by Degen Pener
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Swing and the Jazz Community
Back in the days of the original big bands, swing and jazz were one and the same. Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman: all are considered jazz greats, and all are revered among swing lovers. But the renaissance of swing in the early 1990s witnessed a rift with the modern jazz community. In part this was because many neoswing performers, such as Brian Setzer, Scotty Morris of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ frontman Steve Perry, came from a punk or rock ’n’ roll background rather than a jazz upbringing. “The swing scene kind of came about without some of us in jazz knowing about it,” says Rob Gibson, executive director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. Many jazz musicians simply had a hard time taking the new swing kids seriously.
Fortunately, in the past few years, members of both communities have made attempts to reach out to one another, learn from each other, and help the new swing movement to grow. Bands like Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are attempting to woo traditional jazz audiences with appearances at major jazz festivals and are seeking the advice of musicians from the old school. Royal Crown Revue traveled to Las Vegas to meet sax great Sam Butera, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy played with Tex Beneke, and Lavay Smith has performed with R&B great Ruth Brown. On the other hand, when Chris Calloway, Cab’s daughter, was looking to start her own swing band she called a neoswinger who is Lavay’s arranger and pianist, Chris Siebert, for advice. “I said, ‘Could you fill me in on the scene, what’s happening, and who are the acts,’” says Calloway, who recently formed the Hi-De-Ho Orchestra, as a tribute to both her father and her aunt Blanche Calloway, who had her own band before Cab did.
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7. The Eddie Reed Big Band, Hollywood Jump (Royal Big Mac Records): Following the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the Eddie Reed Big Band brings new life to traditional arrangements from the likes of Krupa, Basie, and Ellington. Reed and his crew exhibit some of the highest-quality musicianship out there and treat these classics with great respect, playing the album’s twelve tunes with sincerity, vivacity, and passion.
8. Jet Set Six, Livin’ It Up (Mutiny Records): Straddling the line between swing and lounge, the debut CD from Jet Set Six would be a welcome addition at any party. The eleven songs, most of which were written by singer John Ceparano, reveal influences of R&B, jump blues, rockabilly, and a hefty dose of Sinatra. With catchy lyrics and clever wordplays, this New York combo has rocketed to the top ranks of the new swing movement.
9. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Coolsville Records): BBVD’s hopped-up neoswing emphasizes full-bodied horns and slick piano licks, but it’s Scotty Morris’s whiskey-tinged voice that gives this band their edge. Their self-titled major label debut features eleven kickin’ originals, like “You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight (Baby)” and the rollicking “Jump with My Baby,” as well as a richly done cover of “Minnie the Moocher” that would make Cab proud.
10. Swingerhead, She Could Be a Spy (Colossal Music and Film): Think James Bond crossed with Wayne Newton and wearing a leopard-print dinner jacket and you’ve got Swingerhead frontman Michael Andrew. On the band’s debut release, Andrew croons his way through a selection of campy originals, including the loungy “Lady with the Big Cigar,” the Latin-tinged “He Just Wants to Cha Cha,” plus a couple numbers that really swing, most notably “Pick Up the Phone.”
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Indeed, today’s swingers are beginning to realize that if they love George Gee and Bill Elliott, they’ll also enjoy the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra’s homages to Duke Ellington or music by such traditionalist bandleaders as Loren Schoenberg and Ken Peplowski. If you’ve gone out to dance and fallen for Lavay Smith’s singing, you might also want to check out jazz star Diana Krall’s All for You, a tribute to the Nat King Cole Trio, or diva-on-the-rise Elena Bennett’s collection of standards, A Wrinkle in Swingtime. And don’t forget to support the best ghost bands, which carry on the names and traditions of such deceased legends as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Tommy Dorsey.
Countless other musicians, young and old, are now working together to make the new swing movement every bit as dynamic and exciting as it was in its heyday. Swing “has emotion. It has depth. It has pain. It has joy,” says jazz singer Ann Hampton Callaway, whose albums include the fabulous To Ella with Love. “It’s not just fun, it’s fun and magnificent.”
