Duke Ellington and his orchestra 1949-1950

Duke Ellington and his orchestra 1949-1950.
A chronological classic, so we’re listening to a comprehensive overview of a particular period, but not truly excellent quality. I picked this sweety up a few weeks ago (again from caiman.com, via amazon – fabulously quick delivery and cheap) so as to secure myself a whole album’s worth of stuff like B-Sharp Boston, a song Doz got me onto.
It’s neat stuff. I wasn’t really all that aware of Ellinton’s more mainstream stuff from the late 40s/early 50s – I have a bit of it, but it’s stuff on compilations or overviews of his career, so I’ve not listened to it in isolation. I also have to say that I’m always distracted by the earlier stuff – I am passionate about very late 20s and early 30s (1928-1931 mostly) Ellington – and find it difficult to move past songs like Flaming Youth and Rockin’ in Rhythm. Which is probably why I find it difficult to DJ a lot of later Ellington – I simply don’t know it as well.
…that’s actually an exaggeration – I do play quite a bit of early 40s Ellington. And love it.
So anyway, back to the early 50s Ellington.
I like this stuff. When it’s not veering off into artyfarty stuff, there’s good dancing action on there. I think I like Joog Joog because it manages to use that big vocal sound Ellington liked for his stage shows with accessible ‘swing vocals’ – so you get the singer from Creole Love Call (sorry, I’ve forgotten her name, and I don’t have it in the laptop yet) teamed up with someone poppier, and you get a rockingly good pop song.
So, as far as DJable music goes, this is a goody – a few I’d happily play for dancers (and have – and had them go down well), plus some arty stuff purely for your own listening pleasure.
Two thumbs.

the tyranny of distance: audiences and performers/texts in high and low art forms

Laura has asked an interesting question here on a previous post:

…I would like to ask a question about “the everyday”, in those CS quote marks – is consumption of canonical or high art an everyday activity, and if it isn’t what is it? Posted by: Laura at August 7, 2006 03:30 PM

I think the man to answer this question is right up there in the cs canon (or at least the audience studies canon). Take it away Henry Jenkins
I skip about a bit in the next part of this post (I’m a bit distracted, so I can’t really take time to formulate a sensible argument)…
I think the key point (in my approach, anyhoo) is not so much the nature of the actual text or practice, but the way it is institutionalised, commodified and ‘valued’ by various cultural and social forces.
I’ve been looking at this issue in reference to dance (of course), comparing the way ballet and vernacular dances like hip hop or breaking are approached by audiences.
[In an aside, the discussions on wikipedia’s project dance (esp the talk pages) – people want to capitalise the names of specific ballet choreographies, but aren’t so sure about how to capitalise vernacular dances like lindy or hip hop].
I’ve also noticed that the way swing dancers – DJs in particular – approach jazz is quite different to the way the genre is approached by jazzniks. One of the clearest and nicest illustrations of how different groups imagine jazz lies in the way Bennett’s Lane puts on gigs (Bennett’s Lane is a well respected local jazz venue – devoted to ‘quality’ jazz). They are very strict about noise during performances, and do NOT allow dancing. This is such a strange and bizarre contrast to the way jazz functioned socially in the 20s, 30s and 40s – it was pub music. It’s also a serious contrast to the way I experience and enjoy jazz at the Laundry in Fitzroy on Saturday afternoons: it’s loud, it’s full of smoke and drinkers, the band members will get down off the stage and kick audience arse if they give them trouble. They don’t care if we dance, and there is – as a consequence – a really exciting and dynamic relationship between dancers, musicians and audience at these gigs.
But at Bennett’s Lane (and other venues around the place), there’s a definite positioning of jazz as ‘art’, which must be ‘appreciated’ from a distance, rather than enjoyed with the body, up close and personal. There are quite culturally specific ways of demonstrating appreciation going on. Just as Jenkins noted that Checkhov fans used different language to describe their interest in theatre, there are clear differences in the way certain groups approach jazz and music.
Here’s a quote from chapter one of my thesis about the relationship between audiences and performers, audiences and texts in dance:

