Laura Light

Laura Light is a fiddler, singer, and composer from Virginia, to whose music I had the pleasure of contradancing a few years ago. (She snuck in a swing tune as well, which was a fun surprise.) For those of you in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, she'll be out here again this weekend, playing at the Palo Alto Contra Dance on the 29th. Come dance off the extra calories!

I've got her album No Gravity (Amazon, eMusic, iTunes), which has a lot of good fiddle tunes and a few good couple-dancing tracks to call out:

• Two Rivers - Cross-step Waltz, 121 bpm
  This is probably my favorite of the batch. Really lovely.
• This Was Meant to Be - Swing, 145 bpm
  "How can I explain this incredible feeling? / Feet on the ground, I'm dancing on the ceiling...."
• Mid-Winter Waltz - Rotary Waltz, 174 bpm
  A great Larry Edelman tune that I remember from one of the first cassettes of "real" music I ever owned.
• The Last Waltz of the Millenium - Cross-step Waltz, 111 bpm
  Probably won't be relevant again for a while, but it's a waltz, nonetheless. :-)

Also, in the process of writing this post, I found that she has another album, called Katchemak Bay Waltz, which is entirely waltzes. Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to buy MP3s -- it looks like you can only buy a CD here. So I haven't listened to most of it yet, though there are a couple sample MP3s on that page. (Including an interesting version of "Scarborough Fair.")

Laurent Fourgo

Special bonus today: The music in this post is not only purchasable and downloadable, but go-hear-them-live-able as well. (Assuming you live around the Bay Area.)

I had dinner last Friday at Mandaloun in Redwood City, to the music of Laurent Fourgo & His Ensemble. Lots of good, standard swing stuff, with the added interest of having French versions of lots of the lyrics. In fact, the CD (Amazon MP3, Last.fm) appears to be entirely bilingual. Anyway, they're perfectly danceable, and if you sit in the right spot you can have a little bit of floor space to hop into and dance when the mood strikes. (As long as you watch out for passing waiters, not to mention the clarinetist who would sometimes get loose and start wandering around on his solos.)

They seem to have been a hit with the rest of the customers and the management as well, since they announced that they now have a regular gig there, twice a month. Keep an eye on their calendar to find out when those will be. The restaurant itself was good as well, so all in all it makes a quite recommendable outing for a Friday evening if you're stuck without an FNW or other dancing (or even a Friday evening on your way to other dancing).

Swing Music from Dublin

There's nothing to connect these two songs except that I first heard them when I went swing dancing in Dublin last year. I was editing the first one this morning and it made me think of the second.

• Lisa Stansfield - Why Do We Call It Love? (180 bpm) (Amazon CD)
  My favorite part of this one has got to be the horns popping in mid-chorus. I also heard this one last week played as a quickstep for a ballroom competition on PBS.
• Eileen Ivers - The Rights of Man (128 bpm) (Amazon MP3)
  Leave it to Eileen Ivers to turn an Irish hornpipe into something you can swing to. Maybe more of a bluesy swing, but still.

Ray Bierl

I'm back from my latest travels, so here's some traveling music for you all. Ray Bierl (a member of The Hillbillies from Mars) came out with a great new solo album last year, entitled Any Place I Hang My Hat. It's full of songs, as he puts it, "about hitting the highway, riding the rails, lighting out for the territory," and is overall an excellent piece of work. I have several favorites, but for dancing, I recommend the following:

• Down and Out (buy | listen) - Swing, 145 bpm.
  "Brother, can you spare a dime? Buck for a beer wouldn't be too bad...."
• Tramps and Hawkers (buy | listen) - Moderate waltz, 137 bpm.
  Five minutes long, but worth it.
  "Like ghosts we roam without friends or home, these tramps and hawkers and me."

If you're in the Bay Area, there are lots of opportunities to hear him perform live as well.

Trailer Park Trio

The Trailer Park Trio is billed as the largest trio in the world, with 5 members. Because everybody knows that bigger is better when it comes to trios. In this case it certainly seems to work, because their whole self-titled album is great, and it's all danceable. They play a lot of classic swing songs from the 20's - 40's and have a great sound. A good three quarters of the entire album is actually available to stream or download on their site, so you can check it all out (and then buy the CD anyway). Some of my favorite tracks are "King of the Road," "Reet, Petite & Gone," and "Nagasaki." There are a few blues songs as well: "If I Had You," "Red Light," and "Someday You'll Be Sorry."

Jim Smith, the lead singer and tenor guitar player, also has some solo albums called "Same Old New Hair" and "Bad Then... Worse Now." I love his voice, guitar playing, and even whistling, but I only have a few tracks from these albums. (Some good ones are "Half Moon Eyes" and "I Double Dare You.") I can't find any information about them anywhere online, though. If you're in the Philadelphia area, I guess just look for him at a live gig or something and get the CDs that way.

Some Silly Swings

Silly swings were on my mind when I got invited to join this blog, so silly swings is what I'll start out with. I'll do some more normal stuff once I get this out of my system. (Though just wait till I put together a silly polkas post....) Here we go:

Louis Jordan & Louis Armstrong - Life is So Peculiar

A nice, relaxed swing, considering the perplexing mysteries of life. "When I get up each morning, there's nuthin' to breathe but air / And when I look in the mirror, there's nuthin' to comb but hair."

Groucho Marx did a recording of this with Bing Crosby as well, with some different verses. Not danceable, though.

Hot Cat Jazz Band - She Looks Like Helen Brown

(I sadly can't find any downloads or samples, but it's on this CD. Part of another rendition of the song is here though I don't care for it as much.)

There are only a couple puns in this one, but they get a lot of mileage out of them. I first encountered this song when I needed to do a (very impromptu) swing performance for a family gathering. My partner and I grabbed the nearest CD, found something at a decent tempo and not too long, didn't really listen to it, then went out and danced. Of course, I often miss lyrics entirely when I dance, so I had no clue why the audience was laughing so much. Once I figured it out, I was delighted.

Ray Stevens - Clucking Chickens singing "In the Mood".

I believe this one stands on its own without commentary.