Swingin' Back In Style
Swing Music Is Gaining New Momentum In Dallas

It's 8:30 p.m. and 100 degrees in Dallas on a Wednesday night—not a night usually packed full of club-goers. But at the Jet Lounge in Deep Ellum there are already 50 or 60 people crowded into one tiny space—the dance floor. They're taking swing dancing lessons. And down the street at the Sons of Hermann Hall, there are about 100 kids taking lessons too. Every night of the week, Dallas-area clubs are getting into the swing of things.

It could be the 1930s or 40s. People are dressed to the hilt in vintage clothes, from dual-toned wingtips and zoot suits, silk stockings and garter belts. Gentlemen dress and act like gentlemen. Ladies dress and act like ladies. A few have cocktails in their hands, most have bottles of water. They aren't here to drink and pick up someone.

They're here to dance, to swing.

Swing music and dancing that began in the late 1920s, and was popularized in the 1930s and 1940s has been coming back in style for about three to four years now. It's the music of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway (and many others) that emerged as an escape from the misery of the Great Depression and World War II. It's music that my grandparents grew up with; music that gets your heart pounding, toes tapping, head bobbing, body wiggling; music that you just can't help but dance to.

"WHAT IS THE THING THAT PUT THE SWING BACK INTO SWING?"

Maybe it was Hollywood that brought it back in style with the movies "Swingers" and "Swing Kids." However, there have always been people who love the music, who love to dance--people like Brian Hurley, lead singer for The Lakewood Rats; and Cason Pilliod, who teaches swing lessons at the Jet Lounge; and the many others who live this swingin' lifestyle.

The resounding answer to why swing is backin a big way is that it's fun. "Everybody wants to have fun, everybody wants to enjoy the dancing," said Hurley. "Everybody really enjoys what's going on with the scene."

According to Johnny Reno, lead singer for Johnny Reno & the Lounge Kings, "It's fun… It's based around the social interaction of dancing as couples. Musically, people are sick of the rock and roll that has such negative connotations."

And there's definitely nothing negative about this stuff. "It's fun to dance, to get out and hear the music," said Hurley. "You cannot be in a bad mood when you're hearing swing. It's bright. It's happy. It's exciting."

Craig Vaught, one of the owners of the Jet Lounge (and The Harder Bar on Lower Greenville), thinks that there's a good reason why this was so popular then and now-—"it's such great music," he said. "It gets the crowd involved and it's exciting. There's a lot of energy to it."

Possibly, the popularity could be attributed to America's love of anything old. "It's been a long enough period of time that a lot of these people don't know anything about it, so it's all new to them, and therefore, it's exciting," said Vaught. "And it is new, even though it's old, it's vintage."

"We [Americans] love nostalgia!" said Georgie Bond, guitarist for The Lakewood Rats.

"MAN, THOSE CATS SWING"

Cary Richards, deejay for the big band radio station 620 KAAM and bandleader for his own orchestra, thinks the Dallas movement started with Johnny Reno and the Lounge Kings. "He tweaked his style subtly from lounge to swing," said Richards. Johnny Reno and the Lounge Kings (Sam Swank on guitar; Alan Pollard on vibraphone; Aden Bubeck, bass player; Eric Scortia, organist; and Jeff Howe on drums) have been playing Thursday nights at the Red Jacket on Lower Greenville for two years. Swing night is always packed, with a line wrapping around the building, and the club even opened up another room to provide more dance space.

Reno, a saxophonist himself, has listened to swing and jazz for a long time. "As a musician," he said, "you have to find a historical point of reference for what you do, your instrument." Unlike a rock band who can get together without a hint of talent and have a gig in three months, "there's a certain level of ability that you have to have to play this kind of music," said Reno.

The Lakewood Rats, named for a 1930s street gang, have been playing since January. Hurley started out as a dancer and then, after seeing some San Francisco bands that played mostly cover tunes, he decided to start a band. He thought, "I can write songs that good;" songs that are "as catchy as some of the classics and use the 1940s style with a new twist."

