baby won’t you please come home jimmy lunceford another one overing around 180bpm but feels a little slower – don’t be fooled

Now…. we reach some controversial territory….. if you like boogie woogie style tracks…. (ahem, no comment) This is a solid, well known, floor filling staple for when you either a) can’t wait to break into your extensive boogie woogie selection or b) get asked “don’t you have any awesome boogie woogie tracks rather than all this old shit” (Like it or not, no matter how awesome you think your taste in music is, you aren’t going to please every dancer all night long…. there speaks the voice of bitter experience;-)

babys boogie woogie swing session darn it – I can only find a link via amazon.com;-)…. this is the track via you tube

moving swiftly on:

The Back Room Stomp Rex Stewart and his 52nd street stompers 154bpm simple but nice.

bacon’s blues Willie Lewis and His Negro Band I think this one would work for blues dancers 105bpm with lots of trombone and clarinet solos

a quick nod to big bad leroy brown Frank Sinatra  LATL 2007 back when bears manned up and did some serious dancing!! Perhaps the bears of 2012 will bring it (cue health and safety dehydration nightmare)

B is for…..The blues! Now I’m no Blues DJ but I hope those who know this dance and genre better enjoy these…..

Back’O Town Blues, 78bpm Louis Armstrong (quelle surprise!) you tube link

And this:

basella, 150bpm Ella Fitzgerald, Bluella: Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Blues (Not strictly blues but a real lazy feel for 150bpm! And at 10 mins long I guess its not surprising I haven’t played it…but it’s awesome. I got it from Andy Lewis and he was right in saying it’s a real late night track. For that sweet spot in the evening when everyone has given up on honing technique and impressing with fancy moves, a real sloogi number where you can just play:-)

B is also for this, not blues but classic Basie: Basie Boogie, 187bpm Count Basie The Lang-Worth Transcriptions wicked track – why haven’t I played this?!?!

And this, a great little well known bal number: Ballin’ the Jack 195bpm, Sidney Bechet The Fabulous Sidney Bechet

And Isla’s favourite: The Bare Necessities, 168bpm Louis Armstrong Walt Disney Records Archive Collection, Vol. 1 (It’s Louis, therefore, it is awesome

A is also for a whole lot of apples:

Apple Blossoms 3:32  107 bpm  Eddie Lang & Joe Venuti 1920′s & 1930′s Sides (Vol. 2) Not one for your big set evening session but nice for a chilled out lazy Sunday afternoon.

The Apple Jump 3:01 172bpm Count Basie 1939 volume 2 (This link takes you to a massive archive collection of FREE downloads of authentic jazz that is now out of copyright/royalty free…. that’s what they say and I do actually believe them. However, if you are about to pillage a whole load of tracks, why not ease your conscience by making a donation to the jazz foundation of America – donate button top right  – it’ll make you feel warm in your heart

Apples Be Ripe 3:29  160bpm  Red Hot Rhythmakers Rhythm of the Day. Sorry but i think you can only buy this track direct from the band on the CD. Its a good album though.

So I didn’t intend to add a post called “A is NOT for” but as I trawled through my A’s I came across “All I want for Christmas” by Mariah Carey and I thought it was worth a mention as part of my nostalgic reflection on Lindy Fridays turning 5.

Not many people realise that Lindy at the Light started BEFORE Lindy Fridays. In fact it was surviving the first LATL that spurred us on to start Lindy Fridays. For the first LATL therefore, there was no LF beginners routine and there were no routines from other cities (Hull scene did not exist, Balboa North did not exist). There was just a group of 1o fresh faced naive lindy hoppers from leeds who had from 2 months -4 years experience. We ran the same routine every 20mins. We invited dancers from Swing Jive and Lindy hop Sheffield to plug the gaps  and social dance, there were maybe 25 dancers in total. The choreographed routine we performed EVERY 20mins was to……… you guessed it,  “All I want for Christmas”.

If I EVER hear that track again it will be too soon But I have a certain fondness for it as a memory of where the Lindy Friday’s scene came from. (Note: this is the less cool version of where we came from  – the cool version being Thomas  and Max hip hop routine inspired us to start lindy hop in Leeds City Centre)

So here it is: You will see Jo Casey with black hair, his girlfriend, the future Vicky Casey and the fab Al Jones. The rest, well they are no longer lindy hopping in Leeds but they remain our very good friends 

I think this is a bit of a staple in some scenes – it seems very familiar from camps but its not one I have been playing….until now!

All That Meat and No Potatoes 2.45 120bpm   Lennie Baldwin’s Dauphin Street Six: Golden Years of Revival Jazz Vol. 3 (track 14)

I found this way back when my only mechanism for getting new tracks was to search itunes for every alternative version of a popular track I already had – e.g the fats waller version (this was a time before I knew Andy Lewis). I used to play this track but stopped about a year ago. I’m not saying this version is better than the fats version, but it makes a nice change once in a while especially for a lazy afternoon dance.

All Of Me 3:57 170bpm  Louis Armstrong: I Like Jazz: The Essence of Louis Armstrong

An old classic  – I LOVE Louis Armstrong so much!! Yet I don’t play this…. I think probably the live recording puts me off but I love this version.

1. I was inspired by the regular blog updates from the fabulous Miss Tessa Smith: http://tessasmith.wordpress.com/ Which  made me think about writing the blog for my own benefit and development as much as for the enjoyment of others

2. I was encouraged to see that my favourite UK lindyhop DJ Andy Lewis (who was and still is a great inspiration and who helped me find my feet as a fledgeling DJ) has started blogging: http://blog.straycat.me.uk/

3. I gave birth to our beautiful baby girl and I now find myself on mat leave with a lot more time where i have a baby in one hand and an i phone in the other:-)

So here’s the issue. I currently have literally 1000′s of swinging jazz tracks but due to a previous lack of time, laziness and habit, I generally only ever compile a set from a pool of around 700 or so. This leaves a load of music sitting unheard in the depths of my macbook:-(.

The plan? I am going to rescue said abandoned tracks and listen to my entire collection over the course of a year. I will start with the letter “A” and every fortnight I will move on a letter. I will post the most interesting tracks that are sitting there and would be great to dance to but for whatever reason I am not currently playing.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a good reason why I don’t tap into everything all the time – or at least there was. I most regularly “DJ” at Lindy Fridays which is a regular “entry level” lindy hop class. I believe it helps new dancers if they become accustomed to certain tracks so they can work on things  like breaks and improvised steps from the security of knowing the music. Thinking back to when I was a new dancer, there was so much complexity to learning the footwork and trying to understand “frame” that if I was constantly hit with different and new music all the time it might have blown my mind. I enjoyed dancing to the familiar songs I knew because at least then I could wiggle at the bits I recognised when the feet and the arms were not behaving!! (New followers – if you ever find yourself in the middle of a truely awful dance with a more advanced lead and you just want to die because you aren’t getting it then shimmy. There is NEVER a bad time to shimmy – it will make you feel better and make your leader smile. In the unlikely event that the mood still needs to be lifted further, turn round and shimmy your bum at them – I guarantee this works and these 2 tricks saw me through my first 3 dance camps

OK, enough waffle – time to get started! A is for……