[QUOTE=capybara]
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.
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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 want a specific recommendation, 