And he does—there's not one cover tune in their repertoire. Band members include George "Georgie" Bond on guitar; David "Blackie" Graham on string bass; Marcus Wolfe, Jeff Fort and Frank Brasile on saxophone; Matt Hitti on trumpet; Hiro the Hero on piano; and Jeff Barbian on drums.

Bond is "the surgeon who helps [Hurley] pull the tunes from my head and put them on paper," said Hurley. "We work through me humming tunes to him and occasionally thumping on guitar or keyboard, while he writes down my ideas on paper." Hurley describes his music as "a lot more aggressive. It's not Benny Goodman. We borrow from that style but it's more aggressive, more 'in your face'—the saxes… the beat is more constant." They're a dance band, not just a swing band.

"It's the dancers—the "kids" (15-years-old to 40) that come out—-they're the reason we play, why we have a band," said Hurley. "They're the reason all this goes on. They're so dedicated to spreading this around."

"LOOK AT THAT KID WITH GREASE IN HIS HAIR, GIRLIES IN FLASH PANTS WHIRL IN THE AIR"

To see these "kids" dancing, one would think they've been dancing their entire lives. Some dance every night. They're the "swing set." And most have only been dancing for a few years. Beth Worley, who teaches swing lessons with Cason Pilliod at the Jet Lounge on Wednesday nights, has always loved the music but has only been dancing since last September and teaching for two months.

"It's just something I jumped into," she said. Worley had never danced before in her life. "I didn't want to dance on my own and just twist around. I didn't feel comfortable with it." A friend took her to a swing night and "it turned from a hobby into an obsession really quickly," she said. "Having this more structured, but still real informal, street dance is really fun." She thinks the resurgence is "cool because it makes it a lot more accessible," she said. "You can swing any night of the week and go anywhere for it."

Her dance partner, Pilliod, took a "bad ballroom class" at Southwestern University about four years ago. After improving his dance technique in Austin, he moved to Dallas. Because he knows an unusual dance called the Shim Sham, he started teaching and "it naturally evolved" into teaching swing.

He has always loved the music too. "In the grand scale of things, I think it's [swing] a good thing," said Pilliod, who enjoys being able to teach and encourage people who actually enjoy something that he enjoys.

Stephen Sanchez and Kelley Pittman teach dance lessons at Cherrilane School of Dance in Lakewood. Sanchez began dancing with his mother. Then, while in college in North Carolina, he started listening to his friend's albums, watching the dancing and picking up the moves on his own. He met Pilliod who began teaching him other steps and has been dancing for about a year and a half.

Pittman has been dancing for about eight months and met Sanchez when she first started dancing. She teaches ballet, tap and jazz and in a past dance recital, they performed a swing dance which was so popular that the dance school now offers swing lessons.

These four aren't the only "swing kids" in Dallas. Also known as "alligators," possibly "because they consume the music with a voracious appetite" (from "Swing Jive Talkin'"), they attend the clubs almost every night. Everybody is dressed up, most are "dressed authentically and spend a lot of time and money," said Hurley.

"JUMP, JIVE AN' WAIL"

The Red Jacket had the first swing night in Dallas. Now other clubs are jumping on the band wagon. Places like the Jet Lounge, Sons of Hermann Hall, and the Velvet Hammer, among others, have swing nights a couple of nights a week. The Sand Castle Lounge and Casino, across town from Lower Greenville and Deep Ellum, is the only club in town that is completely dedicated to swing. All provide free swing lessons.

"If you reinforce the entertainment with some lessons, the people don't just sit there, or they don't feel awkward," said Vaught. "It kind of bridges the gap so it gets them involved which creates more of an environment, more atmosphere, more energy in the room."

About half the people at the clubs are really into the movement, others because it's the new, cool thing. Just like any new thing, it could be intimidating for people to go out and dance to something that they have never done before, especially with the "swing kids" in the room.

