Robert Bell's Hot Swing Combo has spent the last fifteen years as regional favorites at Midwestern swing events. They are based in Minneapolis and have connections reaching into the decades long legacy of trad jazz in the area. Bell is involved in the Southside Aces, the local trad group, and he's also part of an accordion focused world music orchestra.
The Hot Swing Combo though is his own unique project. It's aim, successfully accomplished, was to introduce Gypsy inflected swing into the area. Having first been inspired to turn to jazz by hearing Django he went on to found the Twin Cities Hot Club in 2005. He started playing dance events with his combo around the same time. They play a number of dance meetups in CO, OH, IA, NE, MI, WI, and even made it to DC.
The Twin Cities Hot Club has released a CD and DVD, and Bell has been on any number of albums, but his popular combo went unrecorded, until now.
They were booked to play Madison Invasion 2020 in Wisconsin this April before the world turned upside down. The organizers generously offered to pay them what they would have made by appearing and in gratitude the members of The Robert Bell Hot Swing Combo came up with a way that everyone could still dance. Rather than try to stream a live collaboration from everyone's living rooms they recorded this album ahead of the event and streamed it for all the quarantined dancers to
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