SWING DANCE ~ LINDY HOP ~ HUSTLE ~ Alaska

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Archive 11

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(Text is adapted from “The Swing Book”):

“MORE OFTHE REBIRTH OF SWING”!!!! !!

A MUSICAL REDISCOVERY:  JUMP SWING KICKS OFF THE SWING REVIVAL!!!

THE ROYAL CROWN REVIEW HELPED REDISCOVER AND REVIVE SWING.  The founder of the Royal Crown Review, Eddie Nichols, began listening to the jump blues of Louis Prima in the mid 1980’s.  Nichols was a former punk rocker, and so were the other members of the band. “you couldn’t go out and buy the complete works of Louis Prima on Rhino back then,” remembers RCR guitarist, James Achor.  “I would buy 78s from this Goodwill for a nickel apiece.  I would buy them one hundred, two hundred at a time and I’d go home and listen to them.  It wasn’t like I went to the record store.  I had to get the shovel out and dig for it.  It was archaeology of all this American music.  For some reason it had been lost.  As a kid you didn’t hear about Louis Jordan or Louis Prima.”

   Louis Jordan (Hey, Caldonia!)       Louis Prima (He’s Just a Gigalo)

For early neo-swing musicians, raised solely on rock, it was as if they were hearing this music for the first time (Hey! They were!).  By the late 1980’s, Louis Prima (who, by the way, wrote “Sing, Sing, Sing” for Benny Goodman!) had almost been forgotten.  Many of the neo-swing musicians had been punk rockers – like Scotty Morris, the founder of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.  They were becoming disenchanted with the heavy metal guitar bands like Guns ‘n Roses and the developing grunge movement.  To their surprise, they found something in swing that spoke to their punk sensibilities.  “Here was this music and it rocks just as much, but with a little more refined energy,” said RCR trumpeter Scott Steen.  Another neo-swinger and former rockabilly performer, Eddie Reed, remembered being bowled over the first time he heard Artie Shaw: “I heard an 18 year old Buddy Rich slamming the drums at breakneck speed and shouting like some punk rocker in the background exhorting Artie Shaw into this pyrotechnic clarinet solo.”

BUDDY RICH X3 PICS AT ABOUT 18 TO 20 SOMETHING IN THE 1940’s

           ARTIE SHAW IN THE 1930’S            

ARTIE, LANA TURNER (GOWNED), & FRIEND

The music that really turned on the scene according to Steve Lucky (of Steve Lucky and The Rumba Bums), was “the really hard-swinging, gut-punching, jumping stuff.”  The wold showman Cab Calloway, the bluesy Count Basie, and of course, Prima and Jordan became the guiding inspirations of the new scene.  (Nellee says be sure to catch some Wynonie Harris too!!)  By contrast, at this point in the revival, the more traditional big band leaders, such as Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller, were not.  Instead, Jump Blues (aka Jump Swing) was the entry point. 

     Eddie Reed         

Steve Lucky & the Rumba Bums

       Eddie Nichols (RCR)

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