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Ten More Survey Faves: Johnny Favourite Swing Orchestra, Holiday Romance; George Gee and His Make-Believe Ballroom Orchestra, Swingin’ Live; The Big Six, We the Boys Will Rock You; Jellyroll, Hep Cats Holiday; The Blue Saracens, What’s a Saracen?; Blues Jumpers, Wheels Start Turning; The Lost Continentals, Moonshine and Martinis; The Brian Setzer Orchestra, The Dirty Boogie; Big Time Operator, High Altitude Swing; Mora’s Modern Rhythmists, Mr. Rhythmist Goes to Town; The Jive Aces, Planet Jive.
THE BEST COMPILATIONS
The Hi-Ball Lounge Sessions, Vol. 1 (Hi-Ball): San Francisco’s top bands, including Steve Lucky, ACME Swing Company, Lavay Smith, and Lee Press-on and the Nails, all recorded live at the city’s famous Hi-Ball nightclub.
Hipsters, Zoots and Wingtips: The ’90s Swingers (Hip-O/ Universal): With everything from Royal Crown Revue’s “Hey Pachuco!” to Diana Krall’s “Hit That Jive Jack” to Bill Elliott’s “Bill’s Bounce,” this CD is a wonderfully varied mix.
House of Blues Swing (House of Blues): From Saint Louis’s Vargas Swing to England’s Jive Aces, with a little bit of Western swing thrown in, courtesy of Big Sandy and His Fly Rite Boys’ “Feelin’ Kinda Lucky.”
New York City Swing (Lo-Fi Records): The best of the Big Apple, including Set ’Em Up Joe, Ron Sunshine and Full Swing, the Crescent City Maulers, Jet Set Six, and the Camaros.
Swing This, Baby! (Slimstyle/Beyond): Swing Time magazine picks the best cuts by such bands as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Bellevue Cadillac, and Swingerhead.
SWINGIN’ SOUNDTRACKS
Cotton Club (Geffen): Film composer John Barry successfully adapts Ellington and Calloway standards. Plus, star Gregory Hines sings one tune, “Copper Colored Gal.”
Malcolm X (Warner Bros.): Where else can you hear Arrested Development, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Jordan, John Coltrane, and Lionel Hampton all in one place?
The Mask (Sony Music): An outlandish potpourri of contempo cuts (Vanessa Williams), neoswing (Royal Crown Revue’s “Hey Pachuco!”), and jivin’ covers (Cab Calloway’s “Hi-De-Ho”), plus snippets of Jim Carrey dialogue.
Swing (RCA Victor): Lisa Stansfield was born to do a swing album. This wonderful accompaniment to the 1999 indie film Swing boasts Springsteen sax great Clarence Clemons, a sultry “Baby I Need Your Lovin’,” and four original tunes by Stansfield.
Swing Kids (Hollywood Records): A lively mix of traditional swing, featuring James Homer’s score and some choice Benny Goodman numbers.
Swingers (Hollywood Records): The soundtrack that launched Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is also a great tribute to such lounge kings as Dean Martin and Bobby Darin.
Cab Calloway in full regalia on the set of the film Stormy Weather. (CULVER PICTURES)
CHAPTER 6
From the Andrews Sisters to Zoot Suits: The Guy’ and Dolls’ to Guide to Retro Style
Ok, so you know how to get down with some gritty moves on the dance floor. You’re already keepin’ time with the Duke, the Count, and the King of Swing. Now you’re ready to fly out to the hottest nightspot in town, right? Wrong. To make the scene it’s always fun to look the part too. “You really live the fantasy when you dress up,” says Annamarie Firley co-designer of Revamp, a reproduction clothing collection. “You can feel you’ve just walked into the past.”
