Retro swing
| Swing revival | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1990s–2000s, United States |
The Swing Revival was a late 1990s period of renewed popular interest in swing and jump blues music and dance from the 1930s and 1940s as exemplified by Louis Prima, often mixed with a more contemporary rock, rockabilly or ska sound, known also as neo-swing or retro swing.
For the history of swing, see swing music
The beginning of the neo-swing movement is usually credited to the Los Angeles band Royal Crown Revue, who formed in 1989, playing rockabilly-inflected swing and jump blues at such nightclubs as San Francisco's Club DeLuxe. That same year, two other influential bands formed: Los Angeles' Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, who stayed closer to replicating an authentic swing sound and image, and Eugene, Oregon's Cherry Poppin' Daddies, who started out as a punk rock band before developing a primary focus on both swing and ska music.
Most swing revival bands were based around a rock and roll rhythm section of electric guitar, double bass, and drum kit, with a three or four instrument horn section, which usually consisted of trumpet, saxophone, and trombone. One of the revival bands, The Brian Setzer Orchestra, used a much larger horn section, with thirteen wind and brass instruments, which more closely matched the size of the groups during the swing era in the 1930s.
Much of the swing revival drew on the style popularized by Louis Prima called jump blues. This use of the term "swing" is based more on orchestration and dance than strictly on musical style. The swing music in the 1930s and 1940s was part of the Big Band era, led by Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman. However, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a newer style, known at the time as jump blues, became popular in African-American nightclubs as played by such musicians as Cab Calloway, Big Joe Turner, Lowell Fulson, Louis Jordan, and Louis Prima.
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