SwingDJs

Wow, I have a Maxine Sullivan/Scott Hamilton CD that I disliked. Swingin Sweet from 1988, I believe. I didn't find anything worth playing.

Jerry, instead of trying to understand why your selections aren't good for dancing, maybe it'll help to see some selections that ARE good for dancing. I'm too lazy to post clips, though. You'll have to find the clips on Amazon or something. Here are ten 50's/60's big band songs, all instrumentals, a...

The last info I had was to contact her via email:
jennie@lobel.nu

I thought Patrik would jump in here for sure.

Same with lindy songs. It peeves me to watch the floor undergo some hivemind seizure just because a break occurs in the song. Hitting a break doesn't necessarily involve stopping nor does it have to be everyone at once. Kalman Seriously. It's good to honor a break (do something to acknowledge you n...

Doug- Interesting. I just spent a lot of time comparing "Jersey Bounce" (135 BPM) from "B.G. in Hi-Fi" versus the classic version in Frankie's Favorites. They are fundamentally the same song and arrangement. There are a few minor changes, and certainly the jazz solos are differen...

I just traded some songs with Bernard from Toulouse. Did you all know that the number one spot in France for Lindy is Toulouse? Anyway, I got some great songs by Scandanavia and other European artists. Some of this may be obscure, but tight jazz playing is clearly not limited to the American contine...

So Jesse, are you specifically saying that about the "B.G. in Hi-Fi" album? I don't hear the weird echo on those recordings that I do on other hi-fi recordings, I hear the same arrangements and I hear tight playing and good soloing. What makes the songs inferior, and how inferior are they?...

Ah, now you've gone from saying "most dancers" to "the dancers that travel to other cities..." which I think we can all agree isn't "most". And what I'm talking about is not noticing the difference between a 225 BPM song and a 140 BPM song. It's being able to articulate...

Also, I have to disagree with another post, that Mora's isn't cheesy. I think a lot of their vocal songs are very cheesy. So when I spin Mora's, I rarely if ever play the vocal songs. They make me cringe, it's something about the over-exagerated delivery, I think.

Well, I definitely prefer, and I think a lot of dancers prefer, high-fidelity recordings. So I don't necessarily agree that the performance almost always trumps the recording quality. But just because something is high-fidelity doesn't make it good, as these 50's clips show. What makes them poor is ...

Yeah right, Jeremy! Why would the average dancer have any clue as to what BPM a particular song is? They might hear a fast song and think "too fast, I think I'll sit this one out", not "it's above 175, I think I'll sit this one out". Give me a break. I mean, do you think dancers ...

A few of you might have received copies of the remastered version of George Gee's Buddha Boogie. What did you think? I couldn't hear much difference, the remastered version is perhaps a little crisper. But remastered or not, I was reminded by listening to the CD and reading my old review why I didn'...

Matt - I just bought Amazing Slow Downer as well, after I received some cool modified songs. I haven't tried it much. But I was very impressed with the quality of the songs she sent me. Before when I'd tried to edit songs to slow/speed up the song without changing the pitch, I noted that they sounde...

How does a DJ please the dancers? I've heard you're supposed to read the crowd, but are there hints/tricks for successful crowd reading? I DJ a dance where there are a wide variety of dancers (skill level and swing dance preference, whether it's ecs, lindy, bal, blues, etc). Do you read by looking ...