SwingDJs

Alright, so in my love for swing dancing and the fact that we had no volunteers, I chose to be a dj for small Jack n jill my club will hold in a few weeks. I have a very few swing collection but I was wondering if u guys could give me advice on the tempo of the lindy music I should play and what tracks to use. I have found a lot of the ones from the ILHC competitions but I want to get a feel from you guys.
it has to be swing music, med tempo and i think anytime between 30' and mid50's should do fine....

suggestions and advice greatly appreciated!

There are a few threads already on competition music that are worth your time (http://www.swingdjs.com/phpbb2/viewtopi ... ompetition and http://www.swingdjs.com/phpbb2/viewtopi ... ompetition are good places to start--there are more).

It's hard to recommend things without knowing the level of the dancers you expect to draw and the tempo of music they are used to dancing to. "Medium tempo" isn't a very well-defined term.

I suggest playing things that are:
a) about the same tempo as you would play at a dance, for the dancers that are entered (so if only the best dancers enter, your tempos can be more extreme)
b) are familiar--overplayed, even, if you will
c) have no distracting breaks (you want a constant pulsing rhythm, especially if you end up doing spotlights)

Some suggestions:
"Lavender Coffin", Lionel Hampton, 134 bpm
"Jumpin' at the Savoy", Al Cooper, 146 bpm
"Shout 'em Aunt Tillie", Duke Elington, 158 bpm
"Joshua Fit de Battle o' Jericho", Sidney Bechet, 180 bpm
"Flying Home", Lionel Hampton, 197 bpm

I am DJing a competition tonight (which includes a JnJ) so can give my thoughts. The first thing I would do is talk to the organisers/judges to see what format for the competition they want to use. The standard way we run them here in Australia is to have all skates to various tempos for the heats and then have spotlights and an all skate for the final. We generally have three songs of three different tempos for the heat all skates and paly approx 1 minute of the song. As a rough guide these are around 140bpm, 160bpm and 180bpm. Then for the spotlights for the final I use around the 180bpm with 190bpm the final all skate. These tempos would be adjusted up or down depending on the level of the dancers.
I try to use traditional swinging music that is generally jazz format (4 eights per phrase) with straight forward bridges if present.
As already suggested for the competition you describe I would stick with stuff they are already familar with.
If there are only a small number of competitors you can run just a straight final and use the same format as I describe for the heats (and maybe have more rotations).