G Swing - Swing For Modern Clubbing (2006)

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G Swing - Swing For Modern Clubbing (2006)

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There was once a time when the word swing was on everyone's lips. Well, for ten years, between 1935 and 1945, jazz was incredibly fashionable. It was the swing era, a time when thousands of people danced to giant big bands on huge dancefloors. It was a time when Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald were still just ordinary singers in an orchestra, and Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie were the real stars. In France, hundreds of songs tucked the word swing into their titles and lyrics ("Je Suis Swing", "Mademoiselle Swing" etc) In its own way, swing was already a sort of clubbing, hedonistic and festive. It's not surprising then that house music, a style of music that originated in Chicago, has been using samples of jazz and swing from the city for a long time. From the "Folies" on Broadway to Kiki Montparnasse's "Dancing De La Coupole" in Paris, swing has long been an inspiration for anyone who likes to dance to music. Today, in 2006, a collective called G Swing, a group of inspired remixers brought together by Romain BNO (Basenotic) and Etienne Mignard, has reinvented swing for the new millennium, keeping the jazz elements, adding house music & electro and keeping it danceable. Starting with original samples (such as the voices of Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone), talented remixers such as Romain BNO, Lindstrom, or Joakim have produced a compilation of completely reinvented swing hits, remixed at their home studios. The G Swing EP is a 4 track sampler taken from this project. House-lovers will warm to it immediately, but it should also impress club DJs, lounge selectors, easy listening fans and even jazz-heads. The star track "Ring Dem Bells", originally composed by Duke Ellington for the Danish singer Svend Asmussen, is a wonderful skippy swing number. "Diga Diga Doo", another standout track, is sung by the Mills Brothers quartet, quite well known back in the thirties, and played by Duke Ellington's big band and some of its soloists. One thing leads to another: Charlie Barnet, the saxophonist who was invited by his idol Duke Ellington to play the bells on the original version of "Ring Dem Bells" in 1930, went on to start his own big band. They recorded "Cement Mixer" in 1946, a track that is also to be found here. Written by the extraordinary, slightly loopy, singer Slim Gaillard, the song had been given an inventive & exiting facelift with the mad production of Joakim, from the Tigersushi label.