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It was supposed to be a small appearance in a small film. Hollywood scriptwriter Jon Favreau had been hanging out at the Derby, a retro-hipster hot spot in Los Angeles' Los Feliz district, and approached the house band with an offer to play in a few scenes. There wasn't much money at stake, but it seemed like fun, so they agreed. The movie's name was Swingers. The band was called Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. The year was 1996. Two years later, after the surprise success of the film, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy finds itself alongside Royal Crown Revue, Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Squirrel Nut Zippers, spearheading what some are calling a swing revival. Young cats enraptured with the past are on a sentimental journey; men don wide-shoulder suits and wingtip shoes, women curl their hair and lower their hemlines. It's a logical extension of the lounge music craze--fat cigars and cocktail bars are essential--but swing is more energetic than Esquivel, more American than exotica and tiki bars. Americans haven't always been so ready to jump and jive to horn music, however. When the band blew its first notes in 1992, the nation was buried deep in the muddy angst of grunge--hardly a good time to forward music that was slick, stylish and fun. "I don't think anyone had any idea what we were doing," says 34-year-old Kurt Sodergren, Big Bad Voodoo's drummer. "We dressed up in vintage suits. We had horns, stand-up bass, guitar, drums, it was really loud and exciting.... People went bananas, but they weren't expecting that, because the flavor of the day was Nirvana and Alice in Chains." Regardless of the reigning zeitgeist, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy began touring the West Coast, sometimes sharing a bill with the like-minded Royal Crown Revue. The Revue then scored a big label deal, forcing the band to abandon its regular Wednesday night slot at the Derby; the Voodoo Dads slipped in to fill the Revue's shoes. Then came Swingers, national attention, fame, dames, the whole nine yards. Rolling along like a pair of dice that always comes up sevens, the Voodoo Dads released their eponymous major-label debut in January. It features a dozen ditties sure to get your toes tapping, even if your brain stopped working after the last gin and tonic. All but one of the compositions (Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher") are originals, fleshed out with the arranging smarts of Tonight Show vet Tom Peterson. Though it takes cues from the past, it's undeniably a product of the late '90s: The smooth moves speak more of glitzy, modern-day L.A. than the grimy world of L.A. Confidential. But has the new trendiness of swing soured what was once sweet? Not entirely, says Sodergren. "For us it's just growing pains.... There's always been great underground places. A lot of times they get blown out of the water by something like this. But I don't blame it on the scene, and I think [Swingers] is a great movie." There are several reasons for neo-swing's ascent from underground to über-hip status. For starters, retro-happy Gen-Xers with a love of old fashion modes (and a myopic view of musical history) latched onto the gut-bucket grooves and killer-diller dressiness. The record companies, eager to market a movement that had its own self-contained style (no spendy image makeovers required) and avoided controversial politics (no costly lawsuits), rounded up the leaders and signed 'em on the dotted line. In the case of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, that line belonged to Coolsville/EMI-Capitol. Yet Sodergren maintains there's more than meets the eye in the zoot-suit-riot rage; he insists it goes beyond dandy threads and fedora-capped heads. "The swing scene has a lot of things going for it," he says. "Number one, I think, is that men and women love to dance together.... We hope what we're doing isn't just revamping swing music. We aren't trying to play what [old-time swing musicians] played, because they were the best. We want to take it a step further and have our own voice." As for the band's film-noir fashion sense, Sodergren explains, "The reason we wear suits is for the show--it certainly isn't comfortable in the middle of the summer wearing a wool suit. But I think the music almost demands that you show it that kind of respect. I never thought of it in a vain sense, but as a tip of the hat to the masters.... I don't dress like that all the time." And what if the swing thing loses its luster? What then for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy? "We've always been prepared to play for a room with maybe two or three people who just didn't like it, but it's never happened. Every single time we play, we win the crowd over," Sodergren says. "Scenes come and go, but bands emerge from scenes a lot. There are great bands that are gonna have longevity even after the scene dies." |