Putting on a vintage look—whether authentic or reproduction—may feel a bit like Halloween at first. But remember, what makes the clothes of the thirties and forties so knockout is that they were costumelike even ba
ck then. Just think about Cab Calloway at his mightiest and most righteous. His zoot suit jacket hung below his knees, his chain dropped even farther than that, his hat was like a small spaceship, and his bow tie jutted out like whiskers. And while Calloway represented the extreme, men’s clothing, especially by the late forties, was designed to make a guy look bold and larger than life. Shoulders soared up and out. Lapels were at their widest. The drape of a jacket tapered down to the hips. The whole build was exaggerated. And hats increased a gent’s height. These are clothes to be worn with confidence, even to swagger in. But don’t get too cocky. These duds weren’t rudely hypermasculine. They required polish and sophistication, forethought and savoir faire to wear correctly. You needed to know how to knot a tie just right and how to fold a handkerchief with flair. You had to be able to choose and coordinate hats, handkerchiefs, ties, tie clips, shirts, cuff links, suits, and shoes, all of which came in a startling array of styles and colors. Dressed to the nines, men could really be cool cats.
Gals were bolder too, but in a different way Just think of the feminine extreme—Joan Crawford. A dancer herself, Crawford had a look that defined the era. It wasn’t all about man-pleasing curves. In her big-shouldered suits, Crawford was sharply defined and unequivocally imposing. With straight, more defined lines, clothing began to markedly reflect the increasing independence of women, who by the time of World War II were going to work in unprecedented numbers. These were sensibly sexy outfits that both looked great and commandeered respect. A new athleticism came to the fore also. Those freer clothes included both bobby socks and the knee-length skirt, which was neither so long as to be restrictive nor so short as to leave nothing to the imagination. Although some critics have called the forties look a bit plain, women at the time certainly didn’t skimp on dressing up their outfits with a panoply of sexy accessories, from flowers or bows in their amazingly curled hair to gloves, seamed stockings, and scads of jewelry. But even if you admit these clothes are a touch on the plain side, perhaps for women at the time it was a bit of a relief. After all, this was one of the very few periods in fashion history when gents were expected to be peacocks too.
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The War’s Effect on Fashion
During the war, everyone was expected to do his or her part, and that included cutting back on the use of fabric. Silk was needed for parachutes, and wool for uniforms. In March 1942, the U.S. war production board announced limitation order L-85, with the goal of reducing domestic fabric consumption by at least 15 percent. The use of natural fibers was decreased, leading to a high demand for synthetics like rayon and viscose. Women’s heels were required not to be more than one and a half inches in height, while the three-piece suit became the two-piece suit, without cuffs on the trousers. To meet the fabric restrictions, skirts became straight, jackets shorter. Stockings were often hard to find at all. “When nylons were rationed, [women] would take eyeliner and draw a line up the back of the leg to draw the seam in,” says swing musician Carmen Getit. “My mother still has a bottle of leg makeup. It’s foundation for your legs in a matte color that women would put on. It actually did look like you had stockings on.”
But in addition to specific mandates, the board made pronouncements against innovation in fashion, hoping to slow the pace of change in the style world so that clothes didn’t go out of vogue quickly. This partly explains why the look of the forties seems so distinct today; the fashion stayed nearly frozen. With new clothes hard to come by, people made do by constantly reworking old pieces, often adding different details and stitching. “A lot of the clothes from the war era are so obviously worked and reworked and refit. If I turn a garment inside out, I can tell how many times it’s been remade,” says costume designer Harper Della-Piana. Inevitably, however, once the war was over, a reaction occurred. “People went nuts. They could suddenly use as much fabric as they wanted and clothes went completely overboard,” says Revamp’s Firley In 1947 Christian Dior’s “New Look” revolutionized the fashion world, ushering in bigger skirts, softer romantic looks, and an hourglass figure. By the beginning of the fifties, the straight skirts had fallen by the wayside, replaced by voluminous circle skirts. “A circle skirt can take up to five yards of fabric,” adds Firley. Goodbye Rosie the Riveter. Hello Jayne Mansfield.
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And preen they did. Swing’s best-known bandleaders were notoriously concerned about looking their best. Tuxes and white tails were often the preferred outfits. Stories abound of careless sidemen being called on the carpet—or even being kicked out of a band—for showing up with a stain on a shirt or a pair of shoes in need of a shine. The suavely elegant Duke Ellington was noted for putting on a different pair of shoes for each set of the evening. Wearing the latest style was so important that legendary trumpeter Roy Eldridge would buy himself a new suit every two weeks during the time he played at the Savoy. “You had to be band-box perfect,” says Frances Lynne, a singer who performed with both Gene Krupa and Charlie Barnet. “Every band I was with was glamorous.” Or as Bing Crosby warned in his hit duet with Louis Jordan: “Tain’t no use son, cause your sox don’t match.”
Of course, you don’t need to dress up to enjoy the music and the dancing. But after slumming all day at work on casual Fridays, it can be a thrill to pull out all the stops when you hit the town on the weekend. Men and women are once again enjoying getting togged to the bricks—an expression for wearing your fanciest clothes. “I just love being able to dress up to the nines and go out. There are just no other excuses to do that anymore,” says style aficionado Harper Della-Piana, key costumer for ABC’s Spin City. And if you don’t want to do it for yourself, remember that your clothes are just as important as your dancing in making your partner look good. (Besides, many clubs have dress codes that prohibit T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers; some require jackets as well.)
Don’t forget one other thing: these clothes have come back for a reason. “Period stuff is so much better made. The fabrics were really wonderful and a lot of them just are not made anymore. You can’t find rayon like that anymore,” says Della-Piana. “That’s why everybody in the swing crowd loves the older clothes.” But are the fashions of the swing era really so retro after all? Today they seem more timeless than ever. “You don’t put on a great-looking suit of that era and look back at pictures of yourself and go, ‘Oh man, what was I thinking?” says Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s Scotty Morris. Adds Leslie Rosenberg, editor of the swingzine Atomic: “It’s not about what’s hip, it’s about what endures.”
THE REAL DEAL: TIPS ON SHOPPING
1. Run out to the nearest vintage store and start your education on what’s authentic retro clothing and what’s not. A “Union Made” label is usually a good sign an item is old. Cuts, styles, and stitching were different back then compared with today. To find out how to pick out clothes from particular decades, quiz the store’s owners, who are usually experts on the subject. Keep an eagle eye out for dead-stock—a term for clothing from the period that’s been sitting in warehouses and has never been worn. Patronize the old mom-and-pop hat shop in the neighborhood. And make sure to hit vintage stores when traveling to out-of-the-way places. In the biggest cities, period clothes are nowhere near a bargain anymore. You can also check out on-line sites like eBay for clothing auctions. (A list of fashion Web sites, for buying both reproduction and vintage clothing, is included in the appendix.)
2. Do the movement test. You should make sure that clothes not only fit well (guys especially need to pay attention here—nothing looks worse than a poorly fitted suit) but also move well. You should try on the clothes and move around in them in the store. Do a turn and see if you can really work that skirt. Swing your arms in a big circle. “And then do a test kick,” says Leann Wright of San Francisco’s vintage boutique Guys and Dolls.
3. Be willing to stray into other decades. Many regulars in the swing scene will wear only forties clothing. A few are so strict, in fact, they’ve been unkindly branded “retro nazis.” “Some people w
ill look at a tag and see fifties and not buy it,” says Wright. Adds Meredith Trailor of San Francisco’s Martini Mercantile, “You could have the perfect vintage suit but be wearing reproduction shoes and people might be snobby about it.” But don’t let that bother you. Branching out into the twenties, the fifties, and even the sixties is not only more and more common, it’s a great challenge trying to mix and match. Bands like Alien Fashion Show and Jet Set Six prefer sixties sharkskin suits. Great Gatsby caps are more popular than ever. And fifties skirts—which are much more full than those of the forties—“are almost more fun to dance in,” says Wright. Adds singer Lavay Smith, “I just like bombshell clothes. I get things modeled after Jayne Mansfield’s dresses.”
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The Best Vintage Find Ever
It’s fashion kismet when you hit the right store at just the right time and make a dream discovery. A few style aficionados reminisce here about their all-time greatest hits, from oddball items to art pieces.
“I was in a store where they hadn’t realized what this coat really was. It didn’t have the designer label in it. It had a fancy ladies store label. But I figured out immediately that it was an Elsa Schiaparelli thirties full-length wool evening coat. It was from a collection she did that was based on Jean Cocteau. It has two beaded white doves on the front of it. I freaked out. It’s a museum piece. Every once in a while I look at it and go, ‘Oh my god, how did I find that?’ It’s luck.”
