Yes. One thing that rarely gets noted in these Jesse-bashing/defending threads is that Jesse was a huge Neo Swing fan until he moved to San Fran and started DJing at the 9:20 for... Paul Overton. Jesse's style changed dramatically thereafter.Roy wrote:Another point, a few years back many dj's were trying to emulate Paul Overton, I think many DJ's still do and just don't know it. Look at his 25 reccomended CD list. It came out well before Jessie ever got popular many of those CD's are still staples in many new DJ's 1st 100 purchased CD's.
Paul probably did more to allow Lindy Hop to evolve beyond Swing Era music than any other single DJ. He "re-discovered" New Testament Basie (brought it to the Lindy world), which replaced the Benny Goodman and Les Brown that most DJs were playing (when they weren't playing Royal Crown Revue and Brian Setzer, that is). I also remember when Ben from Seattle (Julie Hamburg's husband) came to Chicago a year or two later (1998ish) and played this "new sound" of Oscar-Petersonesque, small-band jazz combo music that Overton was playing in San Fran (the "roots" of playing Groove swing in the Lindy world). I agreed with my fellow Chicagoeans back then that it wouldn't go anywhere because it wasn't "suited" to "real" Lindy Hop.
But I tried it, adapted to it, and played it more and more. Within a year, this heretofore "unauthentic" swing music became my favorite Lindy Hop music. Which, again, gets back to the original point: close your tastes about "the stuff you don't like" and you and the dancers you serve might just become redundant. Open them a bit, and you might surprise even yourself.
I figure he doesn't come out to the west coast that often so I can get away with it.
