swing slate 7: Frankie's music moments

Chick Webb - Frankie's favourite resident orchestra leader at the Savoy Ballroom

I recently read Frankie's autobiography and it's a cracking read for anyone who wants to get a better idea of the history of Lindy hop as well as the life of its greatest exponent (and thanks to Scott Magowan for lending me it!) but it also listed a few tracks that were especially prominent in Frankie's memories so I have taken seven of them and have provided a little explanation for why they featured.

• Christopher Columbus • Although Frankie started his dancing career at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem it was at the Savoy Ballroom where things really took off and he recalls that, every Saturday when the dance contests were in full swing, 'Christopher Columbus' was the tune regularly chosen by the orchestra leader. The orchestra was usually one of the house bands who don't appear to be on youtube but in this instance I suppose we'll just have to make do with a version by the King of Swing himself, Benny Goodman.

• Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie • As a great example of kind of rarefied air that Frankie was breathing on a regular basis, he witnessed numerous "Battle of Bands" in the Savoy between some of the luminaries of the Swing Era. Count Basie and Benny Goodman (along with Gene Krupa) occasionally played in the Savoy but in Frankie's mind at least, no one out-swung Chick Webb, and 'Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie' was one of Chick's most swingin'est tunes.

• Down South Camp Meeting • Frankie shaped Lindy hop in a way like no one else: the crouched posture, breaks, and ensemble routines amongst other things were all his creation but it is air steps for which he is best known and it was during a dance contest at the Savoy where he and Frieda Washington first debuted the revolutionary pattern and 'Down South Camp Meeting' was the tune, played specially by Chick Webb, that accompanied them. Again, I can't find any record of Chick's version so heeeeeere's Benny!

• Posin' • As I have just said, Frankie also introduced 'breaks' into Lindy hop by freezing on a natural pause in the rhythm until the music picked up again and he recalls that Jimmy Lunceford's record 'Posin'' was the one that first gave him the inspiration.

• Stompy Jones • Frankie's first ever stage show happened to coincide with a one-week residency of Duke Ellington. He remembers being reduced to a shivering wreck at the thought of performing with a jazz legend already in his prime and when he arrived at rehearsals and witnessed every other act handing music over to 'the Duke' when he had none to give it didn't help allay any fears of being found out for being an amateur! When asked for music suggestions, Frankie offered a few more familiar Chick Webb tunes as he was unaware of Duke's reputation for rarely playing the work of other musicians but in the end they settled on Stompy Jones and as you can well imagine, Frankie made it work.

•  Every Tub • Frankie confessed that, sometimes, he just liked to show off and two of his favourite records for doing that were 'Jumpin' at the Woodside' or 'Every Tub' by Count Basie. Woodside gets a lot of airtime so in this instance I have plumped for the other one!

• Shiny Stockings • And finally, I couldn't possibly make a mini music playlist about Frankie if it didn't include his favourite record of all time: 'Shiny Stockings' by Count Basie.

the music, part I: east coast swing & lindy hop

Buddy Holly & the Crickets performing on the Ed Sullivan Show; 1st December, 1957

As I said before, it's one thing to just listen to the music but it's a whole other ball game when you can feel it and, for me, that's one of the biggest reasons I love swing dancing so much - lindy hop/east coast swing and west coast swing both. In fact, that's probably the main reason I got into swing dancing in the first place.

Like most people, my early music tastes were influenced by my parents and what they had playing in our house when I was growing up. This music ranged from Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, Rod Stewart and ABBA to Kenny Rogers, Foster & Allen and Daniel O'Donnell depending on who held sway on the radio at that moment or the level of punishment to be meted out. I even had a few records of my own including the evergreen soundtracks to Postman Pat, Winnie the Pooh and the Jungle Book, but it was a cassette tape (link added for the benefit of some) with the greatest hits of Buddy Holly & the Crickets that really grabbed me.

The Buddy Holly Story the musical hit Belfast not long after and I think I went to see it at least four times as I just couldn't get enough of it, and so Buddy, along with the help of the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, introduced me to rock'n'roll. This was at a time when my mates were listening to Guns'n'Roses, Coolio and Ace of Base and though I also soon succumbed to the lure of New Kids on the Block (who, interestingly enough, were the reason I decided to try breakdancing) I've always had a thing for older up-tempo rhythms and a craving to dance to them.

Rock'n'Roll remains my favourite music to dance to, as the playlist attached to this blog may suggest, and if you can hack the pace then Little Richard, Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and company just can't be beaten for fun. In fact, east coast swing was a product of this era as it was developed to accommodate the faster rhythms and to make swing dancing more accessible to the masses as the trickier parts of lindy hop, most significantly the 8-beat swing-out, were dropped to leave the simpler moves which then became a dancing style in its own right.

East Coast Swing was particularly championed by the Arthur Murray Studios - a chain of dance schools across the USA that is responsible for the 'Big Apple' routine and others, and incidentally provided a venue for some of the only live footage that still exists of a performance by Buddy Holly & the Crickets - and as the music took off so did the new dancing style.

Lindy Hop, however, is most famously danced to tunes from the Swing Era of the 20s-30s when the Big Band jazz bands, led by the likes of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, and Duke Ellington, played an upbeat blend of percussion, brass and woodwind with vocals by Ella Fitzgeralds and Billie Holidays laced on top. But, as much as I adore rock'n'roll, there are few things that can top dancing to a great live band playing the best the Swing Era has to offer and I have to give a special mention to Dana Masters & the Linley Hamilton Quartet who, to date, played the best gig I've ever swung at!

I don't really need to point it out but long before rock'n'roll arrived on the scene the Swing Era music produced plenty of fast music that got lindy hoppers up and popping (and all power to you if you can manage to stay on the dance floor without a defibrillator for the entirety of Benny Goodman's full 12-minute Carnegie Hall version of Sing, Sing, Sing with Gene Krupa going buck daft on the drums) but it is the slower, pulsing rhythms of Big Band music that really lend themselves to amazing lindy hop dancing.

I also couldn't possibly finish this post without mentioning electroswing. Generally, it is not for the faint-hearted - Sing Sing Sing clocks in around 110bpm (beats per minute), Jerry Lee Lewis' Great Balls of Fire burns nearer to 160bpm, but my favourite electroswing offering, Puttin' on the Ritz by Club des Belugas, rockets along at around 200bpm and will blow your mind and/or joints. This stuff is incredible for the odd dance here and there (not for a whole night, that would kill people) but electroswing, as part of the nu-jazz revival that started in the 90s, must be given a lot of credit for the re-emergence of swing dancing and therefore the amazing scene that we have today.

Next up, music for west coast swing...