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Maybe swing isn't red-hot these days, but rumors of its demise are premature.
By MICHAEL CANNING
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 10, 2001
Swing is dead, long live swing?
Hardly. But that irksome feeling you got every time you watched the recent IRS TV ad that told us 40-million people already know e-file's the way to go counted for something, too. You couldn't be blamed for wondering, "Isn't swing done now?"
You might reckon just the opposite if you go to the Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys concert Saturday at Skipper's Smokehouse, if the turnout is as strong as some pundits expect. The pan-swing/rockabilly outfit from Southern California formed in the late '80s during that region's roots music revival, found itself at the vanguard of swing-based acts when swing busted out of the Los Angeles scene in the mid '90s, and still finds itself solvent after the neoswing boom.
So, what to think as you jockey for jitterbug space beneath the oak canopy of the Skipperdome? Has everybody Goodwill'ed their Gap khakis and hid their Squirrel Nut Zippers CDs? Will Burger King revert back to hip-hop for hawking Whoppers? Is swing dead or not?
"The massive, popular scene is completely dead, in my opinion," said Angel Tidwell, 24, a top dancer from Tampa's recent young swing movement. "Nobody is going to do swing just because it's cool. The hard-core dance part of the scene has kind of gone underground. They just make their own events."
Browse the swing events calendar of the Swingnews.com Web site, and events indeed seem scatter-shot at best. For the entire month of May, five shows by local acts, seven concerts by national acts and nine dance nights are all that are listed for an area that stretches from the Tampa Bay area out to Lakeland and down to Sarasota. Unadulterated swing nights have virtually disappeared from proper nightclubs and have migrated to community halls such as Zendah Grotto in Drew Park and outdoor public spaces like BayWalk in St. Petersburg.
Local swing DJ Paul Mallett thinks fracture, and not so much declining numbers, makes the local swing scene look worse than it actually is. "Like the Lindy Hoppers a lot of times get their own things going," Mallett said, "because they don't necessarily like to dance to the same music that, say, the swing dancers do. And the older crowd usually likes the slower kind of stuff, the Sinatra kind of stuff. Whereas the younger swing crowd wants fast, upbeat stuff."
But Mallett, 24, also admits that he doesn't spin nearly as much swing as he used to. During the local scene's apex, about three years ago, Mallett spun up to five nights a week. Three of those nights were at the area's only all-swing nightclub, the short-lived Sugar Palm Club in Ybor City.
Now, he only spins two Sundays a month at Zendah Grotto, and Tuesday nights at the Orpheum music club in Ybor City. And there he's often compelled to blend in non-swing music to suit the evening's live acts.
If you're new to the scene, the different swing factions that Mallett alluded to may be hard to discern at the Big Sandy show. Veteran Tidwell has her own take on them.
She said the Lindy Hoppers prefer "classic '30s and '40s big band jazz. Usually it's more mid to slower tempo." That's because their eponymous dance, a late '20s spinoff of the Charleston, is difficult. "The Lindy is an eight-count dance, and it's a lot harder," said Tidwell. "I know every ballroom dance, and it's the hardest ballroom dance I've ever learned."
The Lindy crowd is not to be confused with your basic swing kids, who mainly dance in the more free-wheeling East Coast swing style. "East Coast swing is more repetitive. It's a six-count basic, step-step, rock-step. East Coast dancers will do a lot of fancy tricks and not much fancy footwork." Swing kids can mix with the Lindy Hoppers, but tempo issues often arise before too long.
"They don't listen to classic big band jazz," said Tidwell. "It's just too slow for them unless it's Sing, Sing, Sing."
So, Tidwell adds, many swing kids end up at rockabilly shows in search of faster tempos. But the problem there is, "Most rockabilly people don't dance at all," Tidwell said. "They generally don't like swing kids because they're sourpusses and they don't like to dance. And it's mostly guys." But the rockabillies do dress up. "They have their greased hair, their wife-beaters and jeans, their rolled-up sleeves. Boots, or Docs (Martens), usually."
This subcultural quagmire compels Mallett to pine for the old days when the neoswing movement first hit Tampa in 1997 at the Masquerade in Ybor City. "Everybody that danced back in those days wishes that it could be like that again, at Masquerade. It was the best time there, it was the best music."
Touring the country and abroad extensively throughout the big neoswing bang, Big Sandy (a.k.a. Rusty Williams) has noticed a universal decline in the swing movement. "A little bit," he said on the phone from a truck stop in West Memphis. "And it varies from city to city. We're seeing fewer clubs that are doing a swing night each week, which there was a lot of for a while. I noticed in some areas it's sort of gone underground. They're kind of just like meeting at dance studios, listening to records."
Big Sandy said his band's record sales wavered last year but then stabilized. "We kept at it, and I think it picked up again a little bit. Now there seems to be more people coming, but from a different angle. Like I see a lot of younger kids who are more into the rockabilly thing. Less of the Lindy crowd. We see more of the greasers with the tattoos and the whole deal. It's a bit more of a rougher look."
Big Sandy attributes that to the same thing that has allowed his band to weather the changing cultural tides: musical diversity. Sure, all their music swings. But the band's musical fluency is a keen reminder of how swing is the basis of many different styles, most notably for this act rockabilly and Western swing. "I don't think we were relying too heavily on just strictly a swing crowd. We just try to be diverse musically, and I think that's worked in our favor. I'm constantly finding new records. They just happen to be made 50 years ago."
To find out more about the local swing scene, go to http://swingnews.com.
Michael Canning can be reached at (813) 226-3408.
WHAT: Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys in concert, with Midnight Bowlers League
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday WHERE: Skipper's Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road
COST: $7 advance, $10 day of show
CALL: (813) 971-0666