I love a three-piece jazz combo. More so than a big band, if I’m honest, although saying so feels blasphemous: as a swing dancer, surely the ballroom-filling Basie, Ellington, and Goodman should be my Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Nonetheless, I like being able to appreciate each player and soak up every single note of a small group recording. (Oscar Peterson’s “C Jam Blues” with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen is the hottest nine minutes on YouTube—prove me wrong.)
So could the sextet line-up hit my sweet spot between big band volume and small group simplicity? The Hot Swing Sextet makes a strong case for “yes,” with their latest release What’s Your Jive? This Bordeaux-based outfit squeezes a mighty full sound out of just two horns, two guitars, bass and drums—ripe for laid-back listening or dynamic dancing. In fact, the cool cover art represents this disc’s contents well: six cartoon guys squashed into a portable record player, with a sharp-dressed pair cutting a groove atop the vinyl.
Drawing from the songbooks of lesser-played bandleaders like John Collins, Irving Ashby, Sammy Price, Hot Lips Page, and Skippy Williamson, this ear-opening (and generous) collection of fifteen tracks is apt to be something of a musical education for swing dancers as much as it is a shoe-shuffling soundtrack. As with any good dancing compilation, there’s a good range of tempos to which
