It’s Swing Time Again : With a Movie and Regular Club Gig, Scotty Morris and His Band Are at the Heart of a Burgeoning Scene

Scotty Morris might have stepped right out of “Guys and Dolls.” In a chalk-striped zoot suit, dangling a knee-length watch chain and crowned with a chocolate-colored fedora, the lead singer of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy looks like a good-natured ‘40s gangster, the wisecracking kid with the baby face and the big heart.

So it’s no surprise that Morris, 30, has made it onto celluloid, strutting and singing like a punkish vision from the past in the movie “Swingers.” Set against a backdrop of L.A.’s ‘40s-inspired swing scene, “Swingers” might just do for Manhattan cocktails, wool gabardine and big bands what “Saturday Night Fever” did for mirror balls and the Bee Gees. On an indie-film level, anyway.

“Swingers” tracks three entertainment industry wannabes up to Vegas and through the Hollywood haunts that serve as the backdrop for their romantic wrangling. With its snappy and slick dialogue--part Old Hollywood producer banter, part hip-hop lingo--”Swingers” hankers for an era of glamour but slyly observes a segment of the city today.

Written by and starring club scene regular Jon Favreau, the film has received a storm of enthusiastic praise and had recouped its filming cost well before its recent move from limited to nationwide release.

In the movie, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy--a seven-man band complete with a four-piece horn section--plays a rousing version of the blues-tinged “You & Me & the Bottle Makes 3 Tonight (Baby)” for the climactic club scene. The sequence was filmed during the band’s regular Wednesday night stint at the Derby in Los Feliz.

“The whole thing felt so real to us, the little crew of us who knew,” says Morris, sitting in a spare room behind the Derby’s stage between the band’s sets. “All of the people in it hang out at the club. Jon Favreau was here dancing two weeks ago and I said to him, ‘You know, you’re not going to be able to do this anymore.’ ”

Voodoo Daddy is at the heart of the West Coast’s burgeoning swing scene, whose roost is the Derby. The band’s residency draws a mixture of East Coast swing dancers and Lindy hoppers, martini swillers and older folks who experienced the World War II era firsthand.

Like Favreau’s script, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is a study in well-oiled cool, irascible grit and considerable chutzpah.

“Walking into clubs when I was a kid, I’d have a Mohawk or purple hair or something like that,” says Morris, remembering his days as a punk-rocker in his hometown of Ventura. “People were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.’ But try to walk into a club with a zoot suit, man, people look at you pretty funny. I’ll tell you, that’s punk rock.”

Although the band has noticed a more mainstream element filtering into the Derby since “Swingers” came out, offers from record companies eager to sign the group were on the table well before the film’s release. In fact, Voodoo Daddy’s predecessor-in-residency at the Derby, the Royal Crown Revue, was signed by Warner Bros. Records, which released an album in June.

“ ‘Swingers’ has opened the eyes of a lot more industry people who were already hip to us but didn’t think we would have mass appeal,” Morris says. “In the last year, we have been approached by everybody.”

The singer is quick to point out that the band filters its mostly original songs through a kaleidoscope of genres and eras ranging from jump blues to rockabilly, mambo to ska, jazz to punk.

“We’re not trying to do exactly what they did in the ‘40s. We’re playing swing music that is absolutely set in the ‘90s,” he says. “The energy on stage comes from the whole punk-rock thing, where you just get up there and give it your all.”

Ironically, it wasn’t until the veteran of Ventura punk bands gave up his career as a studio musician and opened a Port Hueneme surf shop with his brother that he started making a name for himself musically--playing parties and weddings in a three-piece swing combo.

“It was a labor of love,” he says. “When we started in 1990, it was me and Kurt [Sodergren, Voodoo Daddy’s drummer] and a surf buddy trying to swing. Then we bumped it up to horns. People had no idea what we were doing, wearing our zoot suits and coming in with our big hats. But ever since I heard Louis Armstrong when I was a little kid, I’ve had this weird vision that I was going to play this music.”

At that time, swing was the province of a small, die-hard cult.

“I figured it would just be fun,” Morris says. “People would get a kick out of it, us trying to bring some class back to American culture, as kind of a joke.”

The band released two records on its own, the album “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy” and a holiday EP called “Whatchu’ Want for Christmas?” on Big Bad Records.

“Then swing just took off,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “And now we have a rule: No one is allowed to pinch us. Because if you pinch us and we wake up from this dream, we’re going to be really bummed.”

* Big Bad Voodoo Daddy plays Wednesdays at the Derby, 4500 Los Feliz Blvd., 9:30 p.m. $5. (213) 663-8979.