The Squirrel Nut Zippers have been rocking my world recently, but they seem to have broken up and I’m looking for more good bands in the same vein. I’ve tried Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, but they pale in comparison to the Zippers. Also (and probably obvious), I’m a big fan of Benny Goodman and Count Basie, if that helps. In my limited experience, I think Benny was the best composer ever of this style of music, though I would love to be proven wrong.
Any recs? It don’t mean a thing if ain’t got that swing…
Big Bad Voodoo Lou can handle the swing recommendations exceptionally well, so I leave those to him.
For Hot Club jazz - i.e., fast, fun, technical playing typically featuring a nylon string guitar and a jazz fiddle like Django Reinhardt on guitar playing with Stephane Grapelli in the Hot Club of France back in the 30’s - try Mark O’Connor. He is a (frankly, The) master bluegrass/Hot Club fiddle player (and brilliant guitarist, fwiw) who has made some amazing Hot Club-themed CD’s…
Also, you might try some of Jeff Healey’s recent work (yes, that blind guy from the Patrick Swayze classic, “Roadhouse”). Not just a blues rocker, he’s also a talented swing guitarist (and jazz historian with a weekly radio show on jazz.fm in Toronto).
If you want to explore the original artists, you should check Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens recordings, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, Charlie Christian (who played with Benny Goodman), Bix Beiderbecke, Henry “Red” Allen, Joe Newman (who played with the Count Basie Orch. for, like, forever), and many, many more.
One final suggestion if you like the aforementioned Benny Goodman and Count Basie, then I strongly urge you check out Duke Ellington (IMHO, the greatest jazz composer ever to live). If Live at Newport '56 doesn’t make you a fan, then nothing will (Paul Gonsalves’ sax solo nearly sparked a riot).
Wow - **Hodge ** - you know your stuff! Great recommendations. That 20-something measure lead break at Newport by Gonsalves is truly a thing of beauty!
Brian Setzer is a god. If you are digging back - and the Armstrong Hot 5’s and 7’s is perfect for that - I would strongly recommend No Moe! The Best of Louis Jordan. It is the starting place for the swing revival of the 90’s, along with Louis Prima recordings and Joe Jackson’s Beat Crazy (IMHO).
Anyone who can listen to Jordan’s band do **Saturday Night Fish Fry **and **Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby **and not be blown away would need to have their heads examined…
I’ve got this one. It was recommended to me by a friend who’s a Jazz historian in NYC.
The first three or four tracks really swing and the work with Marsallas is brilliant. But, then it goes Misty and loses the mood. The rest of it is good, I would have preferred it kept swinging and then put the other stuff on another disk.
I would like to listen to more O’Conner and it’s on my list.
I’m not as knowlegable as those who have already posted, but am going to go ahead and recommend Either/Orchestra. I personally like their album Afro-Cubism.
If you would like to try some swing with a little western flavor, sample some Asleep At The Wheel and see if you like it. (I’ve got their tribute to Bob Wills playing on the IPOD, which made me think to come back and post this suggestion).
Another artist in the Country Swing vein: Dave Alexander.
There was a band in Oregon who were briefly almost popular-- after several years of slogging around Eugene and Portland doing an eclectic mix of funk and punk and swing, the swing craze came in and it looked like they might get big, but. . . no. Anyway, the much ignored Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. A few albums, but Zoot Suit Riot is the most exclusively swing. Good horns.
Thanks! Usually I get to these threads too late or don’t have enough time to put together a worthwhile post. I’m glad I could do that this morning.
:smack: I should have remembered Louis Prima. That “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” Gap ad pretty much sparked the whole swing revival of the mid-nineties. And I don’t think Louis Jordan ever released a bad record.
Agreed. Of all the suit-wearing swing bands that popped up in the late '90s, the Daddies may have been the most interesting, considering they played everything from ska to punk to country to grunge, in addition to their signature swing sound. Also, Steve Perry (the singer) was a much better lyricist than most of their contemporaries. The album *Zoot Suit Riot * collects all their swing numbers, including the title track that was their big hit. You can probably get a used copy for ridiculously cheap nowadays.
I’m also fond of Royal Crown Revue, who had a hard-edged, gritty, urban swing style they called “gangster bop.” They also wore suits, and singer Eddie Nichols adopted an old-school Humphrey Bogart/Edward G. Robinson/Frank Sinatra tough guy stage persona with a voice to match. They had my favorite sax player of the late '90s, Mando Dorame. Their best album is Mugzy’s Move, which you can probably get for really cheap now. You may have seen them in the 1994 Jim Carrey/Cameron Diaz movie The Mask, where they performed their biggest hit, “Hey Pachuco.”
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was a solid band, but I never liked them as much as Royal Crown Revue or the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. Still, I give them credit for introducing a lot of new, young fans to swing music since they appeared in the excellent 1995 movie Swingers, performing their hits “Go Daddy-O” and “You and Me and the Bottle Make Three Tonight.” Their lyrics were more cliched than the other bands, though.
(I’ve seen all three of those bands live, by the way.)
