 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: wjk
Date: 2004-08-20 21:42
Can anyone suggest any recordings from "new" swing bands such as the Eddie Reed Big Band ? ( I hear he loves Artie Shaw). I wasn't aware until recently that there is a "neo-swing" scene. Lindy lessons anyone?
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Author: hans
Date: 2004-08-20 21:57
wjk,
I don't know what you would consider to be "new"; the Spitfire Band is only about 20 years old and they are superb. I am in the process of copying my five Spitfire LPs to CD so that I can listen to them in the car.
Closer to home for you, perhaps: GBK's Big Band East has made a CD recently and the tracks I've heard are excellent.
Regards,
Hans
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2004-08-22 02:07
The "swing dance revival" (which was a driving force in some of the renewed interest in the "big band" style) fired up in earnest some ten years back. Groups like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and the various efforts of retread rock folks who suddenly discovered the joys of true harmony pushed the craze, and the nascent "swing dance clubs" swelled under the stimulus.
Since the "uptick", the 'craze' has faded. Clubs that had hundreds of "members" in the early 1990's are now down to core memberships of twenty or thirty. Swing dance nights that drew more than a hundred attendees (not all swing dancers, remember) now only draw twenty or thirty.
I know of two "big bands" that were founded in the 1990's by relatively old timers who thought that the "big bands were back", to use the old phrase. This in itself is nothing new, since "big bands" have been coming back on and off for over half a century. However, mistaking momentary trends in music for a permanent sea change in the way the public likes their tunes was what put both of these "big band" leaders into trouble. With books made up mostly of the classic big band tunes, these groups have trouble making bookings on a regular basis, and their bookings are almost always limited to "big band gigs".
I've got a "big band" instrumentation (5444, in arranger terms, with three vocalists), but only about 1/10th of the music we play (and only about 1/4 of the music we have) is of the "big band" era. There's quite a bit of Sinatra spanning the years, but far more pop and R & B and rock, since that's what people want to hear. Revival or not, few twenty somethings want to hear American Patrol at their nuptials...
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