Eighty Years of the Dutch Swing College Band

I met a good friend for coffee the other day. I know she’s a good friend, because she turned up with a carrier bag full of old jazz vinyl. “My neighbor left these out on the curb and I thought you might like them,” she said. I pulled out my phone and began eagerly adding the new acquisitions to my Discogs app, noticing that one of them sells for up to $80 in good condition. Saying nothing about the little goldmine she had just handed over, I gratefully paid for her coffee—I guess she’s a better pal than I am.

One of these records was called Jazz Sir, That’s Our Baby (1963) by the Dutch Swing College Band. My friend—who is more of a folkie—naively assumed that this was some student outfit, rather than Europe’s longest-lived and perhaps best-travelled trad jazz group. (The band’s 2025 calendar includes dates in their native Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and even Japan.) Despite this, it seems the DSCB has received only the occasional mention herein. So, as your self-appointed ambassador for European and UK jazz, I’ve taken the liberty of putting that right in celebration of the group’s astonishing 80th anniversary.

It all began in 1919 with the birth of Peter Schilperoort. The Dutch multi-instrumentalist grew up during the European jazz invasion and became obsessed with its sound—he reminisced in one interview about playing along to imported records on a papier-mâché sax. After dabbling with the piano and flirting with the harmonica, he settled on reeds and guitar. He first joined The Bouncers, graduating later to the Swing Papas: one of the first big Dutch jazz orchestras. Schilperoort began giving clarinet lessons and, together with pianist Frans Vink, made plans for a post-war jazz school—all while Holland was still under Nazi occupation.

When those unhep German squares finally beat it, Schilperoort and Vink established The Quartet [later Orchestra] of the Dutch Swing College and took up residence at Appeldoorn’s Canada Club. Its other members in 1945 were Joost van Os (trumpet), Bill Brant (trombone), Otto Gobius (guitar), Henry Frohwein (bass) and Tony Nüsser (drums). In 1946 they travelled to Brussels, where they took first place at the Hot Club de Belgique contest, and within four short years they had appeared at most of the continent’s major festivals.

The band’s first national radio broadcasts were made in 1948, with their first platters (with Decca) appearing in 1952. At around the same time, guitarist Artie Ligthart joined the outfit and took a management role, leaving musical direction to Schilperoort. Early on, the DSCB’s repertoire was mostly focused on the Chicago school—Schilperoort later cited Frank Teschemacher as his main inspiration, early on. But as interest in the early masters was revived, the band leaned more towards the New Orleans style.

Their chops were soon acknowledged by some of the biggest names in jazz: Sidney Bechet toured with them between 1949 and 1957, rhythm and blues pioneer Hot Lips Page appeared with them in 1951, King Oliver sideman Albert Nicholas sat in during 1954 and Muggsy Spanier in 1960, to name but a few of the US greats who endorsed these European upstarts. An ever-changing roster of players had given 5,000 concerts by 1980 and recorded over 50 albums (according to Discogs)—numbers which must have doubled, since then. There can be few bands in European jazz history who can claim to have worked as hard.

US pianist Teddy Wilson confessed to having a “particularly soft spot” for the DSCB. “Man for man, it’s one of the greatest seven-piece jazz bands I’ve ever heard, and… the greatest small concert jazz band around today [in 1976].” He praised their “varied and interesting” repertoire, including “all the tunes that were popular with musicians like myself to improvise on”, combining “so much jazz history in their concerts” and “all so expertly done.” In fact, Wilson had a close business and personal relationship with the DSCB and writes about them extensively in his memoir Teddy Wilson Talks Jazz (2001).

But trumpeter Bill Coleman revealed another side to the DSCB as it was during the 1950s: they partied as hard as they worked. The prolific US sideman had toured widely with outfits led by Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Andy Kirk, Mary Lou Williams, Sy Oliver, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins and others. Like several of his contemporaries, Coleman settled in France as he found it less racially discriminatory than his home country. He subsequently toured Holland with the DSC during the late 1950s, as recounted in his autobiography Trumpet Story (1981).

Coleman described DCS as “the drinkingest band” he ever knew. “I’ve heard stories about how the guys in the old Fletcher Henderson band could drink,” he reminisced, “but I actually saw how those cats [in DCS] could bend elbows.” He added that the band “never let that ignorant liquid interfere with their playing”, however, and that they were all “real great fellows.” It was, he concluded, “one of the most enjoyable of the many tours I’ve done during my whole musical career.”

Schilperoort briefly left the band in 1955, resuming an engineering education which had been interrupted by the Second World War. He did a five-year stint at—somewhat ironically—Fokker. Jan Morks took Schilperoort’s clarinet chair and pianist Joop Schrier assumed leadership of the group, for a period during which the aforementioned Bechet and Spanier collaborations took place. Having scratched his engineering itch, Schilperoort returned to helm the band from 1960 to 1990. At this point the formerly amateur outfit turned pro, undertaking concert tours across South America, Australasia, Asia and Africa, riding the wave of the second trad boom.

Fortunately for Schilperoort, he hadn’t missed the boat: giants of jazz were still queuing up to play with the band. Bud Freeman, Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Venuti, Condon colleague “Wild Bill” Davidson, Ellington associate “Cadillac” Williams and Goodman/Shaw sideman Billy Butterfield all recorded with them during the 1960s and 1970s. Their musical output also became a little more eclectic with forays into Western, pop and even rock-adjacent jazz: they have covered the likes of Stevie Wonder’s (You Are the Sunshine of My Life), the Beatles’ (Can’t Buy Me Love), and ABBA’s (Waterloo).

So beloved has been the DCSB—becoming perhaps the Netherlands’ best-known cultural export alongside Heineken, Edammer and golf—that their 25th and 35th anniversaries were marked with hour-long, national television specials, the latter event reuniting many of the original members from 1945. Schilperoort was knighted by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands in 1988 and passed away two years later, having dedicated his adult life (minus five years at Fokker) to jazz and built a band beloved by both fans and fellow musicians.

Vink and Schilperoort’s dreams of a Dutch national jazz college were never realised, but their legacy lives on in the DSCB’s modern incarnation. This line-up includes Keesjan Hoogeboom (trumpet), Bert Boeren (trombone), David Lukàcs (reeds), Adrie Braat (bass), Peter Kanters (banjo/guitar) and Frits Landesbergen (drums). The Dutch Swing College Band still sounds absolutely top tier, and they remain firm favorites at both jazz music and jazz dance festivals—their latest LP Ministry of Jazz (2023) was released on the band’s own label DSCMusic.

If, like my folkie friend, you’re only just getting wise to the DSCB, you should definitely check out their official YouTube channel. Those TV specials are definitely worth watching, for more historical context and fascinating anecdotes about European jazz during wartime. They’re also both available on YouTube and, through the (still shaky) magic of AI, can be viewed with auto-generated captions in (very mangled) English. The band’s 70th birthday was marked with a Dutch theater tour—hopefully their upcoming 80th is celebrated with just as much fanfare (and some UK dates).