Considering dance, whether vernacular dance or performance dance, as a public discourse, allows us to analyse it for ideological content, for the ways in which identity markers such as class, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age and so on are represented and valued by a particular community of people. Reading vernacular dance as everyday discourse encourages us to see social dance as an exchange of ideas, and as a site for the negotiation of identity and social relations between individuals and groups within a community. I draw clear distinctions between vernacular dance traditions, where dance occurs in everyday spaces, between ordinary people, and concert or performance dance traditions, where dance is relegated to particular ‘dance spaces’ which are separate from the everyday spaces of a community. Ward makes this distinction: “there is a categorical divide between dancers and the audience in performance dance …that does not exist between dancers and spectators in social dance, where those roles are interchangeable” (18). I read this dynamic relationship between the roles of ‘spectator’ and ‘dancer’ in social or vernacular dance as a clear example not only of call-and-response, but also of the ways in which readers participate in the making of meaning in textual interpretation. (pg5)

Later on I add this:

The word ‘vernacular’ in a discussion of dance refers to the everyday or ordinary, common dance of a particular group or culture. Vernacular dance is distinguished from concert or theatre dance through its positioning in everyday spaces, rather than existing only as a formalised, and usually choreographed, performance of a particular dance on a concert stage. Vernacular dance is intrinsically participatory and happens in all sorts of spaces, both public and private. It is also necessarily mutable and reflexive, responding to the cultural needs of its performers. (pg9)

I wonder if one of the key differences between ‘low’ and ‘high’ cultural forms and practices is this issue of distance – there is (in Western culture …?) a divide between the audience and text/practice in high art forms, whereas the ‘low’ forms encourage close proximity between audiences and texts – you have only to consider the Big Brother website and voting system to see how particular industries and textual forms encourage audiences to get close to texts. If only so that they can be more easily targetted by advertisers.
It can’t be an accident that high art forms like ballet and opera have trouble keeping audience numbers up, and that various marketing strategies that aim to make these sorts of forms more approachable to wider audiences are at once endorsed, yet also regarded with some suspicion by those sections of our community which have a vested interest in maintaining social heirarchies.
…there’s a good article by Joann Kealiinohomoku on reading ballet as an ‘ethnic’ dance that examines how race and class work in high and low art form (and in anthropological approaches to ‘culture’ and ‘society’): Kealiinohomoku, Joann. “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” What Is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism. Eds. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. 533 – 49.

it’s a tall order to claim yourself a guiding force in the dancing lives of a few thousand dancers

I have in the past noted the difference between ‘classic’ swinging jazz of the ‘Swing Era’ (ie 1930s-40s) and ‘new testament’ swing (ie post WWII), focussing on the role of the rhythm section.
I still find julius‘ discussion of the topic over on yehoodi the most useful for discussion of jazz and lindy hop:

