Fads | Life | Music | TV | Movies | Pop Culture | 90s
You Lived Through The Swing Revival Of The 90s, But Do You Know How It Started?
The 90s were an interesting time. People were wearing enormous jeans, crop tops, crimped hair or frosted tips. In some cases they would combine them in truly bizarre ways. But one trend that was huge in the 90s was the Swing Revival and it's kind of hard to understand why.
Where did it come from? Why did it happen? Who was manufacturing all of those fedoras? Well it seemed to start in the late 80s when rockabilly bands started to pop up in San Francisco. The Club DeLuxe in San Francisco is often credited with the birth place of this revival.
Later that year the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry Poppin' Daddies came into the spotlight with their swing/ska hybrid that managed to take off.
Click to the next page to see how this whole thing blew up bigger than anyone expected!
The fad of swing music was growing and growing with people learning dances to go with the fun music. They would dress like they were back in the 40s and 50s with big suits and fluffy dresses.
Then in 1993, movies started to bring it all to the mainstream. Swing Kids, The Mask, and Swingers, all helped bring a bigger audience to this retro style of music.
It was EVERYWHERE at this point. I mean, the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies performed at the Superbowl!
In 98 and 99 the swing revival had reached its peak after The Gap featured original Louis Prima versions of Jump, Jive and Wail in their commercials while dancers did a bunch of cool moves while wearing khakis.
It's possible that the fad had just run its course, or that the Gap kind of ruined it by making people swing dance in khakis, but after that it all started to slow down. There are the occasional swing-style songs that come out (mostly by Michael Buble) but for the most part people just pretend like it didn't happen.