Brian Setzer is a guitar god, and the Brian Setzer Orchestra is required listening for any fans of big band swing. I only own their first four albums plus a Stray Cats retrospective (that’s Setzer’s rockabilly trio from the '80s), but you can’t go wrong with any of this stuff. I think they’ve turned a little too much into a Christmastime novelty act, but I can vouch for those first four albums as a perfect blend of big band swing, jump blues, crooning ballads and rockabilly-style reverb-drenched lead guitar. My favorite is their second album, Guitar Slinger.
I’m a sucker for girl singers, and the aforementioned Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers are probably the best modern swing/jump blues big band with a girl singer. She’s hot too, and very nice in person, and a wonderful live performer.
I will also agree with anyone who said the OP should get some Louis Jordan and Louis Prima. The '90s swing revival owed almost everything to those two guys and their bands, who were essentially the missing links between '40s swing and '50s rock and roll. Neither gets the credit they deserve, especially in jazz circles, but you should at least pick up a good compilation from each of them. Prima wrote Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing,” by the way.
And Django Reinhardt is another one of the guitar gods of all time, but if you decide you like his style, there was an Austin, Texas-based band from the late '90s called 8 1/2 Souvenirs that was heavily influenced by his playing and that entire 1920s-style hot European jazz style. They had an amazing guitarist who seemed to live and breathe Django, and a hot girl singer who went by Chrysta Bell. They had an album called Happy Feet that is a lot of fun, and would be another really cheap CD to get used.
If you’re a fan of SNZ, Tom Maxwell (one of the lead singers) has done some solo stuff since he left the group that is in the same style.
Ken Mosher (the sax/guitar player) has settled in with The Moonlighters in NYC, who are pretty decent.
Je Widenhouse, the trumpet player, is now in The Firecracker Jazz Band whom I have not heard yet - but Je has come a long way with his trumpet playing since he joined SNZ and I am going to bet that his new band is pretty hot.
Andrew Bird, who played fiddle on most of the Zippers albums, has two amazing albums in the same vein - Thrills and Oh! The Grandeur!. They are not to be missed.
Kevin O’Donnell, who was the drummer for Bird’s Bowl of Fire, put out a FANTASTIC album called Heretic Blues with a band that had the same lineup as Bowl of Fire, with Andrew Bird singing and playing fiddle. Also an album not to be missed - one of my favorites.
I can also recommend the Countdown Quartet, who I make a point to see every time I go to North Carolina. Sadly, they have broken up but their first album (eponymous) is one of my favorite albums of all time.
You can check out this page (on a site that is admittedly mine, and also very old) for some recommendations of older “inspirational” music from the Zippers themselves.
I also agree with the recommendations of Louis Prima, Louis Jordan and Django Reinhardt.
James Dapogny, a professor of music at the U of Mich, spent a lot of time transcribing all of Jelly Roll Morton’s piano solos, which he got published in the early '80s. Difficult stuff…you better warm up with some Liszt if you wanna try to play some of it.
In the 1990s, Dapogny put together a neat little 8-10 piece orchestra to record some Morton material, then went on to do more things from the 1920s. The discs seem to be mainly out of print, but are worth searching for…perfect transcriptions of early swing, recorded on nice contemporary equiptment by conservatory-quality musicians.
The Widespread Depresson Orchestra did a similar sort of thing in the 1970s.
Holeeee crap! Cuneiform Records has done two double-disc reissues of The Microscopic Septet, a brilliant NYC indie swing group of the '80s-'90s!
SATB saxophones, plus piano, drums, and a bassist who doubled on tuba. Click on the link, then enjoy the sample of “Lobster in the Limelight” on disc two. You will be hypnotized with pleasure.
I’m not the biggest swing fan, so I don’t really have recommendations for you, but I thought you might like this story.
Benny Goodman’s racial integration of his swing band paved the way for racial integration in music and, really, in all other fields–he hired Teddy Wilson to play in his band 10 years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, for example. America was shocked, but Goodman stood by his decision. And in a particularly colorful incident, someone (a club owner, I think?) asked him, “How can you let that nigger play in your band?” Goodman’s response: “Say that word one more time and I’ll knock you out.”
Benny was known as a hardass who wouldn’t back down from anybody or take shit from anyone, and a large part of that was that he was pulling in tens of thousands of dollars a week during the Depression. He felt that anyone who didn’t like his way could stuff it; thankfully, his way was pretty cool. For example, when he was threatened with legal action for taking an integrated band into clubs in the South, he simply decided his band was never going to play in the South again. That was unheard of, but he had so much dough he could afford to lose the revenue. He is also rumored to have paid quite a few peoples’ college tuition entirely, but his donations were always private. Supposedly, when asked why he never gave money publicly, he responded, “If people knew I was giving away this much money, they would come up to me with their hands out.”
I can enthusiastically recommend Mora’s Modern Rhythmists, a very eclectic 1930s revival band that’s made several great CDs. They present very authentic arrangements without sounding stale or scholarly - meaning they play their own solos with modern tone quality and fidelity, and swing like nobody’s business.
I have to get a plug in for my favourite local band, 51st Eight. Another good one is Solomon Douglas. Both bands have CDs for sale with preview clips on the website, and are a lot of fun in their various permutations. Plus they’re extremely danceable for lindy hop, charleston, etc. - I’m really excited that the Solomon Douglas Swingtet is going to be playing at the Saturday night dance here in Vancouver on Dec. 15!
, if you want a specific recommendation, 