This is all based on informal research, i.e. facts that I cannot document. They are opinions based on watching clips and talking to oldtimers and people who have talked to oldtimers and watching oldtimers and new dancers dance “now” and “back in the day” … and listening to a LOT of music.
Swing-era music (henceforth called “swing”) is driven primarily by the rhythm section. The bass would play on the quarter note and the drummer would beat the same quarter note with the bass drum. The guitarist would also chord on the quarter note along with the bassist and drummer. In addition, the drummer kept the rhythm swinging by playing a swung rhythm on the hi-hat. Rhythmic motifs (such as horn riffs) were often played in unison rhythm (although not unison notes, which were a feature of bop later on). Drum solos often featured march-style drum rolls and rarely used polyrhythmic devices such as playing three with the left hand and four with the right.
The combination of guitarist, drummer, and bass playing on the quarter note made swing music very propulsive. At that time, jazz was not played behind the beat as much as it is now. The rhythm section was almost, but not quite, playing in unison on the quarter note.
The dance reflected this propulsion by emphasizing quarter notes and the swung rhythm. The steps of the basic that we know today are derived from that rhythm: 1, 2, 3 and 4 (swung), 5, 6, 7 and 8. There was very little upper body movement, although the limbs were extensively used to reflect energy and excitement. Charleston steps (often in unison with your partner) were very common because of the tempo and feel of the music. (Note that 20s Charleston is much more staccato and than 30s Charleston, because hot jazz was much more staccato than swing music.)
If we listen to post-war music, we detect a difference in the feel compared to pre-war music. Jimmy Blanton revolutionized bass playing with Ellington’s band by using more ornamental techniques on the bass, and Ray Brown brought bass virtuosity to the fore by playing far less staccato than swing bassists did. His playing virtually defined the feel of post-war straightahead jazz by holding the bass notes and creating a much deeper “pocket” for the rhythm section. With the advent of bop, the drums began to lay behind the beat, which was now kept almost entirely by the bassist. Drummers moved the swing rhythm to the ride cymbal; the bass drum was used to “drop bombs” — playing very loud accents, only barely playing quarter notes, and sometimes even playing on the offbeat.
Arrangements for bands began to feature more rhythmically complex parts and the solos began to use more than the basic major, minor, diminished, augmented, seventh, and ninth chords of swing. The upshot of this new harmonic and rhythmic complexity was a change in the dance, with Frankie notably complaining to Dizzy Gillespie (I think) that you couldn’t dance (lindy hop) to it.
In the modern era, people commonly dance to straightahead jazz from the 50s … not bop, but music heavily influenced by bop’s harmonic concepts and post-war, way-behind-the-beat rhythm. The music chosen by DJs today also tends to be on the slower side than swing era music taken as a whole, and there are a lot of influences from West Coast (which was itself derived from lindy hop) observable in modern lindy hop. For example, the upper body is used often to express the music; frequently dancers will acknowledge musical “hits” with motion.
Why this change has occurred, I cannot say. One of the first people I encountered who taught this style of dancing were Paul and Sharon. When I was first learning I learned from people who had learned from old-timers directly, and were commonly emulating the rhythm-based style of lindy hop dancing. Then I saw people in San Francisco dancing and they were doing a more melody-based style of lindy hop.
Over time I think lindy hop has embraced both aspects of musicality (rhythm and melody), but some areas of the country are still locked in one or the other.
Edited to add something a bit more judgmental:
Dancing to the melody makes it very hard to dance fast, because it feels as if one is being unmusical in not acknowledging the music going by. Dancing to the rhythm makes it very easy to dance fast and requires better balance and technique because there is less time to recover from mistakes. However, dancing to the rhythm makes dancing slow less interesting.
The very best dancers in the world dance to the music, employing whatever is appropriate and not worrying whether the music is “too fast” or “too slow”, because they have integrated everything about the music into their dancing. Dancing reflects the music, not the other way around. I am fairly sure that lindy hop, alone of almost every social dance in the rest of the world, is danced to the widest tempo range of music. That’s one of the things I really like about it, that I can go balls-out on some insane flag-waving swing anthem, or dance more intimately if I want (Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 8:55 pm).

Personally, I prefer the sort of ‘classic swing’ sound to the post WWII sound, which I tend to think of as Old and New Testament, respectively, in part as a response to the influence of Basie on this issue – the man’s career ran from the 20s to the 80s, and he was one of the most influential band leaders in the big band swinging jazz genre.
I’ve been listening to some Jo Jones recently, and reading the Allmusic entry here, where they note:

Jo Jones shifted the timekeeping role of the drums from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal, greatly influencing all swing and bop drummers.

