The Swing Book (10 page)

Or so it seemed. While the success of swing in 1998 was unexpectedly huge, the growth was just as unexpectedly double-edged.
The expectations put on what was still in many ways a grassroots scene ratcheted up about 1,000 percent. “Everybody got big
dollar signs in their eyes,” says Moss. Club owners who weren’t part of the scene rushed to start swing nights, often not
realizing that most dancers don’t drink much except water. When some of these events inevitably folded, the word started spreading,
truthfully or not, that the swing fad had peaked. You know the old saying that they like to build you up just to tear you
down? Many swingers felt that the media was doing just that in early 1999. What it had trumpeted only six to twelve months
before was already being written off as just another trend.
Time
and the
New York Times
both predicted that the clock was running out on the revival. There’s even been a Sprite ad slamming swing as a passing fad.

The truth isn’t anywhere near so bleak, though the swing scene has been experiencing its fair share of growing pains as it
matures. While the new rock-oriented bands were what sparked the revival, in the past couple of years the dancing has come
to really dominate the movement. In turn, as the Lindy Hoppers become more experienced, they’ve been gravitating toward bands
that play more dancer-friendly midtempo songs. “I definitely was affected and influenced by what dancers were interested in
and looking for,” says bandleader Bill Elliott. “On our first CD everything is fast and slow. By the time of our second I
was including several midtempo numbers.” Adds Eddie Reed, “I do songs that are tailor-made for Lindy Hop.” But while the newer
fave bands, such as Indigo Swing, Seattle’s
Casey MacGill
, Elliott, and Reed, favor a more traditional sound over rock influences, that makes them less likely to cross over to MTV.
The classic big bands are as much an inspiration to them as jump blues. Reed’s band replicates the Artie Shaw Orchestra of
the late thirties. Elliott cites Tommy Dorsey as an inspiration. According to Chris Siebert of Lavay Smith’s band, audiences
are getting more sophisticated and are starting to appreciate the more complex but equally thrilling arrangements of the big
band era. “They’ve had a little taste of it and they get hungry and they want to find out more,” he says. Others in the scene,
however, worry that without the rock element, neoswing is losing its edge. Says
Swing Time’s
Moss, “This breakthrough in modern pop music doesn’t really have to do with Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman.”

No matter what style of music they play, all of the bands still encounter some friction with the dancers, and vice versa.
“We joke about it because the dancers and the bands are really like people in a dysfunctional marriage,” says Elliott. “Each
needs the other but can’t really get from the other what it wants. What the dancers want from the bands is exactly the tempos
that they want to dance to all night long. But each dancer has a different idea of what that is. What the bands want from
the dancers that they don’t get enough of is applause and admiration and appreciation.” Conflict has also arisen among the
dancers themselves. In the last few years, a different type of Lindy Hop—dubbed Hollywood style by its popularizers, LA dance
teachers Sylvia Skylar and Erik Robison—has been revived. A smoother way of swing dancing, it’s best seen in such movies as
Buck Privates
and the hard-to-find short
Groovy Movie.
Savoy-style aficionados and Hollywood fans don’t always get along. When the new revival first started in Los Angeles, “they
would throw salvos at each other,” says Santa Barbara teacher Sylvia Sykes.

Despite these occasional lapses of perspective, the swing scene is in fact opening up to more influences than ever before.
Neoswingers are embracing rockabilly again. Some bands are trying to hybridize rap and swing (such as the
Yalloppin’ Hounds)
and soul and swing (such as
Vargas Swing
). Realizing that back in the day, people would dance waltzes, tangos, cha-chas, and foxtrots as well as swing all in one
night, Lindy Hoppers are starting to add everything from hip-hop to salsa to their repertoire. Swing and the jazz community,
completely estranged during most of the revival, have begun to find common cause also (see page 157 in chapter 5).

In 1999 swing continued to hit new peaks. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy performed at the Super Bowl. In February Brian Setzer won two
Grammy’s and the
New York Times
announced, “Over half a century since its heyday, swing is officially pop music again.” Bill Elliott and
George Gee
have revived the tradition of the great battles of the bands, playing an enormous July 4, 1999, weekend show at the historic
Hollywood Palladium. Instead of relying on club owners, dancers are starting to create and run their own events, such as the
swing nights at LA’s Satin Ballroom, where more than a thousand Lindy Hoppers crowd the hall’s enormous floor once a month.
Everywhere you look there are new swing magazines—such as
Atomic
and
Modern Lounge
—and movies, including
Swing,
with Lisa Stansfield, and an in-the-works HBO biopic of Frankie Manning. Lincoln Center’s month-long Midsummer Night’s Swing
concert program draws thousands of dancing couples every night. Colleges across the country now boast swing clubs. And new
bands are forming all the time. “I get ten to twenty demos a week,” says Tammi Gower of the Derby. Keeping it all together
is a hopping Internet community, made up of hundreds of swing Web sites, through which fans of the music and dance keep in
touch.

Many people are relieved that swing may no longer be the fad of the moment. To those people who are passionately attached
to the music, dance, and style of the swing era, it feels like it’s theirs once again, not the province of the latest marketing
hype. Swing’s grass roots are as strong as ever.

There are as many theories about why swing has returned as there are moves you can do on the dance floor. Some feel the swing
movement is a backlash against the musical styles and social mores (or lack thereof) that have emerged over the past several
decades. Others believe the renaissance of swing is simply the next logical progression in the nostalgia cycle, in which everything
old is repackaged for a new, younger audience. Here, in no particular order, are a few theories (besides the fact that swing’s
just great) that swingers themselves have put forth about why swing came back: