Full Swing : Taking the Best of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s--Dance, Drink and Dress--the Trendy Create Their Own Version of the American Dream

Fads are not born, but rediscovered

--Rolf Meyersohn and Elihu Katz, sociologists

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The big, bad turntables are made for bass-in- your-face sound. But deejay Dean Miller has something else in mind for the Technics 1200s in the back of the notorious Viper Room. He throws down a little Count Basie. Then Duke Ellington takes over the wheels of steel. Glenn Miller gets his shot at the Tech 12s too.

It’s dance music, ‘30s and ‘40s style.

The star-studded crowd (co-owner Johnny Depp is here; so is Christina Applegate and members of Counting Crows) approves. This is perhaps the most shamelessly trendy scene in town, what with all the cigar clippers snipping, Mary Janes shuffling and martinis clinking. And the trendy from L.A. to London now ordain that swing is king. Not just swing, however, but all things hip that emanate from America’s romance decades surrounding the second world war.

At the Viper, the Pussy Cat Dolls also entertain the packed black sweatbox of a club with burlesque--garters, slips and leg kicks. Men leer like pervs in a porn booth. Then half a dozen couples knowledgeable in the steps of swing move to Miller’s music as the rest of the club watches with envy.

“Swing,” explains patron Sayzie Koldys, 21, “is dirty dancing with class.”

It is, of course, a selective memory that brings us here. There is no mention of economic depression, war rationing, missing servicemen or polio. The good times are peeled off the World War II era like so many pepperonis off a pizza. And the party-goers know it. They mix the best of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s for their own version of the American Dream. There’s swing dancing and rockabilly music. Zoot suits and Ray-Bans. Burlesque and big bands.

“They pick and choose the most romantic and elegant aspects of that time,” says deejay Miller.

And so from coast to coast, especially L.A., San Francisco and New York (and across the way in London), swing, salsa, mambo, rockabilly, burlesque and the fashions that accompany these relatively ancient subcultures have made a comeback over the last year. Swing and salsa dance classes are packed. Big bands like L.A.’s Royal Crown Revue are booked. Secondhand shops are picked clean. And spots from San Francisco’s historic Bimbo’s 365 Club to New York’s Playland park are swingin’.

“It’s building across the country,” says Miller, 35.

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In L.A., few spots represent this nostalgia as well as the Derby, a 1929 Los Feliz landmark built by legendary filmmaker Cecil B. De Mille. Here, every Saturday night feels like V.E. Day as capacity crowds twirl to the sounds of the seven-piece Royal Crown Revue.

Under the breathtaking wooden dome, amid velvet booths and under old-time star shots salvaged from storage, it seems as if everyone is in character. A young man actually says, “Excuse me, sir,” as he squeezes through the crowd. Other words that recall an earlier era are spoken: cat, kitten, looker, daddy-o . . . .

When asked what attracts them to this 10,000-square-foot time warp, scenesters invariably say romance.

“It’s totally romantic,” says 24-year-old Mela (Frankie) Frankfort, dressed in a ‘40s-era black-and-flowers cruise-liner dress.

“It’s the fact that you can tell the difference between a man and a woman for a change,” says 27-year-old swing dance instructor Pinki Marsolek. “It takes you back to a time when things were glamorous.”

“It’s easier to meet people here, because everyone comes to dance,” says John Morris, 25, who looks and dresses a little like Harry Connick Jr.

Or, as Jennifer (Cookie) Hoffeld, puts it: “Asking a woman to dance is an easier pickup line for a guy.”

“I love it,” adds a friend, “that people can come together without feeling propositioned.”

As people chat and drink Cosmopolitans (vodka with Triple Sec, lime juice and cranberry juice) in the Judy Garland room, others dance in the ballroom to the “jump blues” sound of Royal Crown, which is part Stray Cats, part Sinatra.

It’s a dance floor that, in the beginning, has seen the feet of Ginger Rogers, Garland, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn, and nowadays knows the toes of Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Robert Duvall and Shannen Doherty.

In 1940, after more than 10 years as a nightspot, the building was taken over by the Brown Derby restaurant chain. It prospered as an eatery for 20 years. After that, the place wilted as a restaurant until current owner Tammi Gower discovered it in 1989.

“It was in total disrepair,” she says--void of its vintage furniture, subdivided into cheesy banquet rooms, and with its famed dome covered over by a suspended ceiling. When it reopened in 1993, some say, Gower helped to bring swing back to life in Los Angeles.

“When I walked into it, I thought this could be a club that has all those elements that are missing in clubs today,” says Gower (age: “not important”), who helped organize concert tours before opening the club. “I wanted it to be a place where you could talk to someone just to talk, not to pick up on them.”

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Of course, before the Derby opened, things were pointing the way of nostalgia anyway. Tony Bennett found new stardom among young people. Rockabilly began a slow comeback. And clubbers were beginning to mellow out, fueling a lounge scene, or, as Miller puts it, a “cocktail nation.”

Miller, L.A.’s king of swing (he organizes nostalgia nights at the Derby, the Viper Room and Cafe Largo on Fairfax), says, “I think cocktail nation will eventually go away and it will be all swing music.”

In L.A., the Atlas Bar & Grill on Wilshire, Union on Sunset and Club Mambo in West L.A. also have nostalgic swing or salsa nights. Gower says she has had offers to open Derby clubs in London and Geneva, but “I haven’t made a decision yet.” Miller just bought a spot, the Vine Street Bar and Grill, that he plans to turn into a ‘30s-style jazz club.

Some fans and experts explain this enthusiasm for the past under the decade-du-jour theory. That is, popular culture today is nothing more than a product of historical shopping that author Douglas Coupland termed “decade blending.” Thus the ‘70s redux of recent years, or the ‘80s music nostalgia that seems to be creeping into our consciousness of late (with “greatest hits” albums already with us).

“We don’t have a culture of our own,” says Koldys at the Viper, “so we look to the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s and try to make it new.”

“We’re at the end of the 20th Century and we have theoretically exhausted everything possible--we’ve over-created,” says Todd Boyd, a popular culture expert based at USC. “So the only thing we can do is go back to the past and recycle elements of popular culture.”

“We’re constantly trying to put on the clothes of a different era without paying attention to the historical context,” laments Boyd, a professor of critical studies. “We have interest in history only to the extent that it serves the purpose of being a visual icon.”

Let’s try to be fair to the professor then:

Swing music evolved from jazz in the early ‘30s, when jazz bands emphasized the hi-hat cymbal over the snare drum, replaced the tuba with a double bass and the banjo with a rhythm guitar. Beats got faster. And the bands expanded to 13 pieces and bigger. The changes allowed vocalists to shine and audiences to dance: basic swing and variations such as the staid West Coast, the meandering East Coast, the double-time jitterbug and the acrobatic Lindy Hop were created.

Swing heralded one of the first white invasions of African American culture--Benny Goodman became “the King of Swing” and black bandleaders such as Duke Ellington attracted white fans. Boosted by the emergence of radio and its own loud new sound, swing cut across class and race and was exclusive perhaps only in terms of age. “It appealed to people under 40--people who went out to the dance halls,” says music expert Timothy Edwards, who works at UCLA’s Archive of Popular American Music.

The wartime need for young men broke up many a band. After the war, swing continued to dissipate. Musicians began to break off into trios and quartets and began exploring jazz anew, creating bebop, cool jazz and avant-garde.

“On a sociological level, swing was uplifting, exciting, and it pointed to people to the future,” Edwards says. “In a sense, it gave them optimism at a time when there wasn’t a lot to celebrate.”

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Today, there are indeed those fans who say they take this history seriously--perhaps too seriously. “I’ve been dying to learn how to speak jive,” says one.

Then there’s the guy who has his zoot suits tailor-made and studies ‘30s movies. And the woman in San Francisco with the Varga Girl tattoos who takes as many as four hours to put on her makeup before a night out at Bimbo’s. And the girl who makes fun of “poseurs” who wear ‘90s shoes with vintage suits.

Mary Ann Johnson, a 27-year-old fashion designer, does well by these people. She makes zoot suits, “bombshell” dresses, saddle-stitch shirts and pencil skirts. You see, she explains, the vintage clothing stores have been ravaged by swing-conscious shoppers, and well, there’s not much of the original stuff left.

“You can’t find stuff anymore,” she says. “Or it’s so expensive, it costs as much as buying something new.” So, she says, business under her Black Jack label is booming (not to mention her Bon Phreak line, which she tailors for a few star clients).

Back at the Derby, the music is booming as Morris, the 25-year-old with Connick-like qualities, is contemplating his next move.

“A lot of girls seem to be attracted by the look,” says the vintage clothing store clerk, waving his hand over his slick, neatly trimmed hair.

“I’ll take ‘em to my house,” he says, “listen to old 78s and watch old horror movies.”

Just then, a man who has to be the most polite bartender in L.A., announces in a cool, clean voice, “Last call, please.”