SwingDJs

I really like hearing and dancing with songs that have classical music in them. For example, Basie's "Ebony Rhapsody" uses the theme from Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. What songs that you know of have substantial bits of classical (sounding) music in them? Of course, Ellington did a ton of stuff like that, but not all of it is great for DJing. I'm looking for stuff that dancers and classical-music buffs would enjoy. Another one that I know of is "Bach Goes to Town" by Benny Goodman. Also, there's that Nina Simone tune that has a big section with classical piano, but I can never remember what it is.

We have a thread wondering what classical song Woody Herman's "Blues on Parade" riffs from.

Hi Mathew,

It's been a while, but about 3 or so years ago, I did an entire 2 hour swing radio show featuring classical music done in a swing style.

I'll have to dig up the play list from that.

But think - John Kirby. He had several things with his late 30s and early 40s group.

There is a CD out called 'Beethoven wrote it, but it swings'. I don't have the CD in front of me. This had about 20 or so tracks in this genre. I recall some of the tracks recording quality wasn't all that great.

Probably the most famous classical music turned to swing is Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Obviously the Ellington suite. Also Shorty Rogers has an entire LP (also on CD) of the Nutcracker.

My personal favorite version of Nutcracker is the Les Brown version. I can't recall the arranger off hand. That is not for dancing, but a fantastic arrangement for listening. It runs about 7 mins and is a true gem.

Also Claude Thornhill in the early 40s had Gil Evans as arranger and they produced some fine swing things from classical music.

During the early 60s, several L.A. staff writers did a entire LP of powerful big band arrangements. 'Brass Menagerie' is the name of the LP and also the CD. I seem to recall the CD is out of print. There is some classical turned hard swing on that recording.

In thinking more aloud, I have a new recording that came across my way recently by Chuck Sagle (sp?). This is a mid 60s studio band of top notch musicians. I seem to recall there is some classical to swing stuff on that. Chuck is not a household name, but was a great arranger in the L.A. area in the 50s and 60s.

If you do some research of studio bands in the 50s and into the 60s, there is a lot of great hard swinging things done to classical music. I now recall Billy May has a killer arrangement of March of the Toy Soldiers from The Nutcracker. Billy has an entire LP called 'Naughty Operetta' that has other classical to swing things in it. The CD has 2 LPs on it 'Naughty Operetta / Playsfor Fancy Dancing'.

I'll try to remember to pull my playlist from my radio shows and post the tracks I used.

You might want to look into Hazel Scott too.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=am ... djvwzva9uk

Jerry_Jelinek wrote:There is a CD out called 'Beethoven wrote it, but it swings'. I don't have the CD in front of me. This had about 20 or so tracks in this genre. I recall some of the tracks recording quality wasn't all that great.

That is the CD that came to my mind, too. It contains Benny Goodman's Swing version of "Bolero." Mostly novelty stuff, but still interesting. Goodman also did some of that stuff in his later years when he was actually playing classical music, as well.

Now in thinking about these tracks, many of them are not dance related. At least not lindy related dance things. But some fine performances.

Oddly I didn't use any John Kirby. Strange on my part. I must have had a brain freeze when programming this show.

Cool! Many thanks, all!

How about Les Brown's "Bizet Has His Day"?

Matthew wrote:Also, there's that Nina Simone tune that has a big section with classical piano, but I can never remember what it is.

I think you're talking about "Love Me Or Leave Me".

How about Django Reinhart's "Interprétation Swing du Premier Mouvement du Conceto en Ré Mineur" and "Improvisation Sur le Premier Mouvement du Concerto en Ré Mineur", both based on a J.S. Bach theme?

I was under the impression that Ellington had a swingin' arrangement of the entire Nutcracker Suite as well as some other additions.

Great for Xmas dances.

BigCash wrote:I was under the impression that Ellington had a swingin' arrangement of the entire Nutcracker Suite as well as some other additions.

Great for Xmas dances.

Great album indeed. Duke Ellington: Three Suites

It needs to be edited or faded in/out, but one of the very best is Ray Brown's "classical in G". It's on "3 dimensional" - a sweet album with Gene Harris and Jeff Hamilton.

This also fits into the tempo/dance change catagory: Blues->swing->blues

random bits and pieces i didn't see mentioned:

anitra's boogie (carmen cavallaro, who played classicaly for a long time)
bumble boogie (freddy martin)
sabre dance boogie (freddy martin -- don't know whether it's the same as the harry james version mentioned above)

all three can be found on bmg's "boogie woogie hits", which i'm afraid is out of print. freddy martin did a bunch of boogie woogie classical covers. amazon has one or two albums on backorder, but i don't know much about them.

harry james recorded a flight of the bumblebee, too, but it's not as "danceable" as the rest -- lots of big slow passages and tempo changes to drive you mad. i have it on some cheap compilation cd called, imaginatively, "the legendary big bands" (don't have it in front of me, so don't know the label).

finally, there's glenn miller's version of tchaikovsky's piano concerto, which cracks me up every time i hear it. (the jazz collector edition, delta).

Definitely Raymond Scott.

Hadda Brooks has a few songs he threw classical music into. Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in Boogie is pretty good. I got them off of the Boogie Box.