It was the Roaring Twenties. It was the Jazz Age. A time of prohibition and loss of inhibitions. Hemlines rose and necklines plunged. Those who could afford it, indulged in clothing, jewelry, parties, & liquor. Those who couldn’t saw it in the movies read about it in the gossip columns and dreamed of being among the elite. In the 1930’s the romance of the speakeasy gave way to the stark reality of the Great Depression. Though many did not know where they might find their next meal, they still found a way to escape into the movie theatres from time to time and dream of better days.
And the music played on. The Jazz Age had only just begun, and even if you couldn’t always feed your body you could certainly find nourishment for your soul from the music that poured out of every speakeasy, theatre, and dance hall. From one-room flats in Harlem, to smoke-filled blues joints on Chicago’s famous South Side to glamourous clubs in Hollywood young musicians crowded in, vying to jam with the best of them.

Eighty years later, Jazz is a force to be reckoned with. It has morphed and grown and branched off into many directions, but it always swings. We like to play those tunes that got things started. Sometimes the sounds are so removed from contemporary Jazz that they might not even be recognized or acknowledged as having the same roots. They do. And those roots, like the Jazz of today, swing, baby, how they do swing.