Global pandemics aside, the Mint Julep Jazz Band is enjoying great demand. With band members featured at North Carolina’s Lindy Focus—one of the planet’s biggest swing dance festivals—this NC-based ensemble has toured all over the US; they plan to fill in the gaps when circumstances allow. It’s the sort of barnstorming success its musicians must have dreamed of since their student days—all except singer Laura Windley, who “fell into jazz singing accidentally,” that is. When Laura went to college, her main ambition was to pass the bar. Little did she know that she would end up fronting a globetrotting swing sensation, as well.
Jazz and Laura didn’t gel straight away. “My grandfather was a bit of a record collector,” she said. “He would always be talking about people like Django Reinhardt. I just didn’t know who these people were, or care.” Cue the nineties swing revival, when the likes of Royal Crown Revue and Squirrel Nut Zippers (also from NC) briefly reclaimed the airwaves for jazz. Suddenly, grandad's old records were of interest. “I realised he had been listening to this music all along, so it wasn’t difficult to find out more about it,” said Laura. “He was able to share a lot with me.”
Her next epiphany came from a 1998 commercial for GAP called “Khakis Swing,” in which khaki-clad cool kids performed fancy footwork and air steps to Loui
