Week two of the 100 most DJ’d Blues Tracks series! The list is growing… enjoy!
Author: <span>Andy</span>
As we have at least ten weeks of lockdown to enjoy, it occurred to me to do a series of posts of my most-DJ’d music – so I’m starting a weekly series of posts, where each week I’ll post another ten tracks from my most-played list. Here’s the first ten swing tracks to get things started.
As we have at least ten weeks of lockdown to enjoy, it occurred to me to do a series of posts of my most-DJ’d music in both swing and blues– so I’m starting a weekly series of posts, where each week I’ll post another ten tracks from my most-played lists. Here’s the first ten blues tracks to get things started.
There’s a lot of great jump blues songs out there, and some fantastic ones for swing DJing. I’ve been listening to these two a lot recently, and felt inclined to dig into and share why I love them so much.
This year marked my third year DJing at the wonderful Chase Festival, and my second as DJ coordinator. As ever, I had an absolutely blast.
This set list was requested by a few people – and please accept my apologies for posting a little later than I’d intended.
This year, there were two fantastic Chase after-parties, on the Friday and Saturday nights, and to cut a long story short, on one of the late night venues, while a Lindy room was rocking it upstairs, downstairs some blues happened. I’d had a small equipment crisis, and mislaid some of my sound gear – luckily it was found the following day – so I was DJing “blind” – and couldn’t preview anything. This set, in consequence, consisted of a whole bunch of my blues favourites – so there will be some overlap with earlier setlists, but I hope you all find it useful nonetheless. Enjoy!
Since I made the re-edited version of the Hellzapoppin’ dance scene – the greatest swing dance scene ever to grace the cinema screen, Atilio Menéndez has found, and generously made available, an incredible high definition version of the scene – and it looks absolutely beautiful. The frame rate is better too, which means it feels far smoother, as well as looking far more detailed.
Of course – it probably goes without saying that I had to repeat the rephrasing exercise. I quickly realised that there were places I could improve on what I’d done last time – and I hope I’ve done it better justice than before.
Do people clapping on the One and Three drive you crazy? If so, hold on to your horses, because I might be about to ruin Hellzapoppin’ for you. Don’t worry though. I promise I’ll make things right again.
For the benefit of new dancers, if you aren’t familiar with Hellzapoppin’, it’s the most iconic of all the vintage Lindy Hop clips. Choreographed by Frankie Manning, performed by Whitey’s Lindy in the movie Hellzapoppin’ – it is an electrifying, high energy, lightning-fast routine that many of us can never tire of watching. There’s a lot been written about it – I’d recommend reading this article on Yehoodi if you want to know more. If you haven’t read Frankie’s autobiography – Ambassador for Lindy Hop, do read it – it’s a great book, and he gives a fascinating, in-depth account of how the routine came to be filmed.
Still with me? I think this all got started when I tried using Hellzapoppin’ in one of my music talks, to illustrate how dancers could use the musical phrasing to structure their dancing. I realised it didn’t quite seem to fit with the musical structure in the way I’d expected – all the solo sections were the right length, but didn’t seem to begin and end at the expected points in the music.
More recently, in my post-Big-Apple editing frenzy, I started looking again at Hellzapoppin’, debating whether to commit utter heresy try and change the phrasing, when I realised that after her epic between-the-legs slide, when Ann Johnson scoots back again towards Frankie…
She is clapping. On one, three and five. Let that sink in for a second. Ann Johnson. The Ann Johnson. Frankie’s dance partner, Ann Johnson. Clapping on the odd beats. This couldn’t possibly be right.
When I first saw that, something inside me died a little… and a new editing project was born.
Well – I’d sworn I was done with the Big Apple edits.
However…
You know how it is – the more you look at something, the more you see the imperfections – and having done the original audio sync videos, I was starting to see some really strange things. To cut to the chase – they made me realise I’d not done a good enough job. So here’s two much better versions. I hesitate to call them the final ones, but I very much hope they are.