But it's not intimidating at all. The dancers want everyone to learn and enjoy themselves. According to Beth, "people are more prone to dance because it is a lot easier. You don't have to go to a studio and take lessons. You can just go to a bar and listen to some music and learn to dance. It's a more casual thing."

Swing dancing is based on a six-count beat around a few basic steps. Master the basics and the rest just happens. "It's pretty easy once you get down the basics to feel like you really know what you're doing," said Worley. "There's really nothing to it if you can count, even if you're not that coordinated. I never thought I was that coordinated between my hands and my feet, but it's really pretty simple… and there's so many people around that nobody's watching you if you feel goofy," she said.

"It's something that I've noticed is real simple to catch on to," said Vaught. "It's a fairly easy dance, or if you know a few steps, you're pretty much in there and can have a good time with it. That makes it real easy to introduce to people."

Pilliod got some of his moves from mistakes he made. Improvisation is part of it--just get out on the floor, your body knows what to do. That's why there are so many variations to swing dancing that originated in different regions of the country.

The original swing dance is the Lindy Hop, named for Charles Lindbergh's solo "hop" across the Atlantic. It started in the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in the late 1920s and is a form of East Coast Swing. The West Coast also developed its own form of swing dancing. There's the Jitterbug, the Jive and the Charleston. There's bar-room dancing and ballroom dancing. There are turns, flips and aerials. And the joints are definitely jumpin'.

"THE JOINT IS JUMPIN'"

As the evening progresses at the Jet Lounge, attendance surges to 250-300 people. "Swing night is so popular that it rivals any other night of the week," said Craig Vaught. And it gets more and more crowded every week.

People dance wherever they can find a spot -- in the back by the pool tables, in the doorway, on the steps and raised platforms. Some are even practicing in the street. They dance even when the music isn't playing. Red Jacket and the other clubs are packed as well.

There are quite a few things that make the swing movement unique. Jeff Howe, drummer for The Lounge Kings, is surprised that the movement is so huge. He hasn't seen this many people get dressed up to go out since the early 1980s. Everybody always wants to have fun, but this -- this is an enlightening, return-to-values sort of thing. It is like "safe sex" -- the intention is to dance, not go home with somebody. There is a return to romance where the guys are gentlemen and the gals are ladies.

"It's very refreshing to see the young kids now having the etiquette that they have and display in here," said Vaught. "We thought we'd have a problem with underage drinking. There's not a problem with that. They're not here to drink, they are here to dance and have fun and it's refreshing to see that they can have fun by just doing that," he said. ("You can't drink and dance!" said Pilliod.)

And it's not just young people who frequent the clubs. These "kids" range in age from 15 to 80. According to Howe, a drummer who used to play with Harry James' orchestra and is in his eighties often visits the Red Jacket. Other patrons were young kids when this music was still new. And those, like myself, grew up with it thanks to our parents' influence. "It's a great mix [of people]," said Vaught.

According to Hurley, who often travels to hear different bands, "You can have friends instantly."

The swing movement is picking up the tempo every night and is as hot as the Texas summer. "I think that it'll get crazily popular and then settle down to a core group -- just like with any genre of music," said Hurley. But he also thinks that the whole generation that is graduating from high school right now will stick with it because of the energy, the excitement.

"Nostalgia brings back a value that people have been longing for in their life," he said.

Or maybe it's just a longing for some good, American hoofin' music and some good, clean fun. Whatever it is, people seem to be "In The Mood" for it.

"It's real easy to get hooked," said Worley. "Even if you're just showing up to see what it's about, like I did, it can become really addictive."

Finally. An addiction that is anything but dangerous.

Special Thanks To:
Brian Hurley and The Lakewood Rats
Johnny Reno & The Lounge Kings
Craig, Kevin & Brian at the Jet Lounge
Cason, Beth, Kelley, and Stephen
Everyone at the Red Jacket
Nick Alexander at Big Shots