992

  Spike Lee’s Malcolm X premieres, boasting some of the best swing dance scenes on film. No wonder: Savoy originals Norma Miller and Frankie Manning assisted with the choreography

  Debbie Allen’s Stompin’ at the Savoy TV movie debuts

  St. Vitus Dance, early neoswing band formed by Vise Grip, plays its first live show at the Deluxe

  * * *

  And then there was that Gap commercial, the eight-hundred-pound gorilla that finally propelled swing into the stratosphere. Featuring Louis Prima’s original “Jump, Jive, an’ Wail” and a new stop-motion cinematography that brought the Lindy’s aerials into breathtaking relief, the Gap’s “Khakis Swing” commercial was as much a hit as any song when it premiered in April of 1998. After the ad was taken off the air three months later, customers screamed for more. “You can’t believe the responses we got. We got letters and calls saying, ‘Why did you take it off so soon? I’ve only seen it three times and I love that ad.’ The public wasn’t ready to give it up yet. So we put it back on the air,” the Gap’s Michael McCadden told Entertainment Weekly. And despite the fact that it used hardly a single real Lindy dancer (the dancers in the ad were almost all models) and it promoted khakis (a plain, unisex look that was in fact antithetical to the dressed-up atmosphere of the swing movement), it brought droves of eager novices into dance studios, wanting to have as much fun as the people in the ad seemed to be having. “The ad put it over the top,” says Diane Lachtrupp, co-owner of New York’s Stepping Out, which like every dance studio around the country was soon scrambling to keep up with the demand for classes. Just as in the thirties, jazz had once again gone mainstream under the label swing. No one in the movement was going to be singing the blues.

  * * *

  1993

  The Derby, LA’s first all-swing nightclub, opens in the soon-to-revive Los Feliz neighborhood

  Also in Los Angeles, Brian Setzer, Bill Elliott, and Eddie Reed all play their first big band gigs

  It’s official. Lounge music is back: Frank Sinatra’s chart-topping Duets is released

>   The movie Swing Kids, about jitterbug fans in Germany just before the war, premieres. While not a hit, it’s credited for giving juice to the dance scene

  1994

  Decked out in zoot suits, Jim Carrey hams it up and Royal Crown Revue plays it up in The Mask

  MTV produces “Tony Bennett Unplugged”

  On November 18 the great Cab Calloway dies

  1995

  Swing Time magazine, the first magazine dedicated to the swing scene, is published

  The Hi-Ball Lounge, San Francisco’s first all-swing nightclub, opens in the space once occupied by the legendary Jazz Workshop

  1996

  Jon Favreau’s Swingers puts the swing scene on the map, showcasing Big Bad Voodoo Daddy playing at the Derby

  Slimstyle, the first swing independent record label, sets up shop in Tucson

  1997

  The Squirrel Nut Zippers’ “Hell” becomes a radio hit. While the sound is more twenties hot jazz than swing, the success of the song creates an opening for other retro-style tunes

  * * *

  POST BLOW-UP SWING

  Or so it seemed. While the success of swing in 1998 was unexpectedly huge, the growth was just as unexpectedly double-edged. The expectations put on what was still in many ways a grassroots scene ratcheted up about 1,000 percent. “Everybody got big dollar signs in their eyes,” says Moss. Club owners who weren’t part of the scene rushed to start swing nights, often not realizing that most dancers don’t drink much except water. When some of these events inevitably folded, the word started spreading, truthfully or not, that the swing fad had peaked. You know the old saying that they like to build you up just to tear you down? Many swingers felt that the media was doing just that in early 1999. What it had trumpeted only six to twelve months before was already being written off as just another trend. Time and the New York Times both predicted that the clock was running out on the revival. There’s even been a Sprite ad slamming swing as a passing fad.

  The truth isn’t anywhere near so bleak, though the swing scene has been experiencing its fair share of growing pains as it matures. While the new rock-oriented bands were what sparked the revival, in the past couple of years the dancing has come to really dominate the movement. In turn, as the Lindy Hoppers become more experienced, they’ve been gravitating toward bands that play more dancer-friendly midtempo songs. “I definitely was affected and influenced by what dancers were interested in and looking for,” says bandleader Bill Elliott. “On our first CD everything is fast and slow. By the time of our second I was including several midtempo numbers.” Adds Eddie Reed, “I do songs that are tailor-made for Lindy Hop.” But while the newer fave bands, such as Indigo Swing, Seattle’s Casey MacGill, Elliott, and Reed, favor a more traditional sound over rock influences, that makes them less likely to cross over to MTV. The classic big bands are as much an inspiration to them as jump blues. Reed’s band replicates the Artie Shaw Orchestra of the late thirties. Elliott cites Tommy Dorsey as an inspiration. According to Chris Siebert of Lavay Smith’s band, audiences are getting more sophisticated and are starting to appreciate the more complex but equally thrilling arrangements of the big band era. “They’ve had a little taste of it and they get hungry and they want to find out more,” he says. Others in the scene, however, worry that without the rock element, neoswing is losing its edge. Says Swing Time’s Moss, “This breakthrough in modern pop music doesn’t really have to do with Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman.”

  * * *

  1998

  It’s the year of “Jump, Jive, an’ Wail” as the Gap ad revives Louis Prima’s original cut, and Brian Setzer’s cover debuts accompanied by a killer-diller video

  The legend passes on. Frank Sinatra dies at age eighty-two

  Swing sells: Fans snap up 2 million copies of Setzer’s Dirty Boogie album, while Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies each surpass 1 million in sales

  1999

  The hundredth anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth shines the spotlight on one of the greatest composers of all time

  Big Bad Voodoo Daddy plays the Super Bowl

  The Grammys reward the Brian Setzer Orchestra

  Lindy innovator Frankie Manning’s eighty-fifth birthday is celebrated with coast-to-coast parties

  * * *

  No matter what style of music they play, all of the bands still encounter some friction with the dancers, and vice versa. “We joke about it because the dancers and the bands are really like people in a dysfunctional marriage,” says Elliott. “Each needs the other but can’t really get from the other what it wants. What the dancers want from the bands is exactly the tempos that they want to dance to all night long. But each dancer has a different idea of what that is. What the bands want from the dancers that they don’t get enough of is applause and admiration and appreciation.” Conflict has also arisen among the dancers themselves. In the last few years, a different type of Lindy Hop—dubbed Hollywood style by its popularizers, LA dance teachers Sylvia Skylar and Erik Robison—has been revived. A smoother way of swing dancing, it’s best seen in such movies as Buck Privates and the hard-to-find short Groovy Movie. Savoy-style aficionados and Hollywood fans don’t always get along. When the new revival first started in Los Angeles, “they would throw salvos at each other,” says Santa Barbara teacher Sylvia Sykes.

  Despite these occasional lapses of perspective, the swing scene is in fact opening up to more influences than ever before. Neoswingers are embracing rockabilly again. Some bands are trying to hybridize rap and swing (such as the Yalloppin’ Hounds) and soul and swing (such as Vargas Swing). Realizing that back in the day, people would dance waltzes, tangos, cha-chas, and foxtrots as well as swing all in one night, Lindy Hoppers are starting to add everything from hip-hop to salsa to their repertoire. Swing and the jazz community, completely estranged during most of the revival, have begun to find common cause also (see page 157 in chapter 5).

  In 1999 swing continued to hit new peaks. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy performed at the Super Bowl. In February Brian Setzer won two Grammy’s and the New York Times announced, “Over half a century since its heyday, swing is officially pop music again.” Bill Elliott and George Gee have revived the tradition of the great battles of the bands, playing an enormous July 4, 1999, weekend show at the historic Hollywood Palladium. Instead of relying on club owners, dancers are starting to create and run their own events, such as the swing nights at LA’s Satin Ballroom, where more than a thousand Lindy Hoppers crowd the hall’s enormous floor once a month. Everywhere you look there are new swing magazines—such as Atomic and Modern Lounge—and movies, including Swing, with Lisa Stansfield, and an in-the-works HBO biopic of Frankie Manning. Lincoln Center’s month-long Midsummer Night’s Swing concert program draws thousands of dancing couples every night. Colleges across the country now boast swing clubs. And new bands are forming all the time. “I get ten to twenty demos a week,” says Tammi Gower of the Derby. Keeping it all together is a hopping Internet community, made up of hundreds of swing Web sites, through which fans of the music and dance keep in touch.

  Many people are relieved that swing may no longer be the fad of the moment. To those people who are passionately attached to the music, dance, and style of the swing era, it feels like it’s theirs once again, not the province of the latest marketing hype. Swing’s grass roots are as strong as ever.

  TEN REASONS SWING CAME BACK

  There are as many theories about why swing has returned as there are moves you can do on the dance floor. Some feel the swing movement is a backlash against the musical styles and social mores (or lack thereof) that have emerged over the past several decades. Others believe the renaissance of swing is simply the next logical progression in the nostalgia cycle, in which everything old is repackaged for a new, younger audience. Here, in no particular order, are a few theories (besides the fact that swing’s just great) that swingers themselves have put forth about why swing came back:

  1. Safe Sex. Swi
ng provides a way of enjoying physical intimacy without the dangers of sex. “I think of partner dancing as safe sex,” says bandleader Bill Elliott. “You can very closely correlate the rise and fall of couples dancing sort of opposite the sexual revolution. In the sixties and seventies, it was fine for people to be dancing ten feet apart if they were going to go to bed an hour later. In the nineties, when there’s much more sexual reticence and carefulness, it plays a part in courtship.” (Interestingly, the word swing has made a corresponding journey. It began as a purely dance and music term, later became a reference to casual sex, and is now reverting to its original, more innocent meaning.)

  2. Respect for Our Elders. Swing’s fans are young and old— from teenagers just learning how to Lindy Hop to their grandparents, who danced to Basie and Goodman. What a contrast to the musical landscape of the nineties, where the latest nineteen-year-old pop sensation comes and goes in a flash. Swing music, on the other hand, brings generations together. Its newest fans are giving long-overdue recognition to the creators of our musical heritage who are still with us, such names as Frankie Manning, Anita O’Day, Keely Smith, Sam Butera, Lionel Hampton, and Illinois Jacquet. The younger generation recognizes that these “old-timers” have something invaluable to teach us, and the elders are eager to share their passion for the music and dance that has kept them young at heart.