Keep on swing'n

It's a Sunday night, and Haight Street's Club Deluxe is packed.

Outside, a smartly dressed doorman in a green suit watches a group of teenagers with skateboards and spiked hair walk by as he stands aside to let a couple in. Behind him a sign reads "dress code enforced."

Inside, a bartender in suspenders and tie is serving up martinis and gin and tonics. At the end of the bar, a woman pulling out a cigarette is met by a man holding a Zippo lighter.

On the dance floor, SF State student Mark Jordan, wearing a fedora hat, wing tip shoes and a suit reminiscent of the movie "The Maltese Falcon" is dancing and grooving with his partner as a piano player pounds out some '40s swing. Jordan grabs his partner and flips her through the air -- not once, but twice.

Soon others join in on the crowded floor. Men and women in their 20s and 30s are dancing the Jitterbug and the Street Swing.

Club Deluxe has become the city's focal point of a revival of 1940s style music and culture. Generation Xers, fed up with the world today, have turned back the clock to an earlier, more simple time -- a time when elegance, chivalry and style were important.

"I just found that I couldn't listen to loud guitars any more," said SF State senior Tim Hunt, who is 25. "I started coming to Club Deluxe about a year and a half ago, and I found that this was the place for me.

"The music is timeless. Singers like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra are classic, and evoke a whole different feeling from music today."

John Boydston, lead vocalist for the band Indigo Swing -- one of the many swing bands to emerge in the last few years -- feels he's living in the wrong time.

"I feel like I was born too late," said Boydston, 31. "It (the '40s) was a great time to be alive. It's about elegance and the hope of a brighter future."

For those involved in the swing scene, it is more than just the music that draws them to this era.

"The whole scene is very serious to the people involved," Jordan said. "Everything has to be authentic, from the Zippo lighter you use to light your cigarettes to your clothes."

The beginnings of the revival started in the Haight about five years ago with a small group of people who were into the music and style.

"I worked in a vintage clothing store, and the scene really began there," said Dana, 24, who only goes by her first name and recently opened a dance studio to teach swing with her friend Mango. "It was a small group of us who digged the clothes and music of the era.

"This isn't our parents' music, it goes back farther than that. It has become a way of life for us."

What started out as a small group of people dancing at Club Deluxe has exploded in popularity, with more and more clubs catering to the swing crowd.

"In the last two years, the scene has really grown," said Mike Moss, the publisher of Swing Time Magazine, a new magazine dedicated to the style and music of the era. "It is really peaking now, with new clubs and bands starting up all over the country."

"I don't think this is some trend that will just go away, because there is such variety in the music. Swing encompasses everything from Benny Goodman -- the 'king of swing' -- to Sinatra, Duke Ellington to Count Basie."

For Jordan, who is also a photographer for Swing Time, the scene fit his style and musical tastes.

"It's nice to go out and have people respect what you are wearing," Jordan said. "It's a chance to go out and have an elegant time with a group of people who share your tastes and interests."

"These days all you need is a drum machine to make music. The music of the '30s and '40s had soul and melody. Plus, there was a sense of style that just doesn't exist anymore," Moss said.

[ Golden Gater Online December 12, 1995 ]

[ back to top ]