This is an interesting point, as Jones played with Basie’s band for a chunk of his career, and formed the backbone of Basie’s rhythm section, with Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar) and Basie himself (piano). To think that this man might have played a key part in the shift from bass drum to high hat in the foundational rhythm of a big band is kind of a tall order. I know nothing beyond the stuff I read in liner notes and on the internet (hardly excellent sources, but you know how it is – I’m too busy with other stuff to read up on this… though I’d dearly love to audit a decent undergrad course on the history of jazz), so I can’t really comment intelligently on this topic. But it’s worth thinking about.
I am a fan of Lionel Hampton, who was a percussionist (drums, vibraphone, assorted other) and bandleader (though I’m not sure what role he played in his bands’ arrangements and compositions), and I’ve noticed that big bands tended to reflect the instruments and interests of their leader – so you get a different emphasis in Benny Goodman’s stuff, than you do with someone like Basie, in part because they played clarinet and piano, respectively.
This stuff is really interesting to think about when you’re comparing the work indivdidual members of a group did with their other bands – I’m obsessed with Benny Goodman’s small groups, and have been enthralled by the differences between this group, Goodman’s bigger band stuff, and the role of Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, etc, in those small groups and in their own big bands. You can really hear the musical emphasis shift from Goodman and the clarinet to, for example, the vibes/rhythm section in Hamp’s bands.
So the fact that Basie played in his rhythm section, and that his band was so influential in swinging jazz is kind of important.
…I’m not sure where I’m going with this, really.
But I suppose that one of my ongoing concerns as a DJ is how how to balance the old testament sound with the new testament. As a dancer, I much prefer the chunk-chunk sound of the old testament rhythm section – that high hat action in some of the 50s stuff (and late 40s, depending on who it is) gets up my bum. As a DJ, I’m much more flexible – I will happily play stuff from the 30s through to the 50s for lindy hoppers (with deviations into more modern stuff in the old school style), and from the 20s (and more recently if it rocks) for charleston and other dances. I feel I have a ‘responsibility’ as a DJ to sample good music from all these historical periods, and more importantly, from the range of swinging jazz that is available. While I feel I can comment on musical choice and taste and its impact on dancing in my local community as a dancer, I am more reluctant to make those value-laden judgements as a DJ, perhaps because of the perceived power and influence of DJs in the swing scene. I’ve seen people do some awsome shit on the dance floor to all types of music, and who am I to dismiss something simply because it reflects the music of a period which post-dates the ‘original’ swing era?
It’s a difficult issue, because I do feel that I need to promote the old testament stuff in Melbourne because it is so under represented in the DJing of local DJs, and in the teaching of local dance teachers. We have a preponderance of ‘groove’ music, a definite emphasis on not-old-school dancing, to the point where new dancers frequently fail to recognise someone dancing in the ‘olden days’ style as lindy hop (and often don’t know that name for ‘swing dancing’ at all).
Yet, at the same time, my job as a DJ is to get people dancing, and if old school jazz doesn’t do it for them… I can either trick them into it, leading them gently back to the Good Old Days, using such tools as the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra, Mora’s Modern Rhythmists and the Kansas City Band, or I can hop on the old high horse and play with no reference to what’s going on on the dance floor around/below me.
This seems the perennial question for a DJ who plays almost exclusively in their own, local scene (particularly one which is as parochial as Melbourne).
My solution, though, has been to follow my nose – to seek out the artists and music that I really enjoy, and to combine them in ways while I’m DJing that will get dancers out onto the floor despite themselves. Kind of a honey rather than vinegar approach. There are a number of on-the-spot techniques for doing this, from quick transitions between musical styles and tempos, through to using a combination of old recordings, new remastered recordings, and recordings by new artists, and I’m endeavouring to master as many of these skills as possible.
One of the key parts of this process is simply collecting and listening to as much music as possible.
In Melbourne today, many, hell most of the DJs simply swap their collections, rather than seeking out new music on their own. One of the clearest results of this has been a definite lack of variation in the music we hear out dancing in this town. One of the less direct results is a lack of diversity in the dancing and improvisation we see on the floor – if dancers do not hear ‘new’ music (whether in terms of individual songs, or different styles), and dance is about making music visible, we are unlikely to see ‘new’ stuff on the dance floor if DJs continue with these small-pond approaches to music and DJing. And speaking as an old school hippy feminist, diversity = good. It’s sure as fuck more interesting than homogeneity.
As I am finding, though, the exchange of music between DJs serves as more than simply the sharing of music and the expansion of individual collections – it is a key vehicle for the development of interpersonal and professional relationships between DJs, and between new and more experienced DJs. To refuse to swap is a delicate matter, and one must tread carefully the line between ethical approaches to copyright legislation and forging relationships with other DJs. Particularly when one does not access to other avenues of becoming part of ‘the gang’ in this community.
With all this in mind, then, how can I go about both satisfying dancers’ desire for the familiar, and exploring and sharing my own musical tastes and passions, and consequently, encouraging DJs to include music that suits my tastes, so that I have the opportunity to dance to this stuff as well?
One the one hand, there are the practical DJing techniques I’ve discussed above.
But I’m also increasingly of the conviction that DJing for new dancers is really important.
I enjoy DJing for new dancers. The first set of the night is usually considered the ‘beginners” set in Melbourne, in part because of the importance of pre-social dancing classes (usually populated by beginners). When I began DJing earlier this year, that first set was dismissed by most other DJs, many of whom wouldn’t accept sets in that slot. As a new DJ desperate for experience, I happily took on thost sets. I discovered that the new dancers were not only fresh and excited about dancing (unlike the more jaded, cynical and decidedly picky more experienced types), they were also excited about the music, and far more open to a wide range of music.
So I enjoy playing for beginners, even if it means that I have to be careful with tempos.
And it means that I’m wondering if perhaps I should be strutting my stuff as a DJ at more beginner-friendly, after-class venues in order to advertise my tastes, create a market and perhaps ensure a greater tolerance for wider musical styles in the future?
Those sorts of claims feel insufferably smug and arrogant: it’s a tall order to claim yourself a guiding force in the dancing lives of a few thousand dancers.
But I’ll report back, and we’ll see what happens.

