My Swing Archives

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Fox Trot

The foxtrot is a smooth progressive dance characterized by long, continuous flowing movements across the dance floor. It is danced to big band (usually vocal) music, and the feeling is one of elegance and sophistication. The dance is similar in its look to waltz, although the rhythm is 4/4 instead of 3/4 time. Dancing the slow foxtrot well takes a high level of technical expertise as well as a lot of dance experience and physical skill. Developed in the 1920's, the foxtrot reached its height of popularity in the 1930's, and is today a favourite of many dedicated dancers.

The exact origin of the name of the dance is unclear, although one theory is that took its name from its popularizer, the vaudeville actor Harry Fox.

Two sources credit African American dancers as the source of the Fox Trot: Vernon Castle himself, and then dance teacher Betty Lee. Castle saw the dance, which "had been danced by negroes, to his personal knowledge, for fifteen years," at "a certain exclusive colored club".

The dance was premiered in 1914, quickly catching the eye of the husband and wife duo Vernon and Irene Castle, who lent the dance its signature grace and style.

At its inception, the foxtrot was originally danced to ragtime. Today, the dance is customarily accompanied by the same big band music to which swing is also danced.

From the late teens through the 1940s, the foxtrot was certainly the most popular fast dance and the vast majority of records issued during these years were foxtrots. The waltz and tango, while popular, never overtook the foxtrot. Even the popularity of the lindy hop in the 1940s did not affect the foxtrot's popularity, since it could be danced to the same records used to accompany the lindy hop.

When rock and roll first emerged in the early 1950s, record companies were uncertain as to what style of dance would be most applicable to the music. Notably, Decca Records initially labeled its rock and roll releases as "foxtrots", most notably "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. Since that recording, by some estimates, went on to sell more than 25 million copies, "Rock Around the Clock" could be considered the biggest-selling "foxtrot" of all time.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxtrot]

Today I listened to Wingy Manone [originally Mannone - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingy_Manone] for the first time on Penelope's Sunday radio show [http://www.republicradio.gr] and while searching for his music on the internet I realized that all his songs were listed as Fox Trot, even the ones that were encouraging the listeners to "swing it", hence the post about foxtrot. Here's Swing, Brother, Swing!

Monday, January 9, 2012

Illustrating the Jazz Era [Jim Flora]

James (Jim) Flora is best-known for his wild jazz and classical album covers for Columbia Records (late 1940s) and RCA Victor (1950s). He authored and illustrated 17 popular children's books and flourished for decades as a magazine illustrator. Few realize, however, that Flora (1914-1998) was also a prolific fine artist with a devilish sense of humor and a flair for juxtaposing playfulness, absurdity and violence. Cute - and deadly.

Flora's album covers pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. Yet this childlike exuberance was subverted by a tinge of the diabolic. Flora wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives.

Taking liberties with human anatomy, he drew bonded bodies and misshapen heads, while inking ghoulish skin tints and grafting mutant appendages. He was not averse to pigmenting jazz legends Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa like bedspread patterns. On some Flora figures, three legs and five arms were standard equipment, with spare eyeballs optional. His rarely seen fine artworks reflect the same comic yet disturbing qualities. "He was a monster," said artist and Floraphile JD King. So were many of his creations.

All text and illustrations come from this wonderful site dedicated to his art: www.jimflora.com

Illustrating the Jazz Era [John Held Jr.]

If ever an artist's work so consummately defined a particular era, it was that of the Roaring Twenties illustrator John Held, Jr. (January 10, 1889 – March 2, 1958), whose creations both set the standard for-and gently ribbed-a generation. More than any other artist of his time, Held expressed in his pictures the bold spirit of the Jazz Age. It was a time of bustling commerce, booming enterprises, and engaging recreation. Society's elite were dining at Sardi's, the adventurous were doing the Charleston and the Shimmy in dance marathons, and the flapper was in full vogue, out and about in pursuit of a good time. Chronicling it all, for magazine readers coast-to-coast, was John Held, Jr. [1]

One of the best known magazine illustrators of the 1920s, Held created cheerful art showing his characters dancing, motoring and engaging in fun-filled activities. The drawings, especially his archetypical flapper illustrations, defined the flapper era so well that many people are familiar with Held's work today. [2]

While his drawings were published in such publications as Life and Judge, it was his work for the fledgling magazine "The New Yorker" that established Held in the eyes of the nation. His depictions of Betty Coed, the prototypical "flapper" (along with her gentleman friend, Joe College), became the quintessential definition of the decade's "flaming youth." [1]

Readers of "Harper's Bazaar," "Redbook," and "Vanity Fair" would be hard-pressed to avoid Held's ubiquitous depictions of the Jazz Age's high-living college crowd. The characters' contemporaries got a real kick out of Held's creations, and parents of the younger generation turned to these illustrations for a clearer understanding of their children. [1]