At 30 years of age, British bandleader Alex Mendham is too young to have seen any of the swing band leaders of the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw all had passed away by the time Mendham started studying and playing their music. Today, he leads the Alex Mendham and His Orchestra, an 11-piece band complete with a 1930s style stage show and authentic tuxedos on all of his musicians.
Recently, Mendham successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign for his 4th crowdfunded release, The Roaring 2020s, which drops in September.
Mendham’s upbringing in Essex, a county in southeast England, holds no indications that he would help revive the sound of 1920s and 1930s jazz in the United Kingdom by coming a bandleader, saxophonist, and singer. As he tells The Syncopated Times, his approach to big band music is different because he doesn’t see it as nostalgia but as a living, breathing, and swinging form of music that is attracting new, young audiences.
Brian R. Sheridan: What do you mean when you say that you grew up in “an unmusical environment?”
Alex Mendham: [In my family] nobody played a musical instrument and nobody sang. My mom and dad were both working class, working for Ford Motor Company. I am the middle of three children and my older brother was quite sporty. I was more into books and learning about different things—mo
