The “hot” band touring the country these days is appropriately named The Hot Sardines. This eight-member group out of New York City has six musicians, a French-born vocalist who plays the washboard and serves as M.C., and a tap dancer. They have dug up many of the old classic tunes that for too long have been relegated to the music memory bank and are presenting them in a hip, high-energy style that is distinctively their own.
Among their lauditory reviews, we're told: "It's Trad jazz with an edge . . . as if the cops had just burst into a speakeasy waving their billy clubs. They've captured the spirit as well as the letter of the music, handling tunes that go back to the 1920s as living, breathing music, rather than forgotten museum artifacts."
This is how The Sardines describe themselves: "Take a blustery brass lineup, layer it over a rhythm section led by a stride-piano virtuoso in the Fats Waller vein, and tie the whole thing together with a one-of-the-boys frontwoman with a voice from another era, and you have The Hot Sardines."
"Miz Elizabeth" Bougerol leads the Hot Sardines with her Dubl Handi washboard, still available from Ace Hardware (photo by Rob Ball)
They've figured out how to market themselves, and they have few peers in promoting their story as a great American success epic worthy of the cinema, citing how "a born-and-bred NYC ac