i want a big shouting man and an analogue mouse

bigjoeturner.jpg
I just can’t get enough of this man’s shouting voice.
We’re listening to that album I mentioned here. It’s far too late for such exciting music, but we like to live dangerously.
I should go to bed. The Squeeze is watching some old skool computer nerd peep action: The Mother of all Demos (you can read about it here on wikipedia).
The Squeeze likes to read about old computer stuff. The other day he went to see a talk about the first computer mouse:

“The first computer mouse and other terrific tales of technology!”
The Stork Hotel Café, 504 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne
Who says the history of computing is boring? Experience the droll delights of Information Age nostalgia in a raucously profound evening of low-tech storytelling with your host School of Business Information Technology academic John Lenarcic in conversation with Museum Victoria curator David Demant.

He had a lovely time. I went to see Super Dood Returns and had a lovely time.
When I make up the bed in the back room, I usually find at least two books about olden days computers (today I found the phone that I lost yesterday), the remote for the imac, and some sort of cord for the computer. And usually a belt and a pair of pajama pants. He must own at least a million books about computer history. I’ve read a few of them – ones about macs, or ebay or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or other stuff. It’s mostly dull, and written by semi-literate journalists, but The Squeeze is a big fat sponge for computer knowledge (and hardware – he’s a bit borg I think. All technology is belong to him, and will be assimilated. Resistance is futile).
But this demo on google movies is pretty impressive – this dood Douglas Englebart invented a mouse in 1968, and demonstrates it in this film. That’s some awesome shit – we didn’t start using them til the 90s. And this guy is there, in a black and white film, with his massive quiff and black horn-rimmed glasses, demonstrating some scarily advanced technology.
The Squeeze is about to pass out with delight. When he stumbled onto the film moments ago, he declared: “I didn’t think this existed!”
That and the Big Joe Turner shouting action – this little freckler is going to expire from delight.
I, however, am going to pass out from exhaustion.

Joe Turner’s Boss of the Blues


There’s a reason they call these doods shouters.
The second of my amazingly quick-to-arrive CDs from Caiman (less than 2 weeks from Europe), I’m sucking up Big Joe Turner’s Boss of the Blues.
The super-jazz-nerds amongst you are no doubt thrilling to the thought of Freddie Greene playing on this 1956 recording. The rest of you should just settle in and enjoy… take care to get a firm grip on the sofa, lest Turner blows you away.
I’ve not had that much experience with Joe Turner. I have bunches of his stuff with people like Basie, and I’m pretty fond of most of it, but this is the first proper Big Joe Turner album I’ve bought. I like it. It’s uncompromising. I like those shouters – I love Dinah Washington especially. I like the thought that most of them started singing in church, and all that shouting is about Jesus. But Jesus dancing with his skirt up round his hips, on a table, dancing the crazy-I’m-dancing!-I’m-dancing!-like-a-fool type of dancing.
There’s lots on this album for DJing, from saucy blues to jumpy lindy, but our favourites in this house are the boogie woogie bits – that version of Roll ’em Pete makes you want to run around like a fool*. Sometimes the quality is kind of fagged** by Turner’s volume. But that’s kind of cool. Like feedback on a Nirvana album in 1992.
*funnily enough, I was just listening to my ‘lindy music’ on shuffle and came across another version of that song that I really, really like and wish I had more opportunities to play for dancers (from Basie’s Breakfast Dance and BBQ). It clocks in at 230bpm, so it’s kind of not all that playable most of the time. It starts: “Well I got a gal, she lives up on the hill” and continues…
**using this term the way my dad would – meaning ‘tired’ or totally buggered from overwork.

Alberta Hunter’s Downhearted Blues

While I fear I’ll die of old age before my order from raisedonrecords (via Amazon) comes, I’ve received both my recent acquisitions form caiman.com via amazon (they rock – Caiman are always really quick to deliver and no hassle to deal with). The first was Alberta Hunter’s Downhearted Blues, a live recording by one of my favourite artists. You can read about her over on allmusic, but I think the phrase ‘dirty lesbian nanna’ pretty much sums it up. This album is fun – you can hear that nanna working the crowd. Not so much for DJing, but it’s certainly worth listening to, and heaps of fun.

not in any way i’d like to advertise

Every now and then there comes along a bit of music that gets inside you (to pilfer a metaphor) and makes you want to move your body.
As a DJ for dancers, I’d like that bit of music to come along more frequently. And to bring its friends. While you usually have to hunt them down, sometimes you come across these lovely things hiding in your collection, probably inside a crappy black and white CD cover for something you bought second hand. Sometimes they’re hiding in massive collected works collection on your hard drive (probably in the huge and wonderful Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings Ellington – I promise I’ll get through the remaining ten of twenty-four discs soon).
Right now I’m just sucking up Oscar Peterson’s Bluesology At The Concertgebouw [live]. It has everything late swinging jazz should – saucy bass action, unbelievable piano, chunking guitar (that’s Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, respectively), kind of growly unintelligible muttering from the Oscar at the piano… did I mention this was a live recording? You can hear the audience digging the thing these excellent musicians have going on. You can hear Oscar mumbling along to his piano (and we can assume Clark Terry’s vocals on Mumbles (check it on this album if you’re interested) were inspired by this sort of action). You can just feel these seasoned musicians really working with each other, bouncing musical ideas around far beyond the ordinary length of a pop song. It goes for a massive nine minutes twenty-two – far too long for DJing to most lindy hoppers, but oh-baby, if I ever find just the right crowd…
They’d have to be a group of mellow lindy hoppers, heavy on the groove, happy to work with one partner for the equivalent of three songs (luckily at an easy 120bpm – which, for the uninitiated, is still more than two steps a second, but considered ‘baby tempo’ by lindy hoppers). And they’d better appreciate this gem…
As a DJ, as I’ve said, you’re continually on the look out for the right songs. Some DJs swap music just for the right three minutes. Morally high horse types like myself spurn this fannish exchange and have spent ridiculous sums buying a ridiculous number of albums for just that one perfect song. And while I’ve come back to those albums to rediscover the other great songs overshadowed by That One, I’ve also shoved the CD into the bookcase, or failed to catalogue the rest of it into my play lists. Lost and gone forever. itunes and emusic are your friend in these sorts of situations – I’d never buy a whole City Rhythm Orchestra album, but I’m very happy with the version of Blues in Hoss’s Flat (check that one on this album” – are you getting an idea of the sorts of uses lindy DJs make of Amazon, yet?) I bought from itunes the other day.
This version of Bluesology ends with applause for at least twenty-two seconds, until the musicians bring on the next song (When Lights are Low, incidentally, and almost as good). The very best songs for dancing are usually live – or carry some of the improvisation and creative team work that makes jazz so great for dancing. For lindy hoppers, improvisation is the reason we dance – we learn the basic steps so we can get to the made up bits. And of course, it’s so’s we can do what we hear in the music with our bodies. When it’s a live recording, you can hear the crowd and musicians really making something wonderful together. To call it a conversation is too easy or too simple. Every partner dancer knows it’s not like talking – it’s a much faster and more efficient way of communicating with someone. With lots of someones.
I think that’s the sort of thing that the best DJs aim for – recreating that relationship between musicians and dancers. As a musician, you choose the notes and how you play them to work with the other musicians and the audience and possibly the dancers to make for the nicest possible bit of group work. As a DJ, though, you’re choosing and combining songs for the same effect. The same principles of improvisation and spontaneity apply. You’re still responding and contributing to your dance partner – it’s just that you have hundreds of dance partners, and you can’t get your hands on them to get connection.
So when you find just the right song – the sort of song that makes you want to leap up off your chair – you’re not just scoring something nice to listen to or enjoy on your own. You’re finding something that’ll help you get it going on with as many people as possible. All at once.
The only frustration, the only irritation with sharing the most excellent songs with dancers is that you can’t dance yourself… well, not in any way you’d like to advertise…

shave em dry

This weekend when I was out dancing at a late night party after a big competition night I heard a new version of a song called Shave ’em Dry 2, a song recorded by a woman called Lucille Bogan in 1935. I have a version of the song on a CD I recently purchased called Raunchy Business: Hot Nuts and Lollypops, which is quite poor quality. But not so poor as to make it impossible to make out these lyrics:
(NB: these are fairly explicit)

