Want to understand jazz music and improvisation better? Check out this jazz primer online text by Marc Sabatella:

http://www.outsideshore.com/primer/primer/index.html

You can purchase the paperback version, but the entire text is generously available online. I’m no musician and I’ve just started learning , so I’m wading through it now, and it’s really interesting – whether you’re a student of jazz, or just a jazz dancer interested in better understanding the music we dance to.

There’s a brief section on the history of jazz, followed by the fundamentals of jazz musical structures and processes, on to chord/scale relationships, the theory of jazz improvisation, and some notes on accompanying and jamming with others.

Thanks to Todd Yannacone for forwarding this on.

I have a new blog, collaboratively with a group of other swing dancing ladies, called SwingFashionista.com

It’s a blog and look book, about swing fashion – both swing era vintage (1920s, 30s & 40s), and also those special fashions that sweep through the swing community around the world, completely independently of the fashion world at large!

We’ll be taking photos of the well-dressed folk at all the swing dance events we go to around the globe, and posting them up on the blog, as well as vintage photos that inspire us and anything else related to vintage fashion, hair and makeup of the jazz age.

If you have a snapshot of anyone (guy or girl!) in your local scene, looking fine in swing era vintage style, or you have anything else you think might be relevant to SwingFashionista.com, then email it to shaz@swingfashionista.com

I DJ’d a short set at the Grenoble Lindy Exchange in Grenoble, France last weekend, so I played a handful of my current favourite tunes to swingout to…

Swingin’ On That Famous Door – Roy Eldridge, 1935 (199bpm)
Cherry – Eddie Condon & His Tow Hall Jazz Band, 1944 (168bpm)
A High Hat, a Piccolo and a Cane - Tempo King & His Kings of Tempo (187bpm)
If I Were You – Hot Lips Page, 1938 (225bpm)
Bring It On Home to Grandma – Jimmie Noone, 1930 (164bpm)
Fan It – Red Nichols (181bpm)
Long About Midnight - Willie Bryant & His Orchestra (200bpm)
Let’s Get Happy Together - Lil Hardin Armstrong, 1938 (176bpm)
I Must Have It – Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks, 2001 (137bpm)
Midriff – Duke Ellington, 1945 (170bpm)
It Ain’t Right – Stuff Smith, 1936 (192bpm)
Wild Man Blues - Johnny Dodds & His Chicago Boys, 1938 (173bpm)
Midnight In A Madhouse (Midnight in Harlem) – Chick Webb, 1937 (206bpm)
Laughing at Life - Edgar Hayes & His Orchestra, 1937 (153bpm)
From Monday On – Ella Logan & The Spirits of Rhythm, 1941 (198bpm)
Blackstick - Noble Sissle, 1938 (189bpm)