SWING DANCE ~ LINDY HOP ~ HUSTLE ~ Alaska

WELCOME TO ~NELLEE’S LINDY HOP SHOP ARCHIVES

CHAPTER 4

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

MORE OF “THE GLORY DAYS OF SWING”!!

More than just popular music, swing became an entire lifestyle.  In fact, it was the first real youth culture in America, the beginning of a series of musical uprising that would continue from rock in the 1950’s through grunge in the 1990’s and right into the future! The Swing Kids back then were listening to what they considered their music and theirs alone.  Swing had its own slang, popularized by Cab Calloway in his Hepster’s Dictionary, and its own styles of dress – from bobby-soxers to zoot-suiters!

ZOOT SUIT DANCERS ZOOT SUIT

 BOBBY SOXERS 1940S

 What really propelled swing, however, was jitterbugging, the new name the Lindy Hop acquired as it was danced by more and more white dancers.  Back in the 1930’s, the jitterbug could scare the establishment just as much as Elvis’s pelvis did two decades later (and boy did his hips set both the girls and their parents off – for very different reasons)! 

"Jitterbug dancers on the City Hall portico came to invite Mayor Fletcher Bowron to attend the International Jitterbug Championships and show at the Coliseum. Youthful swingers from 22 states and six foreign countries were to dance in the championships, which climaxed a three-day jitterbug convention at the Palomar."

-- Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 1939

Newspaper accounts used words like frenzy, pandemonium, and ecstasy to describe the swing phenomenon. One psychologist ominiously warned of the “dangerously hypnotic influence of swing, cunningly devised to a tempo faster than 72 bars to the minute – faster than the human pulse.”  In 1938, the swing era even had its own Woodstock, a swing jamboree in Chicago featuring Jimmy Dorsey and Earl Hines that drew 100,000 fans.  It was described by the Chicago Daily Times as “the most hysterical orgy of joyous emotions by multitudes ever witnessed on the American continent.”

For the dancers, there was an unparalleled connection being made between themselves and their favorite bands.  “Really, as a musician you did it as much for the dancing as you did for the music,” said Count Basie singer Joe Williams.  “All of that was together at one time, it was one great communication . . .” the dancers inspired the musicians and vice versa.”

Count Basie Orchestra 1940s                             Notice of Astounded looks!!!

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