swing revival

The tradition & historical record

The swing revival, also called retro swing and neo-swing, was a renewed interest in swing music and Lindy Hop dance, beginning in the early 1980s and reaching a peak in the late 1990s. The music was generally rooted in the big bands of the swing era of the 1930s and 1940s, but it was also greatly influenced by rockabilly, boogie-woogie, the jump blues of artists such as Louis Prima and Louis Jordan, and the theatrics of Cab Calloway. Many neo-swing bands practiced contemporary fusions of swing, jazz, and jump blues with rock, punk rock, ska, and ska punk music or had roots in punk, ska, ska punk, and alternative rock music. ¹

In Canada, the swing revival is associated with the popularity of new dance band recordings by Peter Appleyard's All Star Swing Band and Dal Richards in the early 1980s. The Spitfire Band, a neo-swing outfit that included composer and musician Jackie Rae, trumpeter Micky Erbe, and trombonist Laurie Bower, was founded in 1981 and issued a series of LPs for Columbia Records. The roots of the swing revival in the United States are generally traced back to 1989, which saw the formation of several of the scene's most prominent figures: Los Angeles' Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, who often stuck close to playing traditionally-styled jump blues and rockabilly; San Francisco's swing scene included Lee Presson and the Nails who started performing at local clubs in 1994 and Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, who showcased vocal jazz and blues influences, emerging in 1996; and Eugene, Oregon's Cherry Poppin' Daddies, who incorporated elements of punk rock and ska into swing and jazz music. California soon emerged as the center of the burgeoning neo-swing movement, with such clubs as Los Angeles' The Derby and San Francisco's Club DeLuxe regularly hosting swing and jazz bands as well as offering free swing dancing lessons. By the early 1990s, swing music had started appearing in popular culture, serving as the focal point of the 1993 drama Swing Kids while featuring heavily in the 1994 comedy The Mask, in which Royal Crown Revue made an on-screen cameo. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Swing revival”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

swing revival is music genre and pop culture movement, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 4 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²