~ ALASKA SWING DANCE ~

WELCOME TO ~ NELLEE’S LINDY HOP SHOP

SWING HISTORY

CHAPTER 14

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

“EVEN MORE OFTHE REBIRTH OF SWING”!!!! !!

NEO SWING TAKES SAN FRANCISCO!!!

WHAT THE ROYAL CROWN REVUE HAPPENED UPON IN THE BAY AREA WAS A NEW AND WILDLY ENTHUSIASTIC RETRO SCENE – IN THE MOST SURPRISING PLACE. Housed in a one-time gay bar near the corner of Haight and Ashbury, the Club Deluxe opened in 1989, the same year that RCR came together. The art deco-style bar had a cast of charcters right out of an old-time variety show. Vise Grip was the doorman. Lounge acts performed, like Mr. Lucky who played disco versions of songs like “The Girl From Ipanema, “ and Connie Champagne and Her Tiny Bubbles (she does a great Judy Garland impersonation) sang there regularly. It was like walking into a time warp!

CONNIE CHAMPAGNE

On the club’s tiny stage, in front of its even tinier dance floor, a small group of jazz musicians played standards on open mike Sundays. Vise Grip used to sit in with the bands, and in 1991 he started his own swing band, called St. Vitus Dance and featured Cab Calloway songs. In 1991 Lavay Smith became a regular performer at the Café du Nord.

LAVAY SMITH, AND HER RED HOT SKILLET LICKERS

The historic Bimbo’s 365, a grand art deco nightclub from the thirties that had hosted swing greats like Prima, Ellington, and buddy Rich, reopened and started holding semi-regular swing nights. A series of after-hours garage parties, modeled after speakeasies, had matchbook invitations, and would start at midnight and go until about 7 a.m. There wasn’t a division between swing and rockabilly, it was all one big crowd.

The Marque

The main show room and dance floor

From the start, clothing was almost as important as the music. The Bay area went mad for retro duds. Forties straight-skirt dresses, double-breasted pinstripe suits, fedoras, and wide ties, showed up along with fifties rockabilly jeans and ducktails and sixties sharkskin jackets. People would show up in real vintage clothes. As the edges of modern fashion swung more extreme – to multiple piercings and tattoos – wearing a swing-era outfit was a way of being surprisingly different. It wasn’t defined, the retro style was as much a forties thing as a fifties rockabilly thing as a sixties lounge thing.

Hey! Zoot Suits – Gotta Luv ‘Em

Royal Crown Review’s first shows in San Francisco galvanized, electrified, and inspired the Deluxe crowd. That was when the neo-swing culture started. Suddenly there was a band that fit the scene perfectly. Overnight, San Francisco became the epicenter of the swing revival, eventually becoming the city with the best vintage stores, the “Swing Time” paper, and the music.

All the pieces of the revival were in place, except – the dancing.

NEXT TIME:

 “EVEN MORE OF THE REBIRTH OF SWING”: 

NEO SWING DANCERS BEGIN THE BEGUINE AGAIN!!

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