I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,
I got somethin’ between my legs’ll make a dead man come,
Oh daddy, baby won’t you shave ’em dry?
Aside: Now, draw it out!
Want you to grind me baby, grind me until I cry.
(Roland: Uh, huh.)
Say I fucked all night, and all the night before baby,
And I feel just like I wanna, fuck some more,
Oh great God daddy,
(Roland: Say you gonna get it. You need it.)
Grind me honey and shave me dry,
And when you hear me holler baby, want you to shave it dry.
I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,
Daddy you say that’s the kind of ’em you want, and you can make ’em come,
Oh, daddy shave me dry,
(Roland: She ain’t gonna work for it.)
And I’ll give you somethin’ baby, swear it’ll make you cry.
I’m gon’ turn back my mattress, and let you oil my springs,
I want you to grind me daddy, ’til the bell do ring,
Oh daddy, want you to shave ’em dry,
Oh great God daddy, if you can’t shave ’em baby won’t you try?
Now if fuckin’ was the thing, that would take me to heaven,
I’d be fuckin’ in the studio, till the clock strike eleven,
Oh daddy, daddy shave ’em dry,
I would fuck you baby, honey I’d make you cry.
Now your nuts hang down like a damn bell sapper,
And your dick stands up like a steeple,
Your goddam ass-hole stands open like a church door,
And the crabs walks in like people.
Aside: Ow, shit!
(Roland: Aah, sure enough, shave ’em dry?)
Aside: Ooh! Baby, won’t you shave ’em dry
A big sow gets fat from eatin’ corn,
And a pig gets fat from suckin’,
Reason you see this whore, fat like I am,
Great God, I got fat from fuckin’.
Aside: Eeeeh! Shave ’em dry
(Roland: Aah, shake it, don’t break it)
My back is made of whalebone,
And my cock is made of brass,
And my fuckin’ is made for workin’ men’s two dollars,
Great God, round to kiss my ass.
Aside: Oh! Whoo, daddy, shave ’em dry

As you can see, there are no punches pulled here. Any lindy hopper who pays attention knows that a fairly large proportion of jazz from the 20s and 30s in particular is decidedly saucy. Yet most of the sauce is veiled in innuendo or so reworked by the delivery it’s largely unrecognisable. As an example, the song ‘Hold Tight’ begins “I want some seafood, mamma…” later continues with the lyric “when I come home from work at night, I get my favourite dish – fish!” and has the chorus “hold tight, hold tight…I want some seafood mamma!” When Fats Waller sings the song, you’re well aware that this is not a song about culinary preferences. When the Andrews Sisters sang it, though, the song became a little more ambiguous.
I’m a fan of this sort of blues and jazz, more for the playfulness and irreverence than any naughty pleasure. I like the way sexuality and sensuality are satired, and we’re encouraged to laugh along. When it comes to blues dancing, which is frequently explicitly sensual, I like the edge a little humour lends to the dance, resolving the sexaul tension with humour.
Yet when I heard the new version of Bogan’s song was played at the party the other night, my response was a little different. To begin with, it’s worth pointing out the recording is live (or apparently so), to an enthusiastic audience who cheer along. The singer is a woman, and the lyrics are very clear. I’ve heard this song played a few times before, first by a woman DJ, and always in Melbourne. The crowd’s response was initially surprise and a little shock. By the time it was played at this late night party, however, many dancers were familiar with the song, and both the uninitiated and familiar ears responded with enthusiastic cheering and laughing. It’s also worth pointing out that late night parties are frequently more casual, more relaxed and social than more formal dances or competition events.
Despite the enthusiastic response for the song this weekend, I was left wondering if it was entirely appropriate to play the song at that moment. I think I would have left it a little later, when the room had thinned a little, and only the hardcore dancers were left. I saw a few people clearly offended by the lyrics. Particularly since the partner dancing encourages dancers to share their interpretation of the song in that moment, on the dance floor.
My own response, however, was to giggle and take more than a little delight in the obvious pleasure the vocalist takes in the lyric, melody and shouted chorus.
I haven’t the time here, but I would like to write a little about the way contemporary swing dancers use archival music and dance for self expression in social contexts. And to perhaps comment on the way race and ethnicity are played out in these settings.
So perhaps this post is really just to pose the question: how are swing dancers using seventy or eighty year old dances and songs for self expression, social commentary and communal creative work? And why