~ ALASKA SWING DANCE ~

WELCOME TO ~ NELLEE’S LINDY HOP SHOP

SWING HISTORY

CHAPTER 18

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

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

IT ALL COMES TOGETHER!!!

ODDLY, THE DANCE AND MUSIC REVIVALS BOTH HAPPENED INDEPENDENTLY OF EACH OTHER (SWING IS, AFTER ALL, A DANCE-BASED MUSIC). But it was also understandable, since bebop had cut the link between the Lindy and jazz music in the 1940s. About 1990, people in New York could see the Blues Jumpers play at the Louisiana Bar and Grill and not one person was dancing. According to promoter Lou Sobel, “There was not even a place to dance. The dance floor was all tables.” At early swing music concerts in California, people danced, but it would have been a stretch to call it “Lindy.” Instead, in the speakeasy parties around 1991-1992, it was more like a cross between a mosh pit and dancing.

THE BLUES JUMPERS

By 1993, that was changing. While clubs with swing nights had opened in San Francisco, Los Angeles still didn’t have a spot of its own. But in April, 1993, a new club opened that became the most famous swing dance place of them all. Located in a gorgeous building once occupied by the famous Brown Derby club, The Derby was a nostalgia lover’s dream. It had its original domed ceiling with an art deco-style wood diamond pattern constructed by Cecil B. DeMlle in 1929. It also had a beautiful oval bar that had been used in the movie Mildred Pierce in 1945. For the first two years, the Derby booked the Royal Crown Revue every Wednesday night.

The Brown Derby

Inside the Restaurant at The Derby

Some Flying Lindy Hoppers

Dancing at The Derby to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!

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. Both musicians modeled their groups after big band leader Artie Shaw’s more traditional swing orchestra of the late 1930s. Elliot soon was performing regularly for swing dances at Erin Stevens’ Pasadena Ballroom Dance Association [and he still is – click on Erin & Tammy’s link and check him out!).

The Bill Elliot Orchestra

Dancing also began to take off in San Francisco at the same time. The local Lindy group Work That Skirt came together in 1994. And dancers began to meet up with musicians in more out-of-the-way places like Ventura, California. Terri and Lee Moore (who learned swing dancing at the Pasadena Ballroom), started their own group, an aerials troupe called the Flyin’ Lindy Hoppers and moved to Ventura in 1994. They 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 Flying Lindy Hoppers

NEXT TIME:

 “EVEN MORE OF THE REBIRTH OF SWING”:

Now the dancers and the music